How to End Emotional Eating (and other health questions answered) – BioTrust Radio #9

4 Tips to End Emotional Eating

How can you conquer emotional eating once and for all? Is it okay to have a cheat day when you’re keto? Confused about the different types of carbs, when is the best time to eat them, and how many carbs you should be eating? Speaking of being confused, what’s the verdict on soy…soy protein, soybean oil, and soy sauce? In this episode of the BioTrust Radio health and fitness podcast, Shawn and Tim are going to tackle these listener questions and more. Enjoy!

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The BioTrust Radio health and fitness podcast is fueled by YOU and dedicated to answering YOUR nutrition, exercise, and supplement questions. In this episode, Shawn and Tim answer questions from REAL listeners and customers—just like YOU.

If you have a question that you’d like us to cover, you can submit it in the comment section below, or head over to our private Facebook VIP Community, where you can also get free coaching and support from our inspiring community. If we answer your question on a future episode, you’ll not only get the scoop straight from our top coaches, we’ll also send you a free product to boot!

In this installment of BioTrust Radio, here’s what you can look forward to learning:

How can you conquer emotional eating once and for all? How can you combat emotional eating when you’re running low on willpower?

• First rule of good nutrition: If a food is in your house or possession, you’re going to eat it.

• If you want to eat less junk and reduce emotional eating, create more barriers/obstacles to eating junk food and comfort foods.

• On the flip side, remove obstacles to eating healthier. Make healthy foods convenient and available.

• Identify triggers; what events, situations, people, environments, etc., “trigger” emotional eating?

• When it comes to emotional eating, take time to think about whether or not eating is actually solving the problem?

• Instead of resorting to emotional eating to “resolve” your problems, experiment with other activities, such as playing with your kids, taking a walk, surrounding yourself with people who are happy, energetic, and doing healthy things.

• Lack of sleep can also lead to emotional eating.

BioTrust blog posts that can help with emotional eating:

Is it okay to have a cheat day when you’re following a ketogenic diet?

• It’s important to look at any way of eating as a lifestyle, not a short-term diet. Is this something that you can maintain for life?

• The difference between a targeted ketogenic diet (TKD) and a cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD).

• It’s perfectly fine to have one cheat meal each or a cheat day every other week when you’re keto or following any other diet.

• Think of it this way: If you eat poorly all the time, having one salad per week isn’t going to make you healthy. On the flip side, if you eat well nearly all the time, one cheeseburger or cheat meal isn’t going to “undo” all your work.

• There doesn’t seem to be any metabolic magic to a single cheat day or meal; however, a cheat day/meal may help increase your adherence/compliance to your diet.

• Keep in mind that, more than ever, there are healthy recipe options for favorite cheat foods. For instance, there are keto recipes for pizza, ice cream, and even children’s favorite foods.

Related BioTrust blog posts:

Can you talk about the different types of carbs (e.g., starchy, fibrous, simple), the best times of day to eat them, and how much you should eat?

• Breaking down the different types of carbs, including starchy, fibrous, and simple carbs, and more importantly, the various foods where you’ll find them.

• A general guideline is that faster digesting carbs may be best around periods of activity (e.g., exercise), while slower digesting carbs that are higher in fiber may be better around periods that you’re less active.

• Insulin sensitivity tends to be highest in the morning and after exercise. So, breakfast and around exercise may be the “best” times to eat carbs.

• In general, carb intake should be proportionate to activity levels and inversely proportionate to body fat levels.

Is soy any good? What about soy protein? How about soybean oil? Should I avoid all soy? What about liquid aminos that come from soy?

• You can find both soy- and coconut-based liquid aminos, and as far as they go, they are a flavor enhancer. In other words, they don’t provide a significant amount of protein. So, choose based on your taste preference and/or any allergy restrictions.

• The top concerns surrounding soy include: GMOs (95% or so of soy in the US is GM); soy protein (phytoestrogens); and fatty acid profile (heavy in omega-6 fats).

• Soybean oil is relatively rich in omega-6 fatty acids, which are pro-inflammatory, especially when overconsumed and consumed in excess of omega-3 fats. This is incredibly common today.

• When you tell someone to reduce/eliminate soybean oil, it leads to a reduction in the consumption of processed foods, which are the primary source of soybean oil.

• Soybean oil is not typically used for cooking; however, if there’s any question, it shouldn’t be. It’s rich in polyunsaturated fats, which are highly susceptible to oxidation. Soybean oil is typically refined, bleached, and deodorized. Don’t cook with soybean oil.

