Transitioning from male to female is very much one of those “your mileage may vary” questions. Your specific HRT regimen may be slower or faster, and your body may respond more or less.
The rule of thumb is that you see the bulk of the changes within two years of HRT, and nothing more really happens after that. That’s not explicitly true, but it’s a rule of thumb.
As has been mentioned, no two people’s experience is going to be precisely the same, and different people take slightly different doses of some meds. There are some different medication options under HRT, so there are a lot of variations.
I didn’t see much out of my first month of HRT, the next two months, I noticed lots of things.
1) I had a lot of muscle mass going into HRT. I shed muscle mass like a dog sheds fur in summer. After about three months, I’d dropped around 25 lbs and trust me… that’s noticeable!
Within six months, my weight had finally stabilized 40lbs lighter than where I started.
I slimmed down everywhere. Shoulders, back, dramatically at the waist… everywhere.
2) Notable breast development, for me, was somewhere in the 3-6 month range. By six months in, I stopped wearing any kind of insert or prosthetic breast form and let me just be me.
For visible changes though, after about 6-8 weeks on HRT, my breasts ached (that’s normal), and I swear my nipples were permanently erect for a month or two solid before things calmed down. If I just wore a t-shirt without a bra, it was noticeable.
Nearly a year in, I still notice changes. I’ve stopped losing weight, but I swear the mass is moving around. I’m afraid I’m going to drop another pant size… I’ve been swapping out pants at a rate of a size every two months, and the last ones I bought are once again loose at the waist.
That whole waist: hip ratio thing hasn’t settled down yet, but my waist measurement has dictated size for pants more than my hips, and until that settles down, I have no idea where I’m going to end up.
Recently, I went back through some of my “before” pictures… and the changes in my face are more evident than I thought. I look a lot more like my former self’s sister than I look like ‘old me’ in a dress.
It’s a weird feeling. I don’t know when that change became noticeable. It’s only something I see when looking side by side at ‘before’ and now.
Again, YMMV, everyone takes to HRT a bit differently, but that’s what it’s been like for me.
Source: Jae Alexis Lee, Trans Woman. Researcher. Advocate. Â Dec 22, 2015.
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