I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the muscle loss, but in a weird way it was kinda healing for me. I "naturally" lean towards skinny, which I often felt really insecure about as a guy, and the years before I transitioned I'd spent a lot of effort on eating more and going to the gym to get bigger. When I started HRT I fell back to pretty much the same weight as my pre-gym days very fast, and it was honestly so cathartic to final allow myself to be happy about being small after it caused me so much insecurity earlier in my life.

The self defense thing does just kinda suck though. I hate that I don't feel safe walking alone at night any more, and that whenever I go out with my friends I need to have a plan for how to get back to my apartment safely. But on the other hand, being in a group has always been much better for self defense than muscles, so maybe I was just an idiot before.

I know a non-binary transfem who is on a moderate does of E without an androgen blocker, so if keeping most of your muscle is really important to you, maybe you could consider something like that. I don't really know how it works though, just that there exists other hormone treatments than the traditional mtf or ftm routes.