• Like many plant-based foods, soy contains phytoestrogens, which have weak estrogenic activity. Soy is a particularly concentrated source phytoestrogens. This poses concerns for anyone who wants to limit/manage their estrogen levels (e.g., men). This, however, may be of benefit to some women (e.g., post-menopausal).

• Soy-based foods that would be acceptable, include miso, tempeh, and natto, which are fermented foods, as well as edamame and tamari. Of course, if these foods are chosen, they should be included in small to moderate amounts.

Related BioTrust blog posts:

We’ll dive deep into these questions, topics, and more in this episode of BioTrust Radio. Enjoy!

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Emotional Eating

Shawn: I think we both exercise and eat right and take our supplements. And it’s not necessarily easy. People think it’s like if you are in shape then it just happens. But you know, it’s just as difficult for anyone out there that’s in shape. I think the main difference that we’re going to talk about, probably in answering a lot of these questions, is it’s different from person to person, it’s a lifestyle thing that you have to build into your every day, and you can’t add 15 things. You need to just do one at a time and make sure that you’re going to stick with it and do the best that you can do.

Tim: Yeah, 100%, Shawn.

Shawn: That’s going to answer really a lot of the questions, but we’ll go into these questions. And by the way, you can find these questions on our private Facebook VIP group, and we’re going to answer these questions on different podcasts. And if they do get answered on our podcast, you not only get your question answered by experts—I mean, come on, that’s great in and of itself—but you also get a free BioTrust product, which is really awesome.

So let’s dive into it. I got one for you, Tim, from Maria Filippone, “So, how do you conquer emotional eating once and for all when you know you’re past temporary willpower? Thanx.”

Tim: That’s a fantastic question about emotional eating. There’s a lot of different places we can go with this. I think that one thing that comes to mind is let’s try not to rely so much on willpower, and let’s try to create an environment that’s more conducive to helping us be successful in cutting back the emotional eating. I’ll elaborate on that in just a second, but just going back to willpower.

Willpower, there’s a lot of talk about willpower, and how it’s a muscle in the sense that it’s trainable, and also the sense that it’s a limited resource. I think that what’s pretty interesting about willpower is that it doesn’t seem to apply quite as much to nutrition as it does to other areas. And maybe we can talk more about willpower at another time. I’ll just go with the question.

But my point with this is going to be let’s be smarter and rely less on willpower to eat healthy and to avoid emotional eating. And what I mean by that is one of the first rules of good nutrition, or nutrition in general, is that if a food is there, you’re going to eat it. And if a food is not there, you can’t eat it. So it goes both ways for junk food or healthy food. So, in order to eat healthy, you need to have healthy foods available, you need to have healthy foods convenient. You know, if I want to eat better, I’ve got to have all these things. If I want to eliminate emotional eating  and eat less junk food, then I need to make it very difficult for me to eat it.

Shawn: Right. If you have a hard time at a movie theater because you really have to have popcorn, maybe you should just stay at home and not watch movies out as much. Or if there’s a certain restaurant that all your friends at the office go to that breaks you down, then maybe you shouldn’t go with them that often. I’m not saying to like stop living your life, but if you look at all this junk food. You walk into a convenience store and you’re inundated with all these colors and packaging and it’s just, it’s amazing, all the alcohol, the tobacco, the caffeine, the sugar. It’s like you’re just surrounded by addiction. So, trying to keep yourself away from some of these things is the best answer. Where are all the fast-food restaurants along the highways?

Tim: Right.

Shawn: You know, it’s just it’s there. I would do what I can to keep, like you were saying, you know, healthy food at home, make your own meals, you know what’s in them. And you know, when you cook real, good food and you’re eating healthy food, it’s so much more satisfying. I think you’re going to get something out of it, especially if you prepare it and you know where it came from and you put the love into it. You know, in terms of buying it and then preparing it, and then cooking it, and then eating it. And it’s not that hard to do. There’s plenty of quick recipes you can do.

Tim: Definitely, Shawn. Just to kind of come back, we want to remove obstacles from eating healthy. We want to actually create obstacles for unhealthy emotional eating. And sometimes that can be very simple. For instance, if there was a dish of M&Ms right here on the table, I could potentially eat them throughout the show.

Shawn: Absolutely.

Tim: If they were over there, I’m not going to eat nearly as many. Even better, if they’re on the other side of this wall that I can’t see, even better. So, creating obstacles, that’s kind of that’s one example, but you go out to eat at a Mexican food restaurant.

