How do I get rid of the ol' man boobies?

March 2, 2009 10:13 PM

I got man boobs. Yet, I do not want man boobs. How do I get rid of said male boobage?

They're not too bad... A cup, maybe? I'm 170lbs @ 5'8", so I'm not really over weight per se, but I'm tired of having them. What kind of exercises can I do to get rid of my man boobs? I'm looking for things I can do at home. Thanks, hive (double thanks for not judging).

posted by anonymous to health & fitness (23 comments total)

You're probably overweight. Lose weight.
posted by kldickson at 10:18 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]

Lose body fat. That means adjust your diet.

Do exercises that focus on your pecs. Push-ups, push-ups with your feet on something to make them harder, etc.

If you have true gynecomastia, not just a little extra body fat, it will require surgery to remove the breast tissue.
posted by schroedinger at 10:18 PM on March 2

The general rule is that you can't spot reduce. So if you want to lose weight in your chest, then you need to lose weight all over.

Plenty of aerobic exercise plus a reduction in calories.
posted by sbutler at 10:26 PM on March 2

This has been asked before, and the answer was along the lines of: different parts of your body are hormonally linked fat-wise. So you need to lose overall weight to see specific areas decrease. You can try toning your muscles in that area, but it won't really remove the fat much, the increased muscle might just look a bit more along the lines of what you want. So, to directly answer your question, cardio exercises + a change in diet should do it.
posted by spiderskull at 10:27 PM on March 2

First off, the prerequisite: IANAD.

If you lose the weight and still the boobage does not go away you could have Gynecomastia. This is where a man develops fibrous breast tissue where men are not supposed to.

More can be read here.

To sum it up - sometimes it can be caused by hormonal issues in the body that can sometimes be corrected if losing weight does not help. It's something to consider and at least rule out of nothing else seems to help.
posted by Brettus at 10:33 PM on March 2

Actually, I think just exercising the pecs might produce a very unfortunate effect. Without efforts to reduce body fat, the pecs will get a bit bigger and tighter and the man boobs will be more elevated and prominent on the increased platform. In fact I have seen people advocate this for women who are worried about being flat-chested.

Diet and exercise - then if you still have them at a reasonable bf %age, talk to a doctor about other options. Plenty of advice on bodyweight exercise out there - do that, and eat less food.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine claims that soy products stimulate him in unfortunate ways. So I suppose if you're desperate you could try eliminating phytoestrogens from your diet.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:35 PM on March 2

Yes, having manboobs is called gynecomastia. It is sometimes an effect of the above conditions...but oftentimes it is a SYMPTOM of something larger. Exercising, losing weight, lowering your body fat %, or doing chest exercises won't do shit if this is the case.

I saw something on the NEJM a little while ago, and I can't seem to find it anymore...but there were other symptoms relating to a condition with the pituitary gland.

If you aren't fat in the thighs, but just in the middle ("central obesity", I think its called), you might want to go see an endocrinologist.

Let me see if I can find that link. Also, I feel crazy smart for being able to reference the NEJM out of the blue. Its just too bad I can't back it up with an actual link.
posted by hal_c_on at 10:41 PM on March 2

Ok. Found it! This is what I want you to look for:

1. Fatter in the middle but you got no back (or legs...apologies to sir mix a lot).
2. Are you less hairy than you used to be?
3. Do men in your family of your age display balding...but you don't?

I don't even have to say I'm not a doctor, since this is MeFi...but if you actually read the above and go "Wait a minute...I thought they were isolated!", then maybe you do have to go to a doctor.

Incidentally...a lot of the people giving advice here are kinda assholish. ESPECIALLY when you ask them not to judge.

You're probably overweight. Lose weight.

Normally when people want things removed from their body, they have them removed by a surgeon.

What a bunch of assholes.

