How I used Bodybuilding to Prep for Top surgery
No, this isn’t advice. Just exactly what I did and why I did it :)
Hey there, I’m Devon (he/him) and I’ve been working out since 2020. I really locked into taking training seriously in 2022 and got Top surgery in 2023.
Here’s a full breakdown of what the time leading up to my Top surgery looked like !
2022: Ripping the Band-Aid Off
It was 2022 and I finally decided that I'm going to bite the bullet and get top surgery. To be honest, I looked up to people like Ajay Holbrook. At the time he had not had surgery, just a really small chest, and had a really masculine looking chest without top surgery. I thought, I don't want to have to go under the knife. All I want to do is train my ass off so that I don't need surgery in the first place.
BUT, after around 2 years of trying—doing as many push-ups as humanly possible, bench pressing two plates for reps, pretty much killing myself to have a masc. looking chest—I could simply not out-train my genetics and the breast tissue that I had. So I decided that I wanted to get top surgery within the next year.
I devised a plan. I pretty much reverse-engineered a bulking and cutting phase so that I could build up as much muscle as humanly possible and then diet off the fat that was accumulated in that muscle building phase right on time for top surgery.
The 4-Month Bulking phase
Devon - peak bulk and feeling juicy
The plan was to bulk up for around 4 months, eat more food than I had ever eaten in my entire life, train harder than I had ever trained in my entire life, and then give myself around 3 months to diet leading up into top surgery.
And I do have to be perfectly honest here. Because I was desperate to grow as much muscle as possible and train away as much breast tissue as possible, I did take PEDs for this bulking phase (12 week low dose of a compound, not disclosing to not influence anyone)
During this bulking phase, my calories got pretty high. I actually hit 3,000 calories for the first time in my life. I was eating ground beef and white rice like I was getting paid to do it. Ultimately, I'll be real here as well, my blood pressure did suffer because I was having a ton of sodium and just not being smart with water intake and cardio + general movement.
I got pretty freaking massive (high 190s) My chest got pretty dense and I decided, you know what, this is good. I gained around 15 lbs over the course of those four months. That was really aggressive, and that rate of gain I honestly do not recommend. Anywhere from 0.5-0.75 / week or 1lb / 2 weeks is a safer rate of growth.
Rushing the Cut (The Mistake I learned from)
Devon flexing the highly coveted Abs
I locked in on what surgeon I wanted: Dr. Sasani in Plantation, Florida. I wanted to make sure that I dieted my ass off before I went in for the consultation so that he would pretty much have a crystal-clear image of what he was working with, without extra subcutaneous fat from the bulk clouding his perception of things.
So I (stupidly) did not have a holding phase. At THIS current point in my lifting career and for my clients, I always introduce a holding phase as a stepping stone between a bulk and a cut. The reason for that is you work your ass off to build strength, to hit new PRs, and to solidify muscle. If you go straight from a bulk into a cut, you lose both strength and muscle. In the bodybuilding world we call this “marinating”.
Instead of having a holding phase, I went straight from bulking into dieting and I really crashed. I dieted myself into the ground. I lost a pound or even more than a pound each week, and I also lost muscle with… However, I got pretty shredded, and this was the first time that people started to recognize that I was really lean. Got a few thousand on IG as a byproduct of flexing my abs so that was cool haha.
From diet to Surgery (and the binge eating in between)
Now what I SHOULD have done, was give myself about a 2-3 week grace period where I was no longer in a caloric deficit leading into top surgery. Because I was STARVING every damn day for the final 6-8ish weeks of the diet, things didn’t go so well. I went on a road trip upstate to see Paramore with my GF at the time, and on this road trip I ate like an ass. I binge ate terribly around 9k cals in one day - and this was actually 1 week before my date.
With giving myself a diet break leading into surgery I would have done my CNS and appetite a break - and been in a wayyy better position leading into surgery. And this step is CRUCIAL for my clients now. Thank goodness.
Now back to what ACTUALLY happened - the binge eating. I felt like a terrible person for eating this amount of food on my road trip. This bloat combined with the post op bloating and inability to have a bowel movement due to pain meds + poor motility from antibiotics was just a mess.
By no means was this an easy road, I truly did test myself and my limits with bulking - with dieting hard as hell- with it all. BUT, I learned so much. So much about food selection truly mattering, how to aid gut health both leading into and post top surgery and the accompanying meds. And so much about why it’s important to not push yourself to your limits going into one of the most important ad physically demanding surgeries that many of us in the FTM community are privileged enough to undergo.
Whether you're just starting your fitness journey or looking to take your physique to the next level, I've created resources to help you every step of the way.
-Feel free to check out my Free guides which includes a top surgery survival guide !
-If you’d like a custom meal or training plan we can make that happen!
-Or should you want toward together on the 1:1 level you can check out your options here Coaching!
Thanks for your support homie :)
