This story is part of Trans in Fitness—a series of profiles that highlights the fitness changemakers who are making the world easier and healthier for their community. Read the rest of the inspiring stories here.
FOR OVER A decade, I’ve known about Aydian Dowling. If you’re a longtime Men’s Health reader, maybe you have, too. In 2015, Dowling became the first transgender man to appear on the cover of MH, when he was a finalist in the magazine’s “Ultimate Guy” search. But as I learned when I caught up with him in spring of 2023, becoming a viral fitness star didn’t always make Dowling feel closer to the man he truly was.
“The more ripped I got, the more muscle I got, the more pressure it was to keep it on,” Dowling remembers from that time. “The more I’d notice all these little, little things that no one else saw except for me. It didn’t equal the gender euphoria I thought it would.”
While Dowling was still on his journey, his publicness inspired me through my own transition and helped me realize I wasn’t alone in my experience as a transgender man. He was the one on YouTube that helped me prepare for my own top surgery—the one who was there to move me through each step. His willingness to be so open and honest struck me as not only courageous, but as evidence of the power of community to change lives.
Aydian Dowling (left) on the cover of MH in 2015.
These days, Dowling is more focused on building community than a sculpted six-pack. Since appearing on the cover of Men’s Health, Dowling has created the non-profit Point of Pride, as well as an app called TRACE—both designed to support transgender individuals seeking community and wellness.
I sat down with Aydian to learn where fitness and community interact in his past, present, and future endeavors, as well as what challenges he’s been through, and how they’ve impacted his sense of self.
Bari Glassman: I’m curious to know about the role fitness played in your life just prior to your transition.
Aydian Dowling: Before I decided to medically transition, I had chosen to not medically transition. I had decided that I was just going to naturally transition, which meant I was going to take some over-the-counter vitamins and work out a lot.
Very quickly, I started to see my body shift in ways that felt good, and really aligned with my identity. In the beginning of working out, you see your weight lifts go up higher, and you see your body start to change, and you start to notice muscle on a body that you’d never seen muscle on before. Even if it wasn’t a lot, it just made me feel better. I identify as FTM trans male, so having self-identified as female and then identifying as male, I wanted to look more traditional in my masculinity. That was important to me.
What challenges did fitness bring into your life that you had not anticipated?
The thing that you don’t think about is the mental part of it. You know, there’s a lot of comparison. When you are cisgender to cisgender, comparing your body to the person next to you, I think there’s a lot of similarities to being trans, in that sense. I think the big difference is that for trans people—and more specifically, to speak to my own journey—it feels harder because you feel like you genetically didn’t get any of the luck that everyone else has.
I found myself almost angry at people who didn’t care about what they were doing. Just a lot of judgment, but the judgment came from my own pain and insecurities. That comparison journey was something that I didn’t realize would be so difficult. Also, just a little bit of that hard masculinity of feeling like I don’t fit in here, so I’m just going to have a really hard shell, and no one will mess with me. I’m going walk around with this face, like, I’m not approachable. Stay away from me.
It’s interesting that as we start to transition, there’s this period of excitement where we’re getting closer to our true self. And then at the same time, we’re still so separate from everyone within our own minds. I’m curious, did you think that being on the Men’s Health cover would help you to feel more like the man you are?
I definitely thought that it would make me feel more like a man. At that time in my transition, being a man was so focused on my physicality. I always knew I was a man inside, so now I had this opportunity to prove that. I know I don’t need to prove that anymore, thankfully. I do think it’s very common for people to feel that, and I don’t think it’s something for people to feel bad about either. I just think it’s a common thing people experience, because you’ve been in this body that doesn’t reflect who you are.
Did the experience exacerbate any insecurities that you may have had regarding your body or your identity?
Of course. It definitely did. I mean, when I looked at all the other guys [on the cover], they were all 6 inches, maybe a foot taller than me. I was 150 pounds at the time, and another guy was 250 pounds. As a trans person, being big or just taking up space is what you’re told masculinity is—and being the smallest, shortest one there did not feel great. So, it did affect me, but I don’t have any regrets about what it did. I know it helped a lot of people, including myself, in many ways.
Now that you have a son, how has your sense of community changed? What role does fitness play in your life now that you have someone that you can be a role model to?
Dowling and his family.
I definitely still work out, but it’s not my main thing anymore. I know what people mean by dad bod. I get it now, you know? Because you only have so many hours in the day. In order for me to get a workout in, I have to wake up at like 5:45, 6 o’clock. I get to see [my son] before he goes to school, then I go to work, then after work I get to see him. But sometimes I’m like, “Oh yeah, I have to do like 15 minutes of abs.” No, I don’t end up doing it. “Oh, maybe I’ll do yoga tonight?” Nope. Doesn’t happen. Because it’s dinner and then it’s the bedtime routine, and then I have a partner. So, your priorities shift—that’s just the truth. It’s important to have stability. In my own childhood, having a dad who was there all the time was something I didn’t have, so I really want to do that for him.
