Trainer with a passion for working with trans clients says every body is different
SHAPING UP | Brenda Stowe, left, does exercise to build tissue, not mass, as she works with trainer Danielle Girdano. (David Taffet/Dallas voice)
Brenda Stowe never worked out before. “I’d sit on my tail at home,” she said.
But then came the day she was running through an airport from the car rental to the gate to catch a flight, and, “The lady at the counter asked me if I needed a wheelchair,” Stowe said.
That’s when she knew she had to do something about her weight.
Then she met Danielle Girdano in church.
Girdano is president of D’Fine Sculpting and Nutrition and is a certified master personal trainer. In 2013, she was named a Top 40 executive under 40 by the Dallas Business Journal.
As a trainer, Girdano specializes in a number of areas, including weight loss, exercising with coronary disease and exercise programming for Alzheimers. But her work with her transgender clients is her real passion.
It’s such a passion, in fact, that Resource Center’s GEAR program director, Blair High, said Girdano gave the group $8,000 in scholarship money for members to use for professional fitness training.
Girdano said her program for trans clients came about naturally, because she approaches each person as an individual with different needs and requirements.
“There’s not a cookie-cutter approach,” Girdano said. “There are lots of body types.”
She said when she looked at how she saw trans men and women were exercising, she realized that in many cases they were working hard but getting no results.
Girdano said her philosophy is, “Work smarter, not harder. You can get more benefit with less activity.”
Smarter means understanding a person’s body and what results the person wants to achieve. Girdano said she saw trans men often doing exercises to develop their upper bodies without taking their own bodies’ systems into account. She said someone who has had a mastectomy — man or woman — who wants to build upper body strength, should build muscle from the side and not the front.
“Hormones can affect outcomes, but can’t completely change the muscular-skeletal systems,” Girdano said.
When a person transitions, their body undergoes a number of changes, Girdano explained. But some things don’t change.
As she ran through an exercise routine with Stowe, a male-to-female trans woman, Girdano explained that Stowe’s abdominal cavity is larger than that of someone born biologically female. That’s fine with Girdano: She just adjusts the number of reps or the angle at which the person does those reps or even the type of exercise to compensate.
Girdano hands Stowe an O- ring, which Stowe presses in front of her to turn the O into an oval. Girdano said she likes using this exercise with trans women because it builds tissue, not mass.
When Stowe first began working with Girdano, the issue was weight.
“I could never get below 270,” Stowe said.
“Trust me,” Girdano told her. And with a change of diet and some exercise, Stowe quickly got below 250.
“The wonderful thing about getting in shape was I dropped three major meds,” Stowe said.
As she lost weight, Stowe said she was blacking out. Girdano stopped her workout routines until she got to the doctor to check levels of her medications, including her hormones and testosterone blocker. With lower body fat and less weight, Stowe’s hormones were out of whack.
In addition to exercise, Girdano recommends healthy eating, and said it was especially important for the trans community.
“Keep good nutritional habits,” Girdano advises. “The transition will be easier.”
Although Girdano is vegan, she doesn’t recommend extreme changes for her clients. She does suggest her clients try just one day a week without meat. She prefers those who eat meat stick to chicken and fish rather than red meat that’s harder to digest.
Another piece of advice she offers is, “Peel it, don’t unwrap it.”
Stowe called the foods Girdano recommends “real foods.”
But even if a diet she proposes restricts calories, Girdano figures in a binge day once a week. She said there’s no reason to sneak it, and she thinks it may have a beneficial effect.
When starting a diet, the body sheds the most pounds during the first week. After a few weeks, the weight plateaus. Girdano thinks that binge day stimulates the body to return to the way it reacted the first week, shedding pounds again.
Again, she has special advice for trans men and women that applies to anyone looking for certain results from their workouts.
“Certain foods may interact with hormones,” she said.
She said soy is estrogen-based and acts against testosterone. It can affect energy levels and mood. Calcium interacts with testosterone.
Whether going through a rigorous exercise program or just staying active to maintain your health, Girdano said always drink plenty of water.
For more information on Girdano visit DfineYourHealth.com.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition October 24, 2014.
