I can't get over how much Brace looks like my ex... Same glasses and everything

That's never a bad idea, if it turns out your levels are adequately supressed, my only other guess is that you just have unusually low levels of androgens receptors in you muscles, which would mean your muscles did not receive as much androgenic signaling as they normally would with those higher levels of serum testosterone. That, or you were just really strong to begin with and those lifts were close to your untrained numbers?

Get in the pod Shinji

(completely platonic)

With those lifts at that bodyweight, you are trained enough to be considered an intermediate lifter. The fact that you haven't noticed any drop off in strength, in contrast, actually seeing your progress continue to climb, 10 months after you (hypothetically) took your testosterone levels to adrenal levels from gonadal levels is literally not how the human body works idk what to tell you. The effects of androgens on strength and body composition is very clear cut and well studied, you don't just "get stronger" after starting feminizing HRT unless it isn't suppressing your androgen production, or you didn't produce normal gonadal levels of androgens in the first place, or you are a novice lifter (which you don't appear to be from those lifts but idk).

It is physiologically impossible for your rate of strength gain to increase or for your absolute strength to increase, assuming you are already well trained, after dropping to adrenal levels of testosterone from gonadal levels.

Not really, but sometimes yes. Trans fems who have undergone androgen dominant puberty, tend to need to exclusively use head voice in order to reach the resonances that pass as cis. However, cis women don't need to do this in order to pass, though so do anywyas (who tend to have very "girlish" voices).

CPA is cyproterone acetate yes, possibly sold under the brand name, androcur, and I sent you a dm. (If anyone else want the info just dm me)

This hasn't been my experience at all. I experienced MASSIVE strength drop offs almost immediately, and now, 4 years in, (I took a hiatus from lifting for a few years after I started hrt and only am back to training as of a month ago) my body composition and strength is notably weaker than I was even before I started training at 16.

I can probably attribute this difference to a few things; one is that I was an advanced lifter when starting HRT, with far greater development than could be sustained with adrenal (cis female) levels of testosterone and the 4 year hiatus allows my body to recomp to a level congruent with my hormonal profile.

Which brings me to my second reason, that being Estrogen on it's own actually has a negligible to slightly positive effect on strength, while serum testosterone levels have an astronomical effect on strength. According to the current scientific consensus, it is physiologically impossible for a well trained lifter to gain strength and size after taking their testosterone levels to adrenal (cis female) levels and impossible for an untrained lifter to see an increase in the rate of improvement. Seeing your strength in the gym improve (and especially seeing your RATE of improvement improve) after 10 months on HRT is actually a sign that you are most likely not suppressing your testosterone levels to cis female levels. If you know for a fact that your testosterone levels are at adrenal levels, you either were undertraining to ridiculous levels before starting HRT, or you are a crazy edge case that defys out current understanding of exercise science.

Ugh.. the anxiety that comes with diy monotherapy is the worst, I feel you. Getting an orchiectomy while also doing diy monotherapy did incredible things for my mental health and hrt effectiveness. If you're in North America I can point you too a surgen who does informed consent orchiectomys, who did an incredible job with me a few years ago. If that's not in the cards, a small dose of CPA in combination with injected estrogen will 100% shut down all gonadal hormone production and I can also point you to many places you can buy it online if you're interested. (I would only advice using CPA as a short term solution, as long term it has unfavorable risks for negitive health outcomes)

Correct take

Yep, It is. The biggest danger being heart tissue hypertrophy, which has sadly taken the life of a few modern bodybuilders due to cardiac arrest (it can't pump blood effectively if the muscle walls get too thick). Don't take human growth hormone and/or exogenous insulin outside of medican supervision kids!

People are saying steroids, but that's not entirely true, anabolic steroids don't cause this, but human growth hormone and possibly exogenous insulin use are most likely the culprit. Bodybuilders are well aware of this phenomenon and although we still aren't 100% sure the exact mechanism, this started happening to bodybuilders who started taking insulin and HGH (in addition to anabolics) in the late 90s and early 00s. Either one, or both of these drugs cause the organs in the torso to grow (among other things) which causes what bodybuilders coined, Palumboism, named after the first guy to show up on stage with a noticable gut despite good conditioning (low body fat).

banana

Lex like the app? What did they do

Grow up

Feminizing HRT significantly reduces your risk of prostate cancer, essentially taking your risk to zero. Atrophying the prostate with anti-androgens is already a treatment for prostate cancer that's found early in cis men.

Forced? Only by myself, as I thought it was the only way to keep living, though maybe that's just proof that I am trans, and I simply constructed a bunch of mental hoops to jump through due to internalized transphobia?

I guess I am rather unique in my experience of transness in that I started living full time (and even passing) as a woman before I even self identified as one. The thing is, lifing as a women for aabout a year literally changed my internal sence of gender, I wanted it to happen and I made it happen. Maybe that's just me rationalizing my inherent "transness" but that's my recollection of events.

I'm somebody who absolutely does think I am trans purely by life circumstances, but I also recognize that the vast majority of trans people aren't. Like I am incredibly glad that I transitioned and am now living life mostly stealth as a woman, years down the line, but I'm almost positive that if I wasn't put through literal hell as a child (in the very cruel and specific ways that I was) I wouldn't have even thought to have transitioned as a young adult. Perhaps I am completely incorrect in my assumptions about myself, and I would have turned out this way no matter what, but I find it hard to believe that if I wasn't relentlessly bullied, harassed, beaten, and rejected by my peers as a child, that I would be sitting here now as a woman. I feel like I literally became a woman by sheer force of will in order to save my life, because I literally could not continue as the broken husk of a "man" I was at 21, and by some miracle it worked. But maybe I'm just delusional, idk