Week 44 of HRT: I am constantly hungry

I have now been on hormone replacement therapy for 11 months and I feel like my gender transition is in a pretty good place. I switched to HRT injections over a month ago and it is going extremely well. I have now gone through two two-week cycles of injections and have not experienced any emotional instability or odd side effects in the days before or after an injection. It is still early, it takes five cycles of injections for my hormones to reach a steady-state, but I am optimistic. I also was able to schedule an appointment for trans voice therapy, something that I have been working towards for a while. My first appointment is this week and I am quite excited.

The biggest change in the last month has been to my appetite. About 3 weeks ago, my appetite skyrocketed. I am hungry all the time. I wake up hungry, I go to bed hungry, and I am even hungry shortly after eating. This spike in appetite happened incredibly quickly. I woke up hungry one day (which is odd in itself) and have had a massive appetite ever since. I haven’t made any changes to my diet or lifestyle that would cause this either, if anything I am eating more than usual. While this is odd, I don’t think that it is a bad thing. I was hungry all the time the first time that I went through puberty, it only makes sense that it would happen the second time.

In terms of mental and emotional changes, my mood has been way up over the last month. I don’t know how to describe it, but I just feel good mentally. This is a bit different from previous improvements in my mental health. Since starting HRT, my mood and general mental well-being have improved steadily, largely due to a reduction in my gender dysphoria (although having the right hormones in my brain certainly helped). However, unlike that gradual increase, my recent change in mood was pretty swift. Over the course of a couple of days, my mood just shot up. It has not subsided at all either, despite going through some rough stuff in the last month.

On the other hand, the job hunt is not going so well. I have had a couple of initial interviews in the last month but nothing has gone further than that. I don’t think that this has anything to do with me, there are just not a lot of open jobs right now. The pandemic has reduced the number of jobs available in my field substantially, and I don’t see that changing until things start returning to normal. While being unemployed does make things more difficult, recent legislation has made it easier and provided me some protection. I find it somewhat ironic (and incredibly sad) that it took a global pandemic for the United States government to realize the importance of a social safety net.

I am very optimistic about the current trajectory of my transition. Speech therapy should help resolve the issues with my voice, which was one of my biggest concerns. The switch to injections has gone well and not had any unexpected complications. The physical changes, while more gradual, are still ongoing and have already had significant effects. Every aspect of my transition seems to be falling into place and I could not be happier.