Will soy really turn you into Bob from Fight Club?

Everyone remembers Bob.

"Bob had bitch tits."

"Six months ago, Bob's testicles were removed. Then hormone therapy. He developed bitch tits because his testosterone was too high and his body upped the estrogen..."

Bob only made it about 105 minutes into the 151-minute masterpiece that subverted modern male culture, hence the past tense. You probably knew it by its Christian name Fight Club. There are those of us that know it simply by the way it makes us squint our eyes into the future of what "could be," we call it The Light.

In that future, men can be men, materialism holds no grasp on our testes, and no men have bitch tits (roids or no roids). That begs the question, is there soy in my utopian view of the future?

Was it really the steroids?

Seriously, does soy make men more feminine in the same way that hormone therapy made Bob a big lactating moosie?

Should Bob have even been concerned with "supplementing" his diet?

Let's find out, shall we?

Some idiot

The below rule includes beer. Tough.

The majority of this anecdotal hype comes from a story about some 60-year-old dude who drank 3 quarts of soy milk a day.

I'm going to be blunt here. If you drink three quarts of anything other than water per day, there will be negative side effects. This is for a few very simple reasons.

  1. The body is something like 60% water NOT SOY MILK
  2. When you drink nutrients, they generally flood your bloodstream very quickly because they don't need much processing. This is why sugary drinks spike your blood glucose levels much more dramatically than other forms of sugar.
  3. A woman in Arizona died from drinking too much water. Yeah...even too much of the thing that makes up 60% of your composition will harm you. Ever hear of a Tsunami?

But soy has estrogen in it…?

Or...the things you eat end up composing (or destroying) you.

Yeah, Phytoestrogens... sounds scary. Phytoestrogens are found in soy products, NOT actual estrogen.

So if you eat soy, you'll get phytoestrogens in your body. It's only a matter of time until you get bitch tits….Right? NO.

Phytoestrogens (also sometimes known as isoflavones) aren't estrogen and really aren't the same as naturally produced estrogen.

It's not uncommon that consuming a certain molecule has an entirely different effect on the body than when it is naturally produced, or no effect whatsoever. Kind of like how many collagen protein supplements do nothing but waste your money when you eat them even though you need collagen to build strong connective tissue like ligaments and tendons (stick to hydrolyzed powders if you don't want to waste your money.)

The thought originally was that the phytoestrogens in soy will make the body worse at producing testosterone. This hasn't been seen in 15 studies on this very topic.

The only times that there have been issues is when soy products have been consumed in what I'll call an ex-soy-bitant amount like our 60-year-old friend above or in a 19-year-old vegan that was getting his protein basically from only soy.

Your diet should not solely revolve around one food or food group.

Well, depending on your diet...

The point of talking about soy isn't to demonize or convince you that soy is safe for consumption. It's about the dangers of relying solely on one food to get your nutrition.

You can find a story of someone over-consuming just about everything on planet earth. Don't join that club.

If you don't, you'll hear me say something like, "I am Jack's complete lack of surprise," when I read about you on Reddit in some comment thread about the dangers of nightshades, or legumes, or mTORC1 (not a typo).

His name is Robert Paulson

You always have the option to do anything. You just have to decide...

Bob had bitch tits. They were from horse tranquilizers, not soy. Eat a lot of varied protein sources to build muscle, a good portion of that can be soy, and you won't see any adverse effects. If you are only eating soy products, stop and reassess. It's that simple.

Tyler Durden had a dream of turning a bunch of lost, dejected men who were raised by women and scared of commitment into a thinking and breathing apparatus for real social change (Sound familiar...? *cough cough* military *cough cough*). Putting his methods aside, that's a worthy pursuit.

I have a similar dream, to help men who feel like society has left them in a perpetual state of boyhood or at least left their body soft and doughy while they conquered other professional pursuits.

If you want to feel like you're carved out of wood and your veins pump battery acid, you don't need to roll around on the concrete floor of Lou's Tavern with another guy. You just need to check out Grown Ass Man Programming. Check it out and get a free month here to see what it's all about.