Make Your Breasts Smaller
Feeling insecure or uncomfortable about having large breasts is a common issue for many large-chested people. For some people, their breast size feels so uncomfortable that the breasts are an unwelcome inconvenience. Depending on how much effort or change you're willing to endure, there are various things you can do to make your breasts seem, or actually be, smaller. Get started with Step 1 below to find out how.
Contents
Steps
Using Physical Appearance
- Use a minimizing or sports bra. Minimizing bras are specialty bras which specifically add no bulk. They help a little and may be enough for your purposes, especially if you're just wanting to fit into particular clothes. Sports bras, however, not only provide support but also flatten your chest. These originally served the purpose of stopping breasts from moving during exercise, causing pain. If large, painful movements are a concern (for both physical and superficial reasons), sports bras may be the solution for you.
- Try a shaper or chest binder. You probably have heard of Spanx or other shapers. These are items you wear under your clothes that suck everything in. You can buy ones which cover all sorts of different areas of your body but for you, one which covers the chest will be the most helpful. You might find these sold online under the word shaper or chest binder, but they will usually both be roughly the same thing.
- Try chest binding. If you're desperate and none of the other options have worked for you, you can use chest binding as a temporary solution and last ditch effort. It only is really helpful for those with breasts in the US C-DD cup range, but you can use it outside of the range as well. Keep in mind that this may not be comfortable but it will get the job done if you just want to have some nice pictures taken or fit into a special dress.
- Be careful deciding what kind of binder to use. You can buy good, safe binders from many different sources online. Make sure any binder you wear is safe and will not cause any physical problems. Only bind with a specialized binder, do not use Ace bandages or any similar product. Ace bandages are meant to compress, and can cause breathing problems, bruises, rib fractures, or otherwise damage breasts if when worn for frequent and extended periods of time.
- Wear a bra and clothes that fit. Wearing baggy clothes will only make you look larger all over and increase the problem. Wear clothes that aren’t tight, but fitted, and cover the breasts entirely to look good without attracting excessive attention. You'll want to do the same with your bra. Just wearing a bra that fits makes a huge difference in how your breasts feel.
- Avoid clothes that add bulk in the chest. Avoid cowl-neck sweaters and shirts, turtle neck shirts and sweaters, tops with puckers or gathers around the chest, ruffle-front shirts, and any other items which add volume to your chest. These will only make your chest look bigger. Instead, wear tops which are very minimal around the breasts.
- Wear dark tops and brightly colored pants or skirts. This naturally attracts the line of vision downward, leading eyes away from your breasts. For example, wear a black fitted tee shirt and a teal jersey skirt. Or wear a navy blue blouse and bright white pants.
- Accentuate your hips. If you want to naturally make your body look more balanced and draw attention away from your breasts, draw attention to your hips instead. Use pants with horizontal lines and full circle shirts to create the illusion of more volume in your hips, while also wearing tops that are plain and do not add bulk. This will make your breasts look smaller.
Using Natural Methods
- Stop doing anything that makes your breasts larger. You should always start by stopping certain things that make your breasts bigger naturally. The most common culprit will be birth control pills, which can add up to two cup sizes to your breasts! You'll have to talk to your doctor about non-hormone based alternatives.
- A good alternative option to birth control pills is the copper IUD.
- Pregnancy and breastfeeding are also natural causes of bigger breasts but you should not act against these states as they are natural and temporary.
- Create a calorie deficit. Calories are the fuel that our body uses and in order to burn fat (which is the main contributor to your bust line), you'll need to give it less fuel than it needs. This doesn't mean starving yourself, it just means balancing your activity level with the amount of fuel it needs. Lowering the amount of food you eat by a small amount while increasing your activity by a small amount can be enough to help you lose weight.
- Use an online calorie calculator to find out how to adjust your diet.
- This calorie deficit should only be temporary though. Once you've reached a healthy target weight, balance your calorie intake with your activity level.
- Eat a healthier diet. You'll want to eat a healthier diet that puts your calorie intake to work for you! By eating few unhealthy items and increasing the nutritional value of the food that you do eat, you can make yourself feel more full with less food and easily decrease the number of calories you consume in a day.
- Add healthy items to your diet. Eat healthy foods like kale, spinach, broccoli, quinoa, whole grain oatmeal, potatoes, lentils, edamame, white beans, fish, eggs, cottage cheese, and many other foods. Skip on fruits, which add a lot of sugar to a diet and instead double down on vegetables and beans, as those listed above contain all of the same vital nutrients as fruit (often in greater quantities).