Shawn: The chips on the table.

Tim: Put the chips somewhere else. Ask them not even to bring them out.

Shawn: That’s what I do.

Tim: With this emotional eating thing, though, one thing I’d ask Maria is to start to identify triggers that are actually causing her to go down that path. And if we can start to identify some common denominators, is there anything we can do about those actual triggers. So, how can we instead of the symptom of eating, what’s trigger that eating? That’s one thing that I would look at.

Shawn: Like when you’re watching TV or there’s a certain person that is always eating junk food. All these things—stress.

Tim: Stress, 100%. And then also, is the emotional eating actually solving that problem? Probably not. There’s a study that—I mentioned Traci Mann before. She’s a Food Psychologist. They did a study. They were trying to do some work with NASA and they wanted to see if comfort foods really helped people, like really comforted you. So they did all these things. We don’t have to get into the mechanisms of the study or the methods of the study, but they actually found that someone’s comfort foods actually didn’t do anything more for them than just eating food in general.

So what I’m bringing this up for is like is the food that you’re eating to treat these emotional consequences actually helpful. So really identify if it is getting you through in the moment, great. It’s actually helping you. But if this is a recurring thing, if it’s stress‑related, if it’s emotional eating, or whatever it is, you really need to identify if that course of action is solving a problem for you right.

Shawn: Right, and this emotional eating, I guess you have to get to a point where you attach less emotion to eating, right? And the willpower thing, like you’re saying, you know you’re turning it into exactly what you’re saying. That when you’re stressed, the only solution for you is to have this food—chocolate, cheesecake, burgers, I don’t know whatever it is—that’s your emotional solve that’s a very short-term fix, you need to look at other things that could be your solve, like exercise, like healthy habits, like playing with kids. If you’re stressed, go out and play with your kid. Go take a walk. Put people around you that are doing healthy things.

Tim: Oh yeah, definitely. Absolutely.

Shawn: It’s just like having a mentor for your career, have people around you that aren’t doing unhealthy habits; that are sedentary, that are drinking a lot, smoking a lot, whatever, not exercising enough, and all these things. Put people around you that are eating well, that are happy and energetic, that are exercising, that are spending time with their family, that don’t seem hyper-stressed, that don’t seem to be getting poor amounts of sleep. That would be another way that you could get probably help your emotions is to get really good sleep.

Tim: Right, oh man. Because with sleep, there definitely is a connection between lack of sleep and appetite—and even emotional eating.

Shawn: Exactly.

Tim: Leptin, for instance, is a hunger hormone. When you don’t get enough sleep, even just a day of it, leptin goes down, which is going to drive your appetite. So, yeah, sleep is a big one too.

Shawn: Yeah, exactly, sleep deprivation is tied to eating more junk food and emotional eating maybe like poorer decisions are made that are kind of what she would say is “willpower.” So, hopefully that helps. Let’s go onto the next one.

Tim: I’ll read the question because this one’s right up your old keto alley. This is a keto question.

Shawn: Okay, cool.

Tim: So, Pamela dropped us this question. Pamela said, “Is it okay [and keep in mind she’s talking about keto] Is it okay to have a day here or there were you indulge in carbs such as pizza and ice cream, or do these types of cheat days harm your liver? So, once you’re in ketosis, your body is adapted to burning fat as fuel, how would the body work to shift back to carb-burning?”

Shawn: Interesting. Well first off, going back to what we were talking about before, it’s individualized and you know you have to look at yourself and then what can you maintain for life. Hopefully this isn’t like a diet and this is a lifestyle, and depriving yourself of carbs forever might be too difficult an “ask.” So I would say, I do what’s called a TKD and a CKD, that’s Targeted Ketogenic Diet and Cyclical Ketogenic Diet. I like the idea of what’s called “metabolic flexibility.” We’re dual fueled, so we can use glucose or ketones. And while carbohydrate/glucose isn’t necessary for us to consume and live, I use it as a tool.

I typically weight trained low, without carbohydrate. I’m fasted and I’m in a ketogenic state when I weight train, and therefore I’m making cool adaptations where I’m up regulating these transporters, the MCT transporters that help transport the ketones, I’m mitochondrial biogenesis where we’re are creating more of these mitochondria, “the energy powerhouse of the cell,” in my body, and all that’s great. But when I play competitive sand volleyball, then I like to throw some simple sugar in my body and I use it and I burn it, and I don’t have any issues with that because it’s a fuel source.