Good luck dude, hope you turn out OK.
posted by hal_c_on at 10:51 PM on March 2 [3 favorites]

Do you smoke a lot of weed? I've heard, although I don't really know anything for sure, so it could be a big ol' lie, that prolonged marijuana use can cause man ta-tas. I would research it a little more, but so far, my google searches have only produced horrifying, oh-god-my-eyes-my-eyes results.

But you might look into that, if you're a regular pot smoker.
posted by pazazygeek at 10:56 PM on March 2

hal_c_on speaks the truth. I know guys your height/weight and heavier and they are not overweight, nor do they have man boobies. It can't hurt to see a doctor. (That said, they're probably nowhere near as big as you think they are...an ex of mine used to insist that he had man boobs. He didn't. He just had bad self esteem and decided that lack of pecs-o-steel immediately meant man boobs. Don't be like him.)
posted by phunniemee at 11:05 PM on March 2

Maybe off-topic, but I just found this great site on gynecomastia in bodybuilders. Scroll down for before/after pictures to see the change.

In this case, the gynecomastia was caused by steroid use, so probably not relevant to the OP.
posted by sbutler at 11:11 PM on March 2

In terms of BMI, you're at 25.8, which is only slightly overweight. What's probably more of a concern is that you might be overfat, which is something you'll want to control with strength training and a healthier diet. If diet and exercise doesn't help you drop your body fat percentage or your man boobs, give a second thought to what hal_c_on said — an unusually high body fat percentage relative to your activity level/diet might be a sign of an endocrine condition.
posted by thisjax at 11:38 PM on March 2

Try toning up with some free weights, chest presses, push ups: Best Chest.

This also looks quite useful and suggests a range of all over body exercises according to your fitness aims and time limitations: workout generator.
posted by tokidoki at 2:13 AM on March 3

This previous question has lots of info, including a doctor who says, "I'm surprised that no one has mentioned heavy alcohol drinking, which is probably the most common cause of gynecomastia." It also has a link from jessamyn that may help explain why folks keep saying pot causes men to grow breasts in these threads.
posted by mediareport at 5:35 AM on March 3

Oops, here's the thread.
posted by mediareport at 5:36 AM on March 3

OP, on the chemical level there may be some complicated stuff going on. Please see if you can get an appointment with an endocrinologist. Yes, it's worth trying to lose weight generally, but consider that there are plenty of men with your height/weight stats that don't have manboobs: thus, if you're really worried about, there's no sense in waiting. A lot of recreational steroid users run into gynecomastisa because of aromatization of androgens, and end up doing odd things like taking Clomid to prevent this. You will hardly be the weirdest case the doctor sees next week.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:20 AM on March 3

Oh, also, if you're eating a lot of soy protein, stop.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 6:21 AM on March 3

If it really is gynecomastia then you need to talk to a doc. This is speaking as someone who had this taken care of during high school. What was worse was that I only had it on one side. Completely embarrassing for 15 year old dude but I was ultimately grateful when they pulled a grapefruit sized thing out of my chest. Also relevant to the discussions above was that I had a seemingly never ending parade of adults asking me about potential steroid and weed usage (no and no in my case). Still very embarrassing to my teen aged self.
posted by mmascolino at 7:04 AM on March 3

77.1 kilograms for that height doesn't seem that large.
posted by mary8nne at 7:11 AM on March 3

Eat less, work out more. If you have extreme man-boobage, you may need some plastic surgery to remove the excess skin.
posted by squorch at 7:11 AM on March 3

Deadlift
posted by tiburon at 1:03 PM on March 3

The thing about just giving your height and weight is that different weights look different on different people, and different weights look different on the same person depending on the muscle/fat ratio.

So, yeah, you might be overfat but not particularly overweight, and changing your muscle/fat ratio might help diminish the appearance of moobs. Or it might be hormonally-caused gynecomastia.

I would see a doctor, just to rule out possible endocrinological issues.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:52 PM on March 3

Squat.

(heavy-load compound movements are proven to increase serum testosterone, thus decreasing moobage)
posted by Kandarp Von Bontee at 10:08 AM on March 15