- Cut unhealthy items from your diet. Cut unhealthy items from your diet like trans and saturated fats, excessive salt, and sugar. All of these contribute to weight gain and fat build-up. You can find these things in items like soda, Starbucks-style coffee, bacon, pork rinds, chips, butter, ice cream, and other similar foods.
- Eat better portions. Most people eat way too much food at one time. If it seems like it's the size of a restaurant meal, then it's too much food. A good practice is to eat your meals on a side plate instead of a dinner plate, and go back for seconds only if you are still hungry 15 minutes after you finish eating your first portion. Take a half serving for your "seconds".
- Eating very small meals more often is also a good way to practice portion control. This will also keep you feeling full all day.
- Get active in your everyday life. There are lots of ways that you can get active in your every day life. None of these require taking too much extra time out of your normal schedule.
- The easiest way to get more active in your everyday life and start burning calories is to walk more. Take the stairs instead of the elevator and park further away from wherever you need to go in order to make sure you're walking a greater distance.
- Beyond that, try things like standing or treadmill desks or using an exercise ball instead of a chair. All of these use your normal activities and turn them into exercises!
- Exercise efficiently. It's easy to get bogged down with the clichéd push-ups and pull-ups, but there are more efficient exercises that can fit into your day much easier. Good examples include squats, planks, and burpees, all of which you can learn how to do in the wikiHow on exercising. Try to choose one or more of these exercises and do them for at least 15 minutes at a time for at least 30 minutes day.
- Squats and planks are both core exercises. If you only do these, it's a good idea to also take our advice about walking more. Try to spend another 30 minutes total every day walking, and the more stairs and hills involved, the better.
- Stay motivated. Exercise needs to be consistent and prolonged in order to have any real effect. You'll have to make a real lifestyle change if you want the weight to stay off. This is why it's important to stay motivated. Having an exercise partner, a trainer, or someone else you're responsible to can really help.
- Listening to music while you exercise can also make it much more fun. You can also listen to audio books or podcasts too!
Using Surgery
- Talk to your doctor. Please, talk to your doctor before putting too much consideration into breast reduction surgery and certainly before talking to a plastic surgeon (who may have too much of a vested interest in getting your money). There may be other factors that may contribute to your breast size, health factors that may make surgery dangerous, and potentially much easier and less dangerous solutions.
- Surgery is a particularly bad idea if you are young. Give yourself time: you may find you feel very different about your body in a few years.
- Surgery should also not be used just for cosmetic reasons or to help you fit into the clothes you like. Surgery is dangerous and the dress you wear should not be more important than your life.
- Do your research. Research the best plastic surgery facilities in your area. If there aren’t any highly acclaimed or reviewed locations nearby, it may be worth your while to go out of your way to find one. Again, plastic surgery is risky, and you want the best treatment you can find.
- Get a consultation. Get a consultation with a couple of different plastic surgeons. They will be able to advise you on the different methods of breast reduction and the results that can be achieved. They will also be able to advise on costs and other considerations. You should not choose any surgeon that seems untrustworthy or offers extremely cheap procedures. A poor surgeon can easily give you very bad looking breasts.
- Recognize the risks. There are a number of risks associated with breast reduction surgery, many of which are also carried with any other surgery: the basic risk of using anesthesia is present, since anyone at any time may develop a bad reaction to those drugs and die on the table. You may also develop an infection or blood clots. There are other risks as well:
- You run the risk of scarring, which may even go so far as to form keloids.
- You may end up with uneven or unusually shaped nipples.
- You may lose the ability to breast feed, complicating the situation if you ever plan to have children.
- Accept the permanence. Breast surgery cannot be undone. This is obviously a problem if the procedure is done poorly, but it is also important to remember that what's in fashion now or what you like now might not always be so desirable. You may come to love your body just the way it is and if you have surgery, you won't be able to get it back.
- Make sure you can afford it. Oftentimes, breast reduction surgery is considered an elective surgery across the board and so it will not be covered by health insurance. This can make it prohibitively expensive. Weigh your priorities to make sure that this is right for you, since spending the money on something like school might be more beneficial for you in the long run.
- Get the surgery. Once you've weighed all your options and have made a decision, you'll need to go and get the surgery. It is usually done at a hospital or surgical center, requires general anesthesia, and is completed in a few hours. Generally, you will be sent home the same day, so you'll need to have someone available to pick you up.
- Go through the aftercare. You'll have to be extremely vigilant as you go through the aftercare process. You may have a tube to drain fluids and blood placed in your chest and you'll certainly have stitches and bandages. All have to be kept clean and you'll have to stay fairly inactive, in order to let your body heal and prevent infection. You will likely be in pain and experience severe swelling and bruising. The stitches are usually removed after 1-2 weeks.
