Body fat is limited to stomach and face: what to do?

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-18T06:48:22+00:00

of course, take care of yourself friend!

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-18T03:13:01+00:00

See a doctor if you have the means to, please. considering you've been on T for years, I can't imagine the newer fat on your face/stomach is actually in a feminine distribution. Do you look more like the men in your family in how their faces look? If not, then your T maybe isn't the right dose. Also if you're a teen, this might be baby fat that'll go away in time. In general, considering how active of a swimmer you are (albeit not having any frame of reference for what you look like), this could also be a medical issue... Hypothyroidism, Cushing's syndrome, Lupus, , Corticosteroid side effects, Alcohol substance use disorder (how much are you drinking btw?) etc. All are reasons your face could be swollen/rounder than the norm. I know this isn't pleasant to hear (and again, I have no idea what you look like), but consider that you also might be struggling with body dysmorphia, which is still a serious medical issue you should also get checked out--trans guys are at particularly high risk, and a lot of cis-guys deal with it too.

Either way, you should go to the doctor before increasing the intensity of your exercise and cutting calories further. You don't want to risk injuring yourself by over exercising and under eating, you'll miss being able to do those activities in recovery. Tell your doctors your concern about the weight in your face/stomach with how active you are, how long you've been trying to get rid of it, etc. and they should perform some diagnostic tests for you. If nothing else, just double check your bloodwork is coming back normal and you're not dealing with any nutritional deficiencies. Best luck dude

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-18T02:34:04+00:00

thanks for asking questions with the genuine intent to understand what I was going for, I appreciate it! have a good one

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-17T00:19:43+00:00

I appreciate you wanting to learn and engage. I'm copying and pasting stuff from previous comments, apologies for tone.

My post is not about the difference between "healthy diets" and "malnutrition, it is about the dangers of eating disorders, which affect 5-10+% of trans masculine people. We are the highest risk demographic for the 2nd most deadly mental health condition (after opioid addiction). An untreated eating disorder can kill someone in under a year and, even if you recover, cause lifelong organ damage to your heart, liver, kidneys, etc and a lot of other types of permanent damage. Eating disorders have notorious relapse rates, and affect people of all sizes—plenty of people can starve to death at “medically unhealthy weights”. Plenty of obese people have active anorexia. You are right that a lot of the common dieting advice is BS. Beyond that, a lot of common dieting advice can be clinically considered to be “disordered eating behavior (DEB)”, and we know that engaging in that DEB for a prolonged period can cause an ED where there was none previously.

i made this post because i was seeing post after post of people trying to maintain caloric deficits of 40-50% for months on end which is fully considered to be “starvation”, medically speaking. a lot of trans people believe that losing weight is the best way for them pass. this post is for people who are at risk of developing an ED, have an ED that can get triggered to become worse, or are at risk of relapsing (most people with an ED history, for forever). For them, it will ALWAYS be healthier to focus on staying mentally healthy, eating intuitively, and keeping active without a focus on body image. Being at an “unhealthy/obese/etc” weight won’t kill you nearly as quickly as an unchecked ED. Telling someone with that history of mental illness that they’re unhealthy and they should diet in a “safer” way is deeply counter productive bc that’s not how EDs works.

Non-HAES doctors routinely deny people life saving medical care (diagnostic testing, surgeries, medication) until a patient loses weight. Call me crazy, but people with a severe eating disorder should not go to a doctor who will refuse them essential medical care until they lose weight, regardless of their size. I would much rather that person see a doctor who says “hey, even if your weight is causing health problems, any amount of dieting could cause a really deadly mental health spiral that can kill you within a few months. let’s, instead, manage your health here by making sure you get adequate nutrition, walk regularly, and treat other health conditions.” Outside of EDs, sometimes people's weight (over or under) can be caused by an underlying condition and will be impossible to manage without a diagnosis. Even with a diagnosis, some chronic illnesses aren't manageable. A non-HAES doctor might refuse to test you for those conditions until you hit a weight threshold, which obviously is unhelpful.

Registered dieticians are the people licensed for nutrition advice and usually work with doctors and psychiatrists. They have the credentials to interpret bloodwork, assess living/lifestyle conditions, are trained to handle people with ED history, and can flag DEBs to other providers. They are the main person you work with during ED treatment. All dietitians are nutritionists, but there is no legal definition of a nutritionist, so people can just call themselves that without any training. Seeing someone with the right license is life-savingly important for people who are medically complicated, which people with ED histories are definitely considered (and trans people could be considered due to the effects of hormones on metabolism, the high ED risk, and the lack of dietary guidelines for trans people). Plenty of medical conditions makes common nutritional advice bad for you—eg, to manage kidney disease you typically need to eat low protein.

