Can weight loss change voice???

  • Can weight loss cause a change in voice depth. My good friend just told me that my voice seems much deeper now that I have lost the weight I have lost. I never noticed it before but I think she is right...

    Is that normal??
  • I wouldn't be surprised if it's a function of your lungs working better. If you're using more air when you speak, that could change the timbre of your voice and make it seem more resonant, even if the pitch isn't any different.
  • I've noticed, as a singer, that my singing voice is stronger. Kind of goes against the fat lady stereotype but that's what I've noticed.
  • I have heard this in regards to professional singers being concerned with it happening but when I googled it I hardly found anything.

    Interesting enough, the second link on Google was to one here last year regarding this.

    http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/100-...our-voice.html
  • Hmm, also a singer by training, and I haven't noticed any pitch or range changes for me.

    Your vocal pitch is caused by the length/thickness of your vocal chords, and I've always assumed that was basically unchangeable after hormones kick in at puberty. You can learn to use your vocal chords in a different way, but nothing physically has changed.

    This is kind of fascinating to me and I wish I could get an opinion from an ENT with experience working with vocalists. In the meantime, I like Oboegal's answer.

    katkitten - My air support and breath control are MUCH better now. Not to mention my self-confidence. Makes me wish, more than anything, that I lost the weight in college. Studio and recitals would have been such all-around better experiences.
  • My body hasn't gotten incredibly smaller, but I've had one friend comment that my voice has gotten deeper too. I have a high voice, and when I talk most naturally and comfortable, it's up there... But I've conditioned myself to talk lower so that, hopefully, my voice travels better (dunno if it works or not! But I have had less people asking me to repeat myself).

    Whether weight loss changed it, or I changed it myself to conform, I don't know. Maybe my friend just misrecollected my voice (we hadn't talked in a few months). Who knows?

    I like my natural voice a lot more than my synthetic, lower, conforming voice. I hope I can stop this silly habit of lowering my voice
  • Another singer here, and I haven't noticed any change in pitch, tone, or range. Just in lung capacity and posture, both have gotten much better. I agree with Oboegal, that could totally be the reason behind the change in your voice.
  • That's curious....I've wondered the same thing periodically over the years
    as my size grew and grew. My impression was that my voice changed according to weight changes. I know the vocal cords are in charge of the voice,
    but the body itself contains the vibrations before they are expelled from the body as sound. If your neck size changes, there is less mass for those vibrations to vibrate. Take a kettle drum as an example. Hit it with a mallet and you get one sound. Cover it with layers of fabric....and the vibration/sound
    changes. It makes sense to me that if a person's neck size changes, the voice would sound different too.
  • Hmm. if its true, that's a bummer. My voice is deep enough.
  • maybe this has to do with resonance?
  • interesting concepts
  • hhmmm.. I think my voice deepened when I gained alot of weight a few years ago, but it could also just be age or hormone problems. Also being depressed and self conscious from the weight and how I looked might of made my voice deeper since I didn't like talking talking and drawing attention to myself.
  • All I can think is "Ann Wilson" from Heart. Her voice changed quite a bit when her weight changed.
  • That is odd. I have never heard that. (My voice has always been sort of deep.) I have noticed that I am louder. Maybe I am more comfortable with myself or maybe I get more air in my lungs.