broad shoulders?

[Emily1996]

Hello girls, so I was measuring my shoulders today and I think they are 17 inches, which I think are very broad because I"m 5'5'' what do you think?

Then did anyone experience shoulder shrinking on HRT? When? How evident was the change? I'm just at one month with not many changes but I'm hopeful in the future lol What about the shoulders muscles like the trapezius and deltoids? Will a diet help with that too? I think I'm starting to get over the 145 lbs which is terrible D:

[Emily1996]

Well I think I'm not measuring accurate enough sometimes it's 16, sometimes its 17 and sometimes 18... so its probably around those... But the main question is when do you notice changes on your shoulders and muscle in that area? I hate wearing tight shirts because of that.

[Abby Claire]

I used to lift weights a lot so I'm suffering big time with this too. If you diet, lose weight, and do more cardio then it should go away. I'm having problems though since I've dropped my weight to 145 (I'm 5'10") and still have big shoulders. They say yoga could help, but I haven't tried it yet. Honestly, shoulders and traps are really difficult to get rid of. Hopefully hrt helps you with those muscles going away.

[kaye]

I used to deadlift 140kg for 2 sets of 5 reps so yes, I have this problem. I'm now 5'9" with 18" shoulders.

I've lost a lot, but still, I feel my upper body bulk hinders my passability big time.

Only thing that will correct the problem is time and calorie restriction + regular cardio. Sucks.

[Carrie Liz]

Yes, HRT does visibly reduce the size of the shoulders a bit, because it takes a lot of the muscle away and thus makes them look bonier and thinner rather than broad and strong, but they'll still be wide. It's just one of those things that we can't change, and we just have to accept it and learn to cope.

With that said, I started noticing them looking smaller by around the 9-month HRT mark, and the muscle has slowly but steadily been melting away ever since.

[Sammie Blade]

It's hard to measure the shoulders with accuracy.  Fluctuations in breathing, chest movement, arm movement, and posture can all throw it out of whack.

[Lady_Oracle]

Keep proper posture! can't stress this enough, if I let my shoulders go forward they look huge still but in proper posture I look like any other gal my height with wide shoulders. Once you're on hrt long enough your shoulders will soften somewhat and will appear more round, when you get to that stage you'll see how much good posture makes a difference.

[kaye]

Lifting weights didn't increase my skeleton size. If I gained the muscle it should possible to get rid of the muscle.

[FrancisAnn]

My shoulders are kind of wide, too wide. However my upper arms have so much saggy fat. There was muscle & now it's just flabby under arm fat.
I've already talked with my plastic surgeon & they do under arm plastic surgery to remove fat & tighen up the skin for nicer thinner arms. I going in next week for my doc to look me over & give me his quote.   

[lightvi]

I am 6'1" tall (so pretty tall for a girl) and my shoulder are about 16 1/2 inches wide. I notice they do tend to look a bit wider, or wider than an average female. This is especially apparent when I wear women's t-shirts because the sleeves will come up on my shoulder as well as the sleeve line being much higher than normal. However, some great things you can do to compensate is to wear tanks instead of t-shirts as the straps will divide up your shoulders and give them the appearance of being smaller. You can use that same tip for dresses too.

I think the best thing to do is embrace it. Wear what you can and what looks good. Shoulder width is rarely ever a defining factor in passing, imo. Even cis-women have various sizes of shoulders.

[Andreja Silvija]

I have broad shoulders and little hips so I know how it feels. I am hoping I am still young enough (20) that HRT will trigger some bone growth in my hips, which I read somewhere was possible. Which should really make a nice hourglass waist. Otherwise, I'll just have to gain weight and hope it goes there and not my belly... 6'3 and 150 pounds at the moment pre-HRT.

[Jenna Marie]

My shoulder width diminished considerably on HRT, which I assume was mostly muscle disappearing. It happened in the first year, and I want to say I went from around 18" to 14". It was definitely pretty noticeable, not just to other people but in the sense that I went down a size in shirts.

But more importantly, I think that my 5'5" wife has 22" shoulders and never got grief for it. It's about proportion; if your hips are roughly the same width as your shoulders or bigger, you'll look feminine (and a very female face and/or boobs will go a long way too).

[Violet Bloom]

I am 6'1" tall (so pretty tall for a girl) and my shoulder are about 16 1/2 inches wide. I notice they do tend to look a bit wider, or wider than an average female. This is especially apparent when I wear women's t-shirts because the sleeves will come up on my shoulder as well as the sleeve line being much higher than normal.

  I know this well because my mother teases me (mostly good-naturedly) about the sleeve thing.  Disproportionately wider shoulders are really annoying because almost alone it eliminates the fit of just about every piece of clothing I try on in the stores.  I find it difficult to judge and end up taking a lot of stuff that won't work into the fitting rooms, wasting my time and getting my depressed.  This has been particularly problematic with jackets.

  I should note that the person at my workplace with by far the widest shoulders is a woman.  She looks like a 'hyper-linebacker' except that she's also only five feet tall.  She also has quite narrow hips due to her ethnicity.  It pretty much represents the extreme opposite of typical but is still a naturally-occurring phenomenon.

  BTW, is there any standard way to measure?  I'm really confused because I've seen it done different ways.  If I measure straight across from the outsides of the arms I get 18".  If I measure from the bony points on top I get 15.5".  Measuring all the way around in circumference or any other kind of wrapped placement of the tape is another matter entirely.

[Dahlia]

My shoulders are kind of wide, too wide. However my upper arms have so much saggy fat. There was muscle & now it's just flabby under arm fat.
I've already talked with my plastic surgeon & they do under arm plastic surgery to remove fat & tighen up the skin for nicer thinner arms. I going in next week for my doc to look me over & give me his quote.

Sounds interesting! How many cm's you think can be taken off your upperarms?