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!