Take Shotgun On My Journey To A Better Me

Have a sort of set bedtime. 

Have certain days that you meal prep.

If you have no routine whatsoever, you’re going to have a hard time. It’s hard to wake up early when your bedtime fluctuates between 8 pm and 2 am. It’s hard to eat right when you don’t have food ready on a really busy day. I clean my apartment on Sundays, because that’s the only way it’ll get done.

Trying to find a routine sucks. I’ll admit it. But once you have it, it’s amazing.

Have a sort of set bedtime. 

Have certain days that you meal prep.

If you have no routine whatsoever, you’re going to have a hard time. It’s hard to wake up early when your bedtime fluctuates between 8 pm and 2 am. It’s hard to eat right when you don’t have food ready on a really busy day. I clean my apartment on Sundays, because that’s the only way it’ll get done.

Trying to find a routine sucks. I’ll admit it. But once you have it, it’s amazing.

I am back to gloomy Switzerland and ready to go back to a healthy routine!

This week I need to work on:

Rescheduling my sleeping hours (go to bed by 9 p.m. and wake up at 5:30 or 6 a.m.)

Reschudeling my eating hours as well (7 a.m. 12 a.m. and 6 p.m.)

Eating clean 3 times a day with no snacks

Working out at least 3 times this week (bike to work, run, walk or hike)

Say NO to the booze during the work days

Bagels

Rice milk

Vanilla milk

Lime juice

Almond butter

Nature yogurt

2x falafels

2x teriyaki tofu

Frozen mix berries

Frozen spinach

Red onions

2x avocados

Cucumber

3 bananas

Tomatoes

Lettuce

Breakfast

Smoothie (100 gr spinach, 50gr mix berries, ½ banana, ¼ cup oats, 1 tsp almond butter, ½ cup vanilla milk, ½ cup water)

Lunch

5 falafels, ¼ red onion, 1 tomato, ¼ cucumber, ½ lettuce with a homemade creamy dressing made from tahini, nature yogurt, olive oil and lime juice + spices

Dinner

1 bagel, 1 tomato, ½ avocado, 110gr teriyaki tofu and 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar + spices

I got this ask and I wanted to make this into a post. I’m sure a lot of other trans guys will find this useful, too! Starting off, I would like to emphasize that there are a LOT of gym programs that can accomplish this goal, as well as a lot of diets (if you want to even go on one, some may find it to be unnecessary), so my advice and workout spread is just one of many options out there.

When it comes to diet, I wouldn’t worry too much about it, honestly. With how much you’ll be working out, you won’t necessarily need a caloric deficit to lose weight. You might actually gain weight because muscle is denser than fat, and so people say it weighs more than fat. You’ll develop more muscle mass from strength training, so you’ll probably gain a few kilos in your first few months doing this, while also achieving a leaner appearance because exercising burns fat. As long as you’re eating a varied diet and staying away from junk foods, you’ll be fine. I would also recommend getting a multi-vitamin to take every day just to fill in any gaps in your nutrition, but that’s up to you. It’ll also be important to eat a lot of proteins and carbohydrates for mass building, since those are what build up muscle and help your body grow and have energy. Definitely don’t cut too many calories from your diet when doing any kind of exercise. There’s a difference between a cutting phase and doing your body actual harm from not eating enough.

A decent workout spread that I think would be easy for a beginner to follow is a 4-day spread split between upper body and lower body days. With this, you’ll have 3 rest days in the week, so place them wherever you want. Rest days can be used to do literally nothing, or you could go for a walk, go swimming, bike someplace, etc. If you wanna go to the gym that day anyway, maybe use lighter weight and focus more on endurance (15-20 reps) than mass-building (8-12 reps) or you could do some cardio stuff like jogging or a HIIT circuit like the ones in the linked post. For any beginners here that don’t know what sets and reps are: a rep is 1 repetition of the exercise. For example, 1 push-up would be 1 rep. 10 push-ups would be 10 reps. Sets break up reps with at least 20-30 seconds of a break before starting the exercise again. 3 sets of 10 push-ups means doing 10 reps, waiting 30 seconds, and then beginning your next set, until you’ve done all 3 sets. Common shorthand for this would be 3x10, with the set number coming first, then the rep number. Using sets like this allows you to push yourself for a short burst of energy each time, so you don’t fatigue right away.

The workout spread is under the cut. I think this spread is good for a beginner who wants to focus on muscle mass gains and also get stronger. The exercises I picked are so you can build a decent strength base, and I view many of them as essential to mass-building in general, regardless of your experience level. I’ve linked the exercises to videos of how to do them: