Floater's diary

Hmm might just as well leave for the pool now, but I´ll have 300g of yogurt and my creatine and vitamins first because I feel like breakfast wasn´t quite enough and I need to take my ADHD meds with food anyway.

Gotta buy more yogurt on my way home!
 
Yesterday´s pool workout was great. Ended up seeing a friend on my way home and we had some 420 and at home I ate quite a bit of PB as a result. The combination of nutritional yeast, honey and PB was surprisingly good but, yeah, the trees aren´t my friend when I´m trying to cut lol.

Had a great night´s sleep. HAd some corn and quinoa for breakfast and am now having a feta-crusted chicken fillet and cherry tomatoes for lunch. After that it´s a cup of coffee and gym time. Tomorrow´s rest day but I´ll walk to the city center in the morning to get my weekly InBody reading.

Wrote another blog text. I aim for a text per week and it feels nice to have a creative outlet.
 
Food has been OK today but there should be more of it. Writing down all meals may not be a good idea because it looks like so much food and freaks me out and... Sigh. I did resort to two protein drinks and one energy drink today because anxiety hit and made it hard to eat solids and my body just felt stuck. Signs of overwhelm. Rest day tomorrow.

Gym was OK. I wasn´t in a mindset to push myself so I did my 6x6 deadlifts with 50, 60, 65, 70, 65 and 60 kg. Lat raises 4, 5, 5, 4, 5, 5. Adductions 40, 45, 50 to failure, 45 to failure, 40, 40. Just didn´t have it in me but well, I still had a workout so I guess it´s better than nothing. Of course, the reason for not having the best session at the gym was probably because I was scared of food today after eating that peanut butter yesterday.

Having quinoa and corn and Greek yogurt because I´m out of the low fat stuff. I hope I can find some energy to go buy more. I´m out of food anyway. Still have one feta crusted chicken fillet left which I´ll have later tonight.
 
I was out of spoons so instead of the yogurt I made myself some pasta and the carbs made me feel a tiny bit better. Now having 50g of edamame. And running the dishwasher so I can have the chicken and yogurt later.

I feel exhausted. I´m kind of terrified about the InBody measurement tomorrow. But I have to lose fat. Have to. And in order for that to happen I have to know what´s going on with my body.
 
Sooo yesterday was mental health hell. I couldn´t bring myself to move or eat until after 4PM. I did get the body scan and results were similar to last week.

An undeniable fact about mental health and diet: when I miss meals, the biggest impact is always that my protein intake decreases, because when I´m underfueled, my body wants carbs. Now, there´s nothing wrong with carbs. But I´m trying to be a fucking bodybuilder here and the fact that fasting makes my body want easy fuel from carbs and fats is a bit of a problem.

Another thought. An option exists to start to shift my mentality towards power lifting instead of bodybuilding. It may take the edge off the pain of my body being the wrong sex and it may help me focus on what it can do. I get a thrill every time I notice myself using bigger weights and having a better from than cis men at the gym. It´s a bit silly, it´s a bit petty, but I am a competitive boy. So... Should I start leaning onto that literal strength? Of course, strength gains don´t necessarily bring size gains. But I have planned the next meso to be a max strength one anyway.
 
Friends!!! Today I got a referral to a plastic surgeon for chest masculinization. This may not mean that the referral gets approved, but the doctor who wrote it was super respectful and said that if the referral boomerangs back, she´ll call me and try to add details that could get turn the tides.

I feel like I could wrestle a hundred bears and win!
 
All is well here! Yesterday was so exciting that it triggered a bad migraine, so today I´ve been hiding inside with the blinds down. But I´ve done plenty of food prep and sometimes it´s good to get a good rest and nap.

I´ll go buy more yogurt and pick up a package from the post. Tomorrow´s gym day.
 
I´m so proud and I need to celebrate. Here´s what today´s gym session looked like:

Incline bench press, 6x6: 30, 35, 35, 32,5, 32,5 and 30 kg
Good mornings, 6x6: 50, 60, 60, 65, 60, and 55 kg
Front squats 6x6: 40, 40, 45, 42,5, 40, and 30 kg.

Significant increase in intensity compared to last week and I was in a good headspace, not psyched out by the weights, I´m very happy with myself. Especially as front squats are not the easiest thing to do when covered in sweat and sunscreen. Some meso in the future I´m going to prioritize front squats because my legs and torso could handle a lot more load, but the discomfort the position of the bar is causing makes me still a bit cautious. A very fun exercise still and my back loves it, and it feels easy to go low and get a biiig stretch doing it. I expect my quads to grow nicely as I get better and better at it!

I had Taco Bell before gym which might explain in part why I was feeling my oats - junk food is pretty amazing at providing a quick surge of energy, while obviously not the healthiest option or the best for waistline. But I wanted to treat myself a bit and pre-workout is probably the best time to eat junk because it goes to a good purpose so to say.

Depending on how fatigued I feel tonight, I might take a trip to lake Kuusijärvi, as the boys already got to run in the morning. But first I gotta have a cup of coffee and eat something proper and then we´ll see about that.
 