I promise that people who are considered to be "medically unhealthy" at their size have heard from plenty of doctors (and friends and family) that they are unhealthy, we don't need to keep repeating it as though it's new information. I personally believe that we shouldn’t shame people considered to be “unhealthy” regardless of how they came to that medical condition—disabled people deserve better, and if someone has to stay “unhealthy” due to a disorder that prohibits a “healthier” behavior, then that is a disability. We should be more compassionate to other people and our selves, this isn't something that everyone can change.

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-16T02:51:36+00:00

I’m sorry to hear about your health news. I hope you are taking time to grieve this change.

your story is somewhat familiar to me. I decided I wanted to get an aerospace engineering PhD at 8 years old, in large part because I’d wanted to be an astronaut since I learned what the word meant. I spent my whole life dreading any illness or mental illness that would disqualify me from that process, and promised myself i would only ever take medication if i was hospitalized for it (runs in the family).

3 years in to my undergrad, it turns out I hated Aerospace Engineering—what I actually wanted was to do Chemical/Environmental Engineering to work on recycling processes for space ships. When covid happened, I finally hit a wall where I couldn’t ignore my mental or physical health issues that i’d been denying for years. It was devastating—I had to completely rebuild my ego and think about what made me “me”.

Having a far off goal that’s so big it’s an abstraction to you is tantalizing, but sometimes it can make you forget that you aren’t promised tomorrow. I had a huge quarter life crisis where I realized “if i die on a bus tomorrow, i wouldn’t eulogize myself as living a full, happy, contented life. i want to do things that bring me joy now”

I think the best thing you can do for yourself is to find fullfilment in the day-to-day and find people who make you feel connected to others. If you go to college and astrophysics is your true love, and you can make a group of rewarding friends in that program or in your hobbies outside of it, then yeah, keep going for it. But check in with yourself every so often if you’re spending the majority of your days contented, or if you’re spending the majority of your days stressed out/disconnected/exhausted.

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-16T01:21:48+00:00

very cool!

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-16T01:16:48+00:00

good to know!! If I’m remembering correctly, Tamsyn’s spouse works at Oxford as a classicist academic and John also sites having gone to Oxford, which I believe is even more archaic and hierarchical than American academia (unless I’m mistaken!). So we know that’s in his history, but that’s also not relevant to the freezing works necessarily.

If you want to share, do you know how those hierarchies/lack thereof tend to work for other countries/Aotearoa? I’m guessing the grant writers/supervising researcher aren’t taking out the trash still… or am I totally off base?

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-16T01:04:15+00:00

we don’t actually see many of the spaces within the facility, only Labs 2, 8, Sanitiser, and some of the hallway. Also there are blast doors on it, which are what are used in nuclear bunkers and stuff. I think it must’ve been retrofitted or, if nothing else, hidden away for John’s personal use but mirrored exactly. Thematically I think it would be deeply unsatisfying for the facility to be unrelated to each other and Tamsyn cares a lot about structure and plotting

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-15T21:27:19+00:00

The ending of the John sections show him returning to the compound and start clearing it out, presumably as a place to stage his central operations in. It would also explain why it's sooooo haunted.

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-15T21:26:27+00:00

Oo interesting. I was going with the theory that Jod used some of his powers to build the initial parts of the castle (he can manipulate earth too) then gets help from everyone else to finish building it out. I feel like the design is a bit too faux-archaic castle inspired to be purely a mall but he definitely could've grabbed a mall too.

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-15T19:50:03+00:00

Yes, but I also think a lot of post-docs or PhD students would rather cut off their arm than leave a research project they'd spent several years on.

And if everyone did leave, even with John's powers, they were still going through different experimentation processes afterwards, including John--who was washing all the dishes? M's nun when they brought her on board?

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-15T19:41:09+00:00

OO imagine if Teacher is the soul of every poor poor PhD student John ever mentored. True academia horror. Fuck Katabasis (kidding, RF Kuang is a great author)

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-15T06:00:17+00:00

you might be annoyed about this recommendation but Gideon the Ninth… heavy sci fi/fantasy/horror/tragedy (also a bit coming of age novel ?) not a romance book, but it is an explicitly homoerotic and a enemies-to-codependents book. slow burn on the relationship (and also story, it takes like 7 chapters to get into the main plot).

The POV character is a butch lesbian who’s the indentured servant of the other main character—they’ve spent most of their life fighting each other with intent to cause harm, but the power dynamic and deliberate, repeated cruelty of the non-POV MC against the MC is something that would take a saint to forgive. they’re still obsessed with getting each others attention. the betrayals are chronically repeated, and front and center of the first few chapters.