What other kinds of things are you hoping to do in the future, in regard to bringing people from this community together?
I’m continuing with my nonprofit Point of Pride to build a foundation that can really serve people in trans healthcare. That’s really important to me. And with the Trace App, being able to continue to build a platform where people can go, explore, and get help. And parents can go and talk to other parents, and people can find that support that they so desperately need.
I think just on a personal level, I’ve been trying to figure out where fitness fits in my journey. It was such a big thing that I would document and talk about. I think because I did suffer from some disordered eating and a hyper-fixation on my body, and calories burned, I stepped away from building content around fitness, because for me, it turned negative. I would like post a shirtless photo because it got more likes than the one when I had a shirt on. I started losing followers because I stopped posting that type of content. That was a lot of transition for me. But I just knew that it wasn’t healthy for me. And I want be an example for everyday people.
I believe that you are popular, but you’re not doing it for likes. Right? You’re doing it for you, which is different.
I think I started for me, and then I was doing it for likes. I was looking into moving to LA. I was looking into getting into acting; I was looking into getting all into these things that was the trajectory of what happens when you start to get popular on socials.
What ultimately made you decide not to move to LA?
Well, I went to LA a lot. I met with a bunch of fitness people. And when I would go and visit, it was fun, but I felt like I would always need to be at the top. I was already on the cover of Men’s Health, I was already shredded, but I would feel like I needed to be more shredded. And in my head, I thought every time someone saw me, I would need to look bigger, I would need to be better. I would need to constantly be pushing past that 100%. So, if I gained weight, or I didn’t build more muscle, it would be like, Oh, Aydian looks the same. What’s wrong with him? He hasn’t been progressing. It would kill other dreams that I had, like being a present dad. I didn’t want to show my son that I was hyper-fixated on my body, or not putting him to bed because I needed to do something related to fitness. Or not send him off to school because I needed to go to the gym. I didn’t want to make him wait for me on a Saturday morning because I need to go to the gym six days per week. Because that is going to send the message that my body is more important than spending time with him. That’s why I decided not to do it.
I think that all the choices I made, as difficult as they were at the time, were to try to be more of me. That’s why I transitioned. I transitioned to become myself, not to become anyone else. Not to follow in anyone else’s footsteps. Not to prove myself to anyone, but to just look in the mirror and look at the guy staring at back at me and feel proud of that man.
These days, Dowling enjoys the gym more for mental and emotional reasons than the promise of getting ripped. “That’s where i get more gender euphoria,” he says.
I think it’s important that you take a moment to really sit in what you just said, because I don’t know that many people, trans or not, could really speak to that as openly and honestly as you just did. In the world today, a lot of choices are made based off who people wish they were, or what they wish they could be.
I’m not perfect. I’ve made choices that I regret. I’ve done things for vanity. I don’t post shirtless selfies because I’m not as ripped as I once was. I’m not doing that because that’s more authentically me; I’m doing that because I’m like, embarrassed. Because I’m a human.
One thing I learned is that I really thought that if I was able to pick off every piece of my body that was traditionally female, that I would feel so confident in my masculinity, and all my dysphoria would dissipate. So, if I had abs and striations and no hips, and just thighs full of muscle, and I’m wearing a large t-shirt because I’m just so big, that I would just feel so confident.
It didn’t happen like that. The more ripped I got, the more muscle I got, the more pressure it was to keep it on. The more I’d notice all these little, little things that no one else saw except for me. I felt like, well, I still don’t have that, or, this guy still looks like this. So, it didn’t equal the gender euphoria I thought it would.
What I have now—which is like, the mental and emotional release of going to the gym, the endorphins, having muscle on my body to some extent—that’s where I get more gender euphoria than when I was super ripped. It’s an interesting journey that has ups and downs, but it takes time to get to that space where you can just feel really good. And I think even that ebbs and flows. Sometimes I feel really good. I’m like, this is great. Other times, I’m like, eh, maybe not so great.
Do you feel like in that way, that’s what fitness has brought to you? Almost like, an internal confidence? You’ve sort of learned to get over that external, social construct of what a man is, and you can still feel like a man internally?
I think you can spend more time in that authentic space than not. Because I think I will forever go back and forth. Forever I’ll probably look at a photo without a shirt on and think I could look better. But I think it depends. More often than not, I’ll think, cool, great shot.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Bari Glassman is a graduate student at Immaculata University studying Dietetics, and he intends to combine his passion for nutrition, and fitness, with his interest in cultural diversity, as a future professional practice.
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