Went for a walk to watch the full moon rise. I have muscle spasms and pins & needles sensations, the heat is definitely taking it's toll. Still need to brush my teeth and then it's offto bed
 
Today I walked to lake Kuusijärvi and swam with my swimming fins for approxx an hour. It was so nice to swim to the middle of the lake and float on my back and watch the birds and the clouds. I´ll go again.

Had some intense dysphoria about my chest but it is what it is and who knows, maybe the plastic surgery clinic will accept me as a patient.

Walked a total of 11km today. I had to wash my swimsuit with detergent at home because it smelled of fish...! Obvs also took a shower.
 
I wrote a blog text about my trip to the lake and the thoughts it evoked in me and I´m really happy that I have gotten into the habit of writing regularly. https://lahionoita.home.blog/2024/05/25/the-lakes-embrace/

There´s a thunderstorm about to start, so I´ll vacuum and clean the boys´ cages and give the floors a quick wash. It´s pollen season so that should help with my stuffiness. In the evening it´s gym time again - the storm should have passed by 6PM.

I´m super happy to have found the nice brand of quark yogurt, I eat it on almost every meal of the day. One 300g package has 171 kcals and 26,4g of protein! Especially as the weather´s getting hotter and hotter, having frozen fruit (about 200 kcal per 300g bag depending on variety) and quark yogurt as staples is convenient and doesn´t lead to the problem of feeling even hotter form cooking and eating hot food.

Speaking of fruit and veg, I need to up my roughage intake, I´m usually very diligent with it but the last couple of days I´ve been very stressed and my gut feels a bit stuffy because of it. Again, the hot weather probably plays a part. Anyway, feeling pretty nice and hoping that everyone here is having a nice day and feeling good about their bodies!
 
Apartment is clean now. The thunder didn´t strike yet, I just hooked the AC back on and lo and behold now it´s starting to rain. I will still go to the gym tonight as planned, I´ll wear a rain coat if necessary.

I need to start training Timo more. Usually when it´s time to get him back to the cage, I have to take a hold of the base of his tail and then scoop him up and move him to the cage and neither of us likes this. It should be perfectly safe to do but I hate it. Anyway. Having a bowl of quinoa, black beans and tofu now.

Tomorrow I have to wake up early because I´ll go visit my sister. It´s a bit unnerving I guess. I don´t like foreign places. But it´s going to be nice to see her guide dog and her new home.
 
I saw my sister today, which was nice, but left me a bit overstimulated so I'm having a hard time falling asleep.

Made a batch of high protein soup earlier today: sausage for flavor, beans, tofu, kimchi, spices. Very easy. Just had a bowl of it and 300g of Greek yogurt (the store was out of quark yogurt).

Therapy and work ability eval social worker tomorrow.
 
Quick gym progress update - I bench pressed one set of six reps with 35kg and five with 37,5kg today. I may have been able to push 40 but I don´t want to take any chances - but now that I know that 37,5 was a little too easy, I know it´s safe to push 40 on my next bench day. This means that I´m back to where I was last summer before things started to really go downhill for me mentally and that took me backwards regarding strength as well, because I just kept losing weight and took it way too far.

After next week´s 40, I want to gradually build things up to 50. I´m planning to do a strength meso next and do 3x3. Obviously I can´t get from 40 to 50 during one meso, that sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I´ll get somewhere between 40 and 50 and then plan again from there.

On other news, lots of stuff going on, being evaluated for working ability, trans clinic stuff won´t progress until the fall, also the referral to plastic surgery clinic was denied which was kinda expected. Tomorrow I´m going to a tattoo artist so she can take a peek at a tattoo that needs fixing. If she thinks the error can be improved upon, I´ll book an appointment with her.

End of month, so I´m living on cupboard and freezer goods until Monday. It´s psychologically annoying more than actually horrible, and at least my stockpiles are healthy stuff, although a bit lower in protein and higher in carbs than how I´d like to eat. I do need to buy more toothpaste and dish washer tablets but thankfully neither are luxury items haha.
 
The second referral to plastics also fell through. Apparently any form of chest surgery became impossible the second I legally transitioned, so that sucks ass.

But: I have an idea for PhD research. Not something I would have the capacity to do any time soon, but in my forties. Not gonna go into details here but comparative study of religions and discourse analysis would make a good discipline and method for studying the trans clinic´s inclusion and exclusion arguments for patients. As a trans person myself, it should be doable to gain rapport among my peers and participate as an observer in consenting patient´s trans clinic processes. I would record and transcribe the interviews and compare them to the statements written by the trans clinic, seeing what gets left out, what gets included, what kinds of things are considered valid for diagnosis and what are not. For research ethical reasons I would have to exclude myself from progressing my own process for the duration of the study, but the trans clinic says I won´t ever transition anyway, so I could sacrifice my own comfort for the sake of science.

Of course, the patients would be informed that I can´t function as a support person, and that my presence in their processes shouldn´t affect their processes in any way as long as the clinic remains objective in their part. But there shouldn´t really be any legal way for the trans clinic to prevent me from conducting the study for as long as my own department accepts it. If they would come up with some way to do it, it would be a finding onto itself: that the clinic is so insular that they don´t tolerate interdisciplinary approaches towards their own work. A good research plan always has a plan B, which in my case would then to just interview the patients outside of the clinic and compare my findings to their trans clinic statements, which they could consent me to analyze without any way for the trans clinic to intervene. After all, it´s their personal data. Obviously, the timeframe of it being in my possession and the data handling in this case would be extremely strict but that´s perfectly fine.

I have a hunch that there would be no issue in finding enough people willing to allow me to participate as an observer in their processes, because the trans clinic is so widely know to be extremely hostile to patients that a lot of folks would likely be willing to help interdisciplinary approaches to the issue of the treatment of trans people in the medical system.
 
Today I squatted 6x6 with 70, 80, 90, 85, 80, and 80 kg. Very pleased with my progress. 90 was a lot, and I didn´t want to risk it, but I think that the next time I can start straight from 80. Form was decent throughout and I went deep enough for me. There´s no mirror on the side so I can´t really gauge whether I went parallel or not. They weren´t shallow squats by any means but when the load increases, my brain won´t allow me to go all the way down. I could reduce the weight and retrain myself to go all the way down - I do do that with lighter loads - and build back up, but right now I just need the sensation of intensity more than I need the hypertrophy that squatting super deep would give me.
 
OK not doing good. Hormones doing their thing as I´m PMSing. With added agony from feeling like I´m not even supposed to experience this in the first place. Had a little cry.
 
I wonder if me feeling this fucking awful has something to do with yesterday´s squat sesh? Or if it´s just PMS. I´m not too sore, I didn´t push it too far, but squats and DLs are psychologically exhausting when the loads get bigger because I focus so hard and there is a risk of injury if something goes wrong.

Gotta get off my arse and draw. I should go for a walk but right now too scared of the sun.
 
On Wednesday I had a consultation for fixing a tattoo on my right leg. I have seam stocking tattoos. I know they aren´t the most masculine thing ever but I like them. It´s just that the original artist messed up and she behaved really unprofessionally and I hadn´t realized how traumatizing it had been. Because my legs are one of the few things about my body that I do actually like. And even though the error isn´t big, it does bother me.

The consultation went well but I did get emotionally very triggered when the new artist said she doesn´t need to hear about the initial session or speculate what went wrong. When I was there, I didn´t have a problem with this because for the technical outcome of the work, it doesn´t matter. But I´ve been growing increasingly more and more anxious and realized that I actually can´t have the tattoo fixed unless I feel like I have the chance to tell the person who fixes it how things went down the first time around. She has the right to her boundaries but it´s my body and I´m trying to fix a trauma here, not just a tattoo.

14 years ago when I had the seam stockings done, I went to a high profile artist who was initially really nice to me. I was studying nursing back then and she said that she wouldn´t usually do such a big project as anyone´s first tattoo but because I studied nursing, she´d make an exception. This artist was a public figure and a yellow press frequent flier.

I had mentioned my gf at some point and she asked me if I was a lesbian. I said that actually I´m a trans man but I´m not in treatments yet because I´m not sure about getting on testosterone because it can have pretty big side effects. She raised her voice and asked me, why the hell do I want seam stocking tats then, while being done with one leg and working on the other. I said that I don´t think gender roles should be that strict. She went on a rant about perverts and I felt really uncomfortable. I apologized and said that I had only told her about me being trans because I knew from news stories that she had dated a trans man. She said it´s none of my business and I apologized again, feeling like I didn´t know what I could safely say and what I could not. She then accused me of lying to my girlfriend. I said that I had told her and that she just didn´t take is seriously.

I... Genuinely think that she became so upset that she messed the tattoo up. Because she said during the first session that it may need redoing in one point. But when it had healed up enough to redo, she accused me of haing ruined it by "drinking and letting it get infected", which I had not done. I genuinely can´t remember if I went to her for a touch up or not.But she did yell at me and say that people accuse her when things go wrong because they are jealous that she´s in the public eye.

I wouldn´t have needed to tell the new artist this. But I guess that her saying she doesn´t need to hear anything triggered in me the memory of being accused and mistreated. She didn´t mean anything bad by it. But I just realized that I can´t have the leg fixed with anyone who won´t be able to hear me when I say that the initial tattoo was a traumatic and humiliating experience, my gender identity which I innocently thought was safe to reveal when asked was made a mockery of and vilified. So, I need to be able to work with someone who won´t make the initial trauma worse. Because then, even if the tattoo would look good, I would feel bad about being silenced.
 
And the worst thing is... I tried to tell her to stop when she slipped and made that error. But she didn´t let me go. So the right side tattoo from my knee from my ankle isn´t a tattoo. It´s a permanent scar left from physical assault.

I will never know if she made that error on purpose or not. But she had no right to keep tattooing me after I had told her to stop.
 
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