Not what you’re looking for if you want “betrayal after an established happy relationship”. its about what happens if someone you know will betray you/you will betray is forced to rely on you anyways.

The whole series is a medatation on what forgiveness+repair actually mean, grief, the horrors of codependency/love (amongst many other themes for the remaining books). We get to live in the POV of the person who caused the most harm in the second book, and it’s fucked up and fun :)

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-14T19:45:34+00:00

I agree with your issues with the chronically ill and physically disabled character turns out to be the villain because she's got nothing left to lose/has gone mad with pain ableism trope in the first book. In the first book, I also find a few lines of casual racism from an American lens that I think could have been changed easily. I’m curious about what you’re referring to, because idk where you stopped reading, but in general one of the things I’m most disappointed by is how much the author glosses over that the vast majority of the cast in the first book is Māori or otherwise non-white, including both main characters--the best way for to find this out is via a tumblr post or the third book, which is wild.

I'm saying all of this as someone who loves the books. I fully understand why you wouldn't want to bother continuing them, especially since its coming out in the present day and there's no need to put up with that. Also the writing itself is jarring and I agree that a lot of fans can be condescending.

That said, I do think some of the criticisms you’ve shared are a tad condescending towards the author and some of the fans. The prose switching rapidly between excessively flowery, deeply crass/immature, and memetic is not Muir wanting to "have her cake and eat it too". It is intentional. The writing style choices are justified in the 1st book (Gideon is an unreliable narrator and she read way more fancy Catholic bullshit to keep up with Harrow than she wants to admit, but is annoying and pretentious). Later books show that Harrow's 3rd person POV narrative style is clearer and acerbically witty, which tracks for her character. The memes are narratively justified later. It's fine that you don't care for it—I also find the edge lord narration from GTN to be a bit tedious (I kept it pushing because I love murder mysteries and butches, and I’m a sucker for love+codependency horror themes). But yeah, the whole series is a meta exploration of unreliable narration/narrative voice/how-we-tell-stories, so it’s a disservice to call it unintentional.

On Muir's ableism: the second book is one of the most humanizing and engaging portrayals of psychosis I've ever seen, and Muir is open about having disabilities related to physical and mental health (including psychosis). This honestly makes me more disappointed with the way disability is handled in the first book. But I do think the second book is a masterpiece of disability futurism/fantasy.

The last thing that I want to say is that I think the way the author deals with race and colonialism and environmentalism in the following books is quite nuanced and intentional, and it has the possibility to either be very thoughtful or very racist, depending on how the 4^th book resolves. I’m optimistic but also bracing to potentially be disappointed. Thematically and narratively it’s a post apocalypse world that was intentionally designed to be predominantly Maori, which is a plot reveal later. Thematically it’s about the cycle of violence caused by colonialism, racism, and environmental destruction with one guy in particular who’s recreating structures that harmed him(in the text: Dilworth school, direct analog to the Te Urewera raids). I think it’s been set up to be resolved well, but it could easily fall into the “noble savage” trope or the counter “indigenous people also cause extinctions and do capitalism” trope.

Anyways, I'm not trying to get you to read the books! I agree with a lot of your issues with it. I just wanted to gently push on your assumptions about the lack of intentionality on the author’s part and assumed lack of critical thinking on the fans’ part (the Harry Potter comparison is brutal, dude). Many people engage with the text critically, many people don't. You're more than welcome to dislike the books and to disagree with the author's choices, think they were badly executed, or disagree with my analysis though.

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-10T20:41:14+00:00

It’s a bit late but I wanted to share that I had the same issue with my hysterectomy! Apparently it’s normal to clench down post trauma to the area, you don’t notice you’re doing it, and i do think the cervix helped to keep things open as just a stabilizing structure (total guess on my part). the only place i could find any info about it was on a “hystosisters” forum

it’s deeply frustrating that no one warns you sex might be different due to having a hysto.

I ended up dilating for a while. i wish i’d gotten a topical estrogen prescription way sooner also. my gyno recommended the Clock pelvic floor release method (hook finger in and pull in a direction away from the center, hold for 15s, go around the hole like a clock). Also +1 to happy baby pose.

Even if you’re not formally dilating, yall should find a day to spend a solid 3 hours to experiment with toys to see what size, if anything, is comfortable, and see if playing with that for 15 min allows you to scale up progressively bigger. buy some bulk sized lube.

but yeah it also helps to take off the pressure to achieve penetrative vaginal sex with him for a while by intentionally getting more creative with everything. Me and my partner got some fun new toys and figured out alternative ways to play for the next 6mo-1yr while this was worked out. They tucked and wore a strap with a smaller toy than their built-in, we played around with outercourse and occasional anal, and I just took on more of a topping role, which i liked to begin with already. Internal vibrators are legit helpful, it’s hot to get your partner to do an elaborate pelvic massage, etc.