You know, I don’t beat myself up over that and I think it’s good to have that flexibility. So, for me, when I do have that carbohydrate, that high glycemic carbohydrate in this case, it feels like caffeine almost. Because I have that insulin sensitivity that’s back. Remember when you’re a little kid and you had the chocolate or the soda or whatever and you’d be crazy. Now you just like fall asleep because you’re insulin insensitive or glucose intolerant. But back when you were a kid, you were highly insulin sensitive. So what’s cool is keto can bring that back to you.

And I would say the other one is cyclical, so some people who don’t do a whole lot of competitive exercise. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I don’t know. But it’s good to have your “cheat meal” here and there. I would say I don’t like the idea of the cyclical ketogenic diet that’s two days a week, like the weekend, and the weekdays you’re doing keto, because my friend Dr. Jacob Wilson did a study on this and it took until Thursday to get back into ketosis. And that’s with exercising. So you may not get the benefits of ketosis if you’re just going all out on the weekends and just kind of killing it.

And sometimes you can make the weekends turn into like almost like a hedonistic holiday, where you’re just having crazy amounts of desserts and all these things. That’s kind of a weird cycle to be in.

Tim: Agreed.

Shawn: That’s a destructive cycle. So, enjoy maybe a meal a week or have like a day every two weeks where you look forward to it, but don’t build it up too much. And enjoy whatever it is you feel you’re deprived of and feel good about that. If you were to have one salad and you were someone that ate junk food all week long, and you have one salad. Are you going to be healthy? No? But if you’re someone that eats all this healthy food all week long and then you have one hamburger and French fries, one meal a week, is that going to kill you, is that going to make you unhealthy? No. So don’t be overly legalistic about it. Know that it’s a lifestyle, know that it’s good to have some flexibility, and just try and make it a healthy thing. That you’re not building it up in your mind so it’s like a binge. You don’t want to get into that kind of mentality. You want to think of it as it’s enjoyment, it’s a fuel, it’s part of your life. It’s like you drinking water, like you going to the bathroom, like you’re exercising, like you sleeping, whatever. It’s a part of your life, so make it a healthy part of your life and don’t build it up too much.

Tim: Yeah, that’s a great response, Shawn. I wanted to just mention that your doctor, Dr. Roberson, who we featured on our blog, because he had lost 40 pounds with your help getting him on the ketogenic diet. He did say that, for him, one of his keys to success was scheduling himself a weekly cheat meal. But I really don’t like “cheat,” that terminology, but it is what it is. But Dr. Roberson, he’s scheduled that on Saturday and he would go to lunch with his family. It helped him stick with the plan. I don’t know that there’s any magic to a cheat day, like some people might suggest, but I think that if it helps you stick to your nutrition plan, then it could be helpful.

Shawn: Yeah, the “all-or-nothing” mindset can be a little dangerous.

Tim: Agreed.

Shawn: Just keep it healthy and limit it. But also know that like with this pizza-ice cream thing, there are awesome recipes, incredible recipes. You can do keto pizzas that taste phenomenal, you can make keto ice cream by using heavy cream and egg. There’s so many recipes out there. I mean, now that keto’s gotten so popular, as well as having to address children’s needs for like kind of these junk foods or whatever kids like to eat sometimes, because of epilepsy. Like look at the Charlie Foundation, for example, that works with epilepsy. There’s just so many good recipes now. It’s a phenomenal time if you want to do keto that you really don’t want for much. There’s really great desserts and whatever “junk foods” that you can do keto. So, I would take a look at those. Ketogenic.com is a really good site to check out for all the keto information and recipes. As well as we have some stuff up on BioTrust with our blog, so check that out.

Well, let’s get into the next one from Peter McNamara, “Lots of excellent and complicated questions so far, but can you talk about the difference between starchy, simple, and fibrous carbs, and the best time of day to eat which one, and how much? Thank you.”

Tim: That’s a great question. Quick shout out to Peter. Peter was one of our participants in our recent 12-week Shape-Up Challenge.

Shawn: Oh, nice.

Tim: And Peter, who’s a fellow Texan, won third place runner-up, I think. So, he lost over 20 pounds.

Shawn: Great.

Tim: Yeah, he was awesome.

Shawn: Good job, Peter.

Tim: So, we’re kind of going from keto to carbs. It’s a great transition. So, Peter’s asking about starchy, simple, fibrous carbs. I suppose that you can just start thinking of foods, because we don’t really eat starchy, simple, and fibrous carbs. We