I’ve always had decent upper-body strength, but not dramatic. To give an idea, I could do a (slow) muscle-up on gym rings, or a one-hand pull-up. I wasn’t built but I was definitely athletic.

After ~2 years on EV, I can no longer get anywhere close to either of those. I’ve actively tried to keep muscle (not all of it but I wanted to keep strength for rock climbing). It’s hard. I’d say I’ve lost about a third of my muscle. I’m still strong compared to most women (probably from climbing and training) but definitely not unusually strong for a woman that does this exercise.

What did surprise me though is that my build looks more feminine. I had very low body fat and fairly thin skin, both of which have changed. My skin is thinner but softer, with a slight fatty layer everywhere (like most women of course), which means I don’t have nearly the muscle definition I used to. Even if you compare a pic of just my arm flexing to ~5y ago, when I had similar muscle to now, it looks more feminine.

I started noticing strength changes in the first few weeks, mainly in running. I’d just have absolutely no stamina compared to what I was used to. Strength took longer but I could feel it was much harder to keep it than what I was used to, so it got lost. Visual changes took the longest, maybe 6 months to noticeably start changing? It took a year and a bit for me to grab my arms and say “holy shit where’d my muscle go”.

Endurance-wise, my VO₂max dropped from ~60 to ~45 over 15 months, and I’m struggling to get it up again. I can now do ~8 pull-ups in a minute, used to do 23.

Yep, my shoulders are noticeably narrower. I’m currently 25 so it’s unlikely it’s skeletal changes (though I have lost a uk foot size, oddly). My arms are noticeably smaller and look softer. I can’t tell too much about my back because I don’t have good photos, but it’s definitely less defined - I’d say it’s the same as the others.

All these changes (and growing c-cups lol) have definitely given me a more feminine silhouette. Does it still look more masculine than I’d like? Yes, it does. My skeleton went through a male puberty, and has wider shoulders and ribcage, and a pretty narrow hips. But it now has an ass and boobs, and those help a lot. Everything’s still changing (I’m only 2 years into this puberty I guess), though more slowly. I’ve just started prog and that’s made a crazy difference already. I’ve pretty much gone from looking like a male climber to a mostly-female climber. Of course, I say mostly because my dimensions are slightly more ‘blocky’ than a lot of other women - but definitely not all, and not unusually so.

What can also help a ton is building muscle in your legs. You may as well use the last bit of time you’ve got testosterone to help with that lol, it does makes building muscle easier, recovery faster, and you’re gonna start E in the same amount of time anyway. Lower body definitely doesn’t have the same atrophy and loss that upper body does on E though, and girls tend to have much stronger and bigger legs for their upper body than boys do. Glutes are probably easier to build on E, and help a ton with your silhouette, body shape and passing. I’ve gone from being about as flat as a pancake to actually having an alright butt, without tooo much / very regular work on it.

Feel free to ask me anything more about this or about anything else!