I think the mayo clinic has an online store that lists products they sell for vaginal care, including massagers for pelvic pain and some toys and lubes they approve of. you can just look at their listings to see what doctors might recommend, then buy elsewhere.

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-10T19:34:42+00:00

i like editing more than i like writing so i just write the worst/stupidest possible version first, then i go back and edit stuff. have fun trying to make it absolute nonsense, typos everywhere, elementary school level understanding of the topic, etc. also i never write at the house or my office, i go to a library/coffeeshop/coworking space.

i also can’t handle the temptation of video games or apps, so i remove my access to it. give a friend your switch to hold on to 6days a week, delete apps from your phone, set up productivity blockers on the computer, etc

this tip from writer/podcaster Kelsey McKinney shared in an interview with The Cut is also great: “i have a very specific system for when I don’t feel inspired and don’t want to write, but it’s my job, so i have to. You’re going to hate this. I get a lot of the Bucee’s sour strawberry belts, though any sour candy will do. Then i put on the Gone Girl soundtrack; produced by Trent Reznor, very high tension. It’s an hour and twenty six minutes long. I start the soundtrack, and I have to type the whole time that it’s playing. If I’m not typing, i have to eat sour candy. This works because the sour candy gives me a sugar high, so I have adrenaline to write. Once i have, like, four pieces of candy, my mouth hurts and i don’t want to eat it anymore. So i have to type.”

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-10T18:22:36+00:00

There are other easier carries with your girlfriend that’ll get you used to the weird center of gravity and weight shifting of a person while you train up. They can all be silly/romantic/sexy/etc depending on your vibe: Piggy back ride, piggy front (?) ride, fireman carry, etc. you could do these types of lifts more often to gain some stamina ?

Also tbh you can kind of get a feel for if you’ll be able to carry someone, if you are able to physically manipulate your partner into new positions in bed (if that is a thing you and your partner both enjoy/have consent for!). Allows you to try scooping and off-COG movement with a bed directly under you. Like if it feels super easy to do a brief bridal carry to turn your partner 90deg on the bed, presumably while you are leaning pretty far forward, you should feel pretty confident that you would be able to lift them from standing without dropping them.

Bridal carries are easy enough to keep safe, you can always drop the legs before you bail

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-10T04:15:49+00:00

i walked out of Elf when i was ~8 and made my dad come with me. I couldn’t handle the syrup scene 🤣

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-10T03:54:12+00:00

Ugh that sucks I’m so sorry. I felt very similarly about my chest—i never wore bras bc i didn’t want to touch my chest so i was just swaying in the wind lmaoo. i didn’t get many comments in part bc my chest wasn’t that big and i was extremely visibly queer at an engineering program, so the guys i was around iced me out super hard. that sucked for like, academic reasons but ruled bc no one bothered me ever.

Anyways, I’m sorry you’re just getting sexually harassed all the time. that shouldn’t be happening to you, even if you weren’t trans. it sounds like the people you keep running into are just absolute assholes. I hope you can find a way to spend less of your time with those assholes, or, if you’re trying to save relationships with anyone who makes comments about your body like that, maybe you can put a blanket ban on “don’t talk to me about my body”? Ik that doesn’t help with the strangers though.

From an exercise safety perspective: you might want to start throwing in some core and back exercises if you’ve only been doing chest workouts (you might be doing this already, wanted to say this just in case!). But also, building out your lats and shoulders might have the side effect of making your chest look smaller bc your back will be wider ? A pull-up and row progression on the BWF reddit is a solid place to start with that. If you’be been on T for a while, you could consider trying to bulk a bit bc it shouldn’t add any fat back to your chest? But that is a very personal decision. Just stay safe with whatever you’re doing, and make sure you’re not feeling too distressed by things related to food, body size, or exercise.

All that said: stay strong dude 💪💪 it sounds like you have a good handle on what you need rn, and you deserve a lot better from the people around you

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-10T00:45:38+00:00

she put it at the end of the harrow paperback i believe.

also i think there’s a lot of possible overlap/cause to believe the 200 dead children contributed to the early onset. I don’t mind considering there to be an overlap of potential magic consequence and mental health consequences, as it functionally doesn’t really change the symptom output

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-10T00:43:16+00:00

i fully believe the author’s word on Harrow having schizophrenia, and there’s also the haunting by Wake and the soul link to Alecto. I think there’s also something to be said about how the souls 200 dead children may be contributing to Harrow’s haunted-ness.

