I have a question for those who have been castrated, either chemical or physical. Has anyone had any noticable loss of muscle since castration. I have been chemicaly castrated for over a year now,and have not noticed any loss of muscle tone. My job is very demanding at times and I keep busy for long hours. I do notice that I am a little more tired at the end of the day, but I can deal with it. Any comments on this effect of castration?

Christina (imported) wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2002 8:19 pm I have a question for those who have been castrated, either chemical or physical. Has anyone had any noticable loss of muscle since castration. I have been chemicaly castrated for over a year now,and have not noticed any loss of muscle tone. My job is very demanding at times and I keep busy for long hours. I do notice that I am a little more tired at the end of the day, but I can deal with it. Any comments on this effect of castration?

Most of the medical literature out there on the web states that loss of muscle is a side effect of hypogonadism, but as to how much can vary widely. I suspect some of it has to do with how physically active you were before and after castration.

In my case, I was not all that active before. Afterwards, my main exercise program has been one hour of walking a day to ward off osteoporosis. So I have developed narrow shoulders and a lack of muscle definition in the upper torso. To offset this, my therapist now has me doing exercises with one pound hand weights.

Hi Christina,

I was always slender and didn't appear to have much muscle mass to begin with. So several months after my castration I was a bit suprised when I noticed that I wasn't as physically strong, and thay my limbs appeared more smooth.

After I was first castrated in April of 1999, the effects did not hinder my job performance. But in November of that year, a vindictive boss put me on a heavy lifting job without my consent and she would not let me out of it. I might have managed to perform that position satisfactorily were it assigned to me a year or two earlier, but seven to eight months post castration I could no longer do it quickly enough. I often got in trouble even though I had never asked for that position. I was slim and appeared as such, so they should have known better. Several of the EA members here would probably remember my posts about all of this in the eunuch newsgroup at the time.

Those bosses were vindictive. When I signed a card at the chicken plant to get into a position in another department, I told them that I was doing this just so I would not trouble them anymore and would be out of their hair. The boss responded by keeping me the maximum 15 days allowed by policy on that heavy job I was trying to flee.

On one of those 15 days I got into more serious trouble. I was under the spell of the eunuch calm, so I was able to keep ignoring this one lead person who was almost constantly screaming at me about my inability to perform my heavy job as would be expected of a normal male. Since she couldn't get me to blow up, she just lost it herself, stormed into the office, and threw a tantrum. Soon they had me in that office, and they blamed me for 'making her' lose her temper when I was in fact merely keeping my own under control. Even after that incident, the boss still wouldn't let me leave her department.

I finally got my transfer in January 2000. But the new boss thought I could substitute for absent workers on a heavy job in his own department. I couldn't measure up to standards on that either. This boss wasn't anything like the one I just fled, but I eventually transferred even farther away from that department. Nobody has expected me to do any heavy lifting at work for more than two years now.

One issue which still remanins is my mom. She is disabled and needs me to do her shopping for her. She lives on a ridge in the hills of southern Missouri, so every two weeks I need to carry groceries and supples up a hilly driveway to her trailer. It wasn't long after castration that this hill seemed to wear me out a lot more quickly than before. In 2001 I started getting her dog food in two 25 lb bags instead of one 50lb. She was Ok with that, but about a month ago she was unhappy that I didn't get a bag of sand that she had asked for (which comes in only 50lb bags at the local ACE Hardware store). Another ongoing issue is that I used to bring 5 gallon bottles of water up there, but I no longer do that. I could still lift them, but it is too much to ask me to carry them up that hill anymore. I think my mom has noticed my decreased physical strength by now, but has no idea why.

The truth is, I don't miss that extra bit of strength that I used to have. After my gender issues surfaced back in 1998, I turned my back on society's expectations of the male, because I am not a real man. More than three years after castration and ten months on estrogen, my body is not as strong, but it is more pleasing to me. I love how I feel and also what I look like, and I don't want to go back to what I was before. I do not wish to gain back that lost strength.

I don't miss my lost strength at all, but my mom does.

Well I am chemically castrated, I will be physically castrated this Friday 9/6. I have noticed in the last year that I get winded quicker, I don’t have the energy I had last year. My physical strength is the same and I don’t think I have lost any muscle mass, quite the opposite I have gained about 30 lbs and I think that is the problem. After I recover from the castration this Friday I will start a daily physical fitness program to reduce my weight and get in better shape. I am looking for that muscle beach look. LOL Anyway hope that answers your question. I would like to take another stab at it in lets say a year, see how things have changed.

Like Andrew and Sherry, I was never Mr. America (or Mr. Canada). But as I remember my days on the farm and all the physical work I did, I think I must have been a lot stronger than I looked.

I didn't think much about loss of muscle or strength until this summer, when I found myself doing more physical labor than I've done for years. First I had to help my daughter move, i.e. load and unload a truck twice, then I was helping my son build a garage which included leveling a piece of ground, building concrete forms, spreading gravel and then probably hardest of all, spreading the concrete as it came out of the truck and then smoothing it with one of those power trowels. I found I could do all the work, in fact I had more stamina than my 32 year old son in the 100 degree heat. But it took a LOT more effort... a shovel full of wet concrete is HEAVY! I was struggling to do my share of the work... a lot more than I would have had to do 5 years ago.

On the other hand, I am 64 years old, and at that age we're not supposed to be what we were at 35 are we?

Like Riverwind I am having a bit of a battle with weight... I am walking 4 miles every day now just to keep from gaining... I think that is my biggest problem... with diabetes it is crucial that I keep my weight down. But having to work to keep thin is a small price to pay for the joys of being a eunuch.

As several here can attest to, I am NOT Arnold Schwarzenegger ... never have been. But since the great medically induced hormonal crash of 1999/2000, I haven't noticed a bit of muscle/strength loss. I did break my hand punching out a window about a year or so I think, but that's been it.