Life as a Transgender Gym Junkie
By: Allie Keeler
Tags: Workout, Transgender, Fitness, LGBTQ, Gym

Life as a Transgender Gym Junkie

My Transition Fitness Theory and Methods.

I have come a long way, but I am very much a work in progress. I feel much more aligned with myself, have allowed myself to be visible in an environment in which I previously hid the most in, and learned to embrace my inner “Amazon”. My short term goals are to continue to develop my lower body and to lose about 10 lbs of bodyfat. At 5'11" I’ll never be tiny- but I can be strong!

A bit of a Prologue-

My interest in fitness is a long one. Prior to the dissolution of my first marriage in 2009, I had worked out in a gym maybe a dozen times in college and never really felt passionate about it- but in the wake of that separation, I found myself in need of something healthy to both serve as a distraction as well as something to rebuild my shattered self esteem. I started slowly at first, usually 30–45 minutes of cardio, a few resistance exercises here and there, and cut back on extra calories, but without any drastic steps, managed to go from 220lbs down to 165lbs in a few years. By this time, my gender dysphoria was causing me some real grief and desperate to mask it, began adding more weights to my workouts and quickly discovered that if I could fit into the “gym-bro” clique, that I would have a perfect cover and no one would ever question that I ever struggled with my gender identity. While I came to genuinely love working out and felt an extreme sense of reward from it, my goal to fit a mold was driven entirely by my insecurities and my hope that if I acted *enough* like a man- that it would somehow make me a man and this struggle that I had wrestled with for so long would somehow be “fixed”.

From 2014 through part of 2017 I essentially lived in the gym- with plans to transition taking shape near the end of that period. By that time I was at peak “gym-bro” status; I looked the part, I acted the part, and I lived on eggs, chicken, rice, broccoli, steak, oatmeal, and whey protein. Whenever I was in the gym, I was usually one of the biggest and I was one of the few that combined Bodybuilding methods with Power Lifting to strike a balance between the two. Both the gratification of increased strength and muscle and the ever-present desire to reinforce the walls of this impenetrable shield that I had constructed, from which no outsider could ever see any vulnerabilities led me to convince my Doctor to prescribe Testosterone Replacement Therapy. I didn’t truly need it- my levels were still “normal” for a male, but in my desperation, I felt that anything would help. Though I did extreme amounts of research on everything I put into my body during those times; taking multiple compounds at a time (and others to protect from side-effects) for many weeks at a time became my new normal. I kept telling myself that maybe I would work to compete on stage and THEN Transition after achieving some kind of closure with all the work I had done.

I was able to pull off the “Gym Bro” look very well, though I was not a noticeably happy person overall. In retrospect, it is obvious that I was over compensating and very insecure and used the idea of fitness as something to hide behind.

To make a long story short, Eventually, this entire lifestyle was no longer providing the bullet-proof shelter from dysphoria that I hoped it would. I knew that I was using the concept of fitness- in theory a healthy lifestyle- in an unhealthy way. Physically, Emotionally, and Mentally I couldn’t keep up that game anymore. I genuinely loved to workout. I knew how to eat, how to train, my technique was solid and I never had a substantial injury aside from strained rotator cuffs. But the persona that I had adopted vanished quickly in a gasp of relief after I came out and began my transition in the Fall of 2017.

What follows is an account of how my methods and experiences in the areas of fitness have changed and observations made in this regard since I began Hormone Therapy.