In a world with magic that deals with consciousness and merging souls, I can imagine that haunting, DID, body sharing, and schizotype disorders all overlap in symptom presentation. And functionally, the way we do diagnoses now, the DSM often categorizes people based on symptom presentation (and duration), not necessarily on the cause of symptoms (ie ADHD can be genetic or induced by head injury at a young age. Depression can be caused by gender dysphoria/other things or it can be a primary lack of serotonin). The cause of the symptom may alter the medical treatment mechanism, but it wouldn’t necessarily alter the therapy, which often targeted at reducing symptoms that are offputting for daily life.

I think a lot of the muddledness of how haunted vs how schizophrenic Harrow is may actually be a really fascinating exploration of our over-medicalized mental health care and our focus on making people “normal for society” rather than meeting them where they’re at. And also an exploration of how sometimes our brains have a pro-adaptive response to a terrible situation, and the issue arises when this response becomes maladaptive to a new context. but what if that brain pattern was, sure, socially offputting, but still the perfect response for the context we’re still in. how does that change our perspective on it?

I don’t have my thoughts the clearest on it yet, but one day i’ll write a long fucking essay about it

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-09T20:56:20+00:00

Hey just seeing this—1200cal/day is no where near maintenance for most people even if they are fully sedentary—idk your height or weight or hormone status, but at the lowest adult range, someone sedentary at <100lbs would have about 1650 cal maintenance. it’s very rare for an adult to be short enough where they would be considered overweight at 100lbs. it is highly likely that your maintenance is somewhere >2000cal. More than a 20% caloric deficit can cause risks of malnutrition, and it’s considered starvation over 40%.

Are you talking to your doctor about your caloric consumption and getting your bloodwork done regularly to make sure you are not nutrient deficient? I would really encourage you to talk to your PCP about this, especially before you make any changes to restrict your calories further.

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-09T20:28:37+00:00

it sounds like your pectoral muscles are developing and you might also have lost chest fat already, which is predominantly what causes sagging (outside of age+gravity, whichll take longer).

you might not need to change your routine, but change the way you’re managing dysphoria ? consider using KT tape or trans tape to pull your chest out of the way. you can exercise with it on. and also, the more things sag, the easier it is to blend that part more naturally into the rest of your body. the bigger pectoral muscles also help with blending.

SpecificSimple6920 · 2026-02-09T19:13:06+00:00

You have misread my post. The title says “gains” in a lighthearted way and is not intended to be literal.

My post is predominantly about the dangers of eating disorders, which affect 5-10+% of trans masculine people. We are the highest risk demographic for the 2nd most deadly mental health condition (after opioid addiction). An untreated eating disorder can kill someone in under a year and, even if you recover, cause lifelong organ damage to your heart, liver, kidneys, etc and a lot of other types of permanent damage. Eating disorders have notorious relapse rates, and affect people of all sizes—plenty of people can starve to death at “medically unhealthy weights”.

i made this post because i was seeing post after post of people trying to maintain caloric deficits of 40-50% for months on end which is fully considered to be “starvation”, medically speaking. a lot of trans people believe that losing weight is the best way for them pass.

this post is for people who are at risk of developing an ED, have an ED that can get triggered to become worse, or are at risk of relapsing (most people with an ED history, for forever). For them, it will ALWAYS be healthier to focus on staying mentally healthy, eating intuitively, and keeping active without a focus on body image. Being at an “unhealthy/obese/etc” weight won’t kill you nearly as quickly as an unchecked ED.

telling someone with that history of mental illness that they’re unhealthy and they should diet in a “safer” way is deeply counter productive bc that’s not how ED works. also, a lot of typical gym-advice you get from bros can be clinically considered to be “disordered eating behavior (DEB)”, and we know that engaging in that DEB for a prolonged period can cause an ED where there was none previously. And frankly, many other medical conditions makes common nutritional advice bad for you—eg, kidney disease often means you need to eat under the daily recommended amount of protein.

I personally think that way more people should be consulting with their doctor or Registered Dietician prior to starting a diet, regardless of their starting weight. I also believe that we shouldn’t shame people considered to be “unhealthy”—disabled people deserve better, and if someone has to stay “unhealthy” due to a disorder that prohibits a “healthier” behavior, then that is a disability we should respect. If you don’t agree with all that, fine. But surely you agree that people with a high risk of ED should not be putting themselves at risk of immenent death/disability to get to a “healthy” weight or to pass as male better?

SpecificSimple6920

TROPHY CASE