Kimberlie,
I used to take some of those herbal supplements, for about a year, buying them when they went on sale, but I do not use them any longer. I think they helped some, I did have some breast growth and some female fat accumulation area rounding. I only took the number of pills suggested on the bottles, I did not mega dose. I heard the results vary from person to person.
However, for the last four years after that first year, with taking no supplements unless I had some herbal pills left over, I have eaten estrogenic foods as well as "regular" foods. I believe that those estrogenic foods have helped as much as those herbal pills.
I snack on seeds such as fennel and anise. I have eaten lots of blocks of firm or extra firm tofu (which is soy) for lunch or before the evening meal, usually in noodle or tofu soups. It tides me over until the evening meal, and does not have many calories. I eat fennel a lot when in season. I suggest studying estrogenic foods. Make sure you have no allergies or medical problems by eating any of these estrogenic foods, they might conflict with medicines you are taking. But herbals could be problematic also.
It makes sense to eat these foods because I like the taste and they are foods, not pills. The herbal pills seem costly and the foods gave me some nutrition and similar continued results.
It seems like buying the estrogenic foods was money better spent than buying the herbals.
Now there are estrogenic herbals that are warned against on this site to NOT use, as they can have bad health results for some people, not just breast development. I have not used any of those and I do not plan to do so.
I will continue to eat the estrogenic foods, maybe not so much tofu though, as believe it or not, you can get tired of eating a lot of it! An average of a block a day for five years is getting boring. I guess I should make tempura soup more often with tofu!
That is about all I can tell you, I know of no secret facts by my experience of these foods or herbals.
One really longtime helpful member on this site is Devlyn. She had tremendous results on herbals, far better than me. Perhaps she will reply to your message. Remember, results vary.
It is time in my transition to have a letter from my gender therapist for doctor supervised pharmaceutical mtf HRT as I want to have more of a nice female figure. Yes, it is nice to see my breasts bigger with even nice "sideboobs", and some curving on my thighs, but I do want to see what medically supervised mtf HRT might give me. I will cut back further on these estrogenic foods after starting mtf HRT as there can be some chemical competition for estrogen receptors in the body from phytoestrogens that would make the medical estrogen not as effective as it might be. Talk to a doctor about this.
I still am a trans-woman regardless of what I do, of course.
Chrissy
