Hello, I’m nonbinary but have some potentially helpful info. My friend is transitioning currently and she is in the same boat with trying to lose pre hrt fat, she’s having a lot of success with the same advice I’m about to give you. Not that I’m a professional or anything, but I do practice bodybuilding with some success, and I’ve learned a lot about weight/fat loss.

So first thing is the # of meals and even the sugar content “doesn’t matter”, only the calorie content. There are apps and calculators where you can enter your weight and height and get an estimate. Aim to lose about 1-2lb per week, any faster is generally not sustainable. From there, you just need to make a meal plan and stick to it*.

*this is not always easy. Sugar will make you crave more sugar. Certain foods will blow through your food allowance but leave you hungry in an hour. The best thing in general is to focus on increasing your protein. Eggs, lean meats, greek yogurt, and cottage cheese are great to look into. High protein plants like beans and edamame. Protein shakes are an option. Make an effort to track your protein deliberately, at least 100 grams per day makes weight loss much easier.

For the gym, you want to focus on leg workouts and cardio. Your leg muscles are some of the largest in your body, and growing them in particular will actually increase the number of calories you burn in a day passively by a large amount, even while you’re sleeping or chilling on the couch. Stuff like leg press, RDL, dumbbell split squats, lunges. Really just any leg machine, don’t stress too much in the beginning about making a whole perfect workout program. Just target your quads, hams, and glutes.

You can get similar benefits from upper body workouts, especially back workouts, but depending on your aesthetic goals you may want to emphasize those areas less, at least until things progress with the hrt and you gave a better idea of what you’re working with.

Then for cardio just find a goal and try to accomplish it. Any cardio machine or just running or swimming. Important thing is consistency, try to get in at least 2-3 sessions per week.

But yeah that’s just all kind of stuff that I’ve observed to be super effective, everyone is different and different stuff will work for them, but hopefully something here will be useful for you. Best of luck!

One thing to keep in mind is to not under-eat, but instead eat better. Salad wraps with a protein are kind of a go to for me as I can get a bunch of greens in with minimal bread and use a fish protein. Raw foods ftw as well. Eating more often rather than all at once is also a good as it keeps your metabolism going for longer.

Avoid skipping meals. If you eat too little your body will assume food has become scarce and it’ll store away as much as possible as fat to use later, kind of defeating the purpose of your exercising.

Beans and mushrooms are also good sources of protein. Quinoa > rice. Finding good healthy recipes is also a must. There’s a ton of delicious recipes that you can do. Naturally fermented foods are also great in moderation (high salt content). In general, if it’s cooked the food is easier for your body to use and the calories are more accessible which is why I’m recommending raw veggies and such.

Also, you can make your own granola really easily by tossing oats, pecans, pumpkin seeds and some honey in a bowl with some oil and oven roasting it for a few minutes. Find a recipe and enjoy it with unsweetened whole milk Greek yogurt and some fresh fruit. Overnight oats with chia seeds are also easy to get going with the same idea of adding fruit.

Hope this is helpful!

Exercise will not help you lose a significant amount of weight. It can help tone your body, but a single cheeseburger can completely undo all the calories you burned during an hours long workout. What worked for me is using a calorie tracking app to make sure I'm eating less than Im burning, instead of just guessing based on the number of meals.

I don't have a ton of advice, but I have heard that you have to pay attention with intermittent fasting as your metabolism can slow after not eating and then will store more of what you're eating, even if it's really not that much.

Carbohydrates are an important nutrient. You don't necessarily need much, but "some level of sugar" is not an issue. Calories in and calories out are all the ultimately matter for weight loss, but different things affect how much you feel you need to eat, from the nutrients that make it up to how much volume it physically takes up, so losing weight it probably easier if you change what you eat. If you are eating calorie dense foods, its not going to have the volume to fill your stomach and it can be easy to overeat even if only consuming calories in one meal.

For me, only eating one meal a day is all it takes for me to lose weight without counting calories. But I do get fairly regular exercise as part of my normal activities and my unhealthy diet at includes foods that are not very calorie dense so I simply cannot eat enough calories in a single meal to overeat. I don't go to the gym or dedicate time to exercise: I ebike to work most days (quite low intensity, but since its 1 hour each way, it still gives an extra ~750 calories) and beatsaber is a favorite game of mine. I don't think going to a gym often is something that sustainable for most people. Different people find different things work for them. For some its just counting calories and strict meal planning, others its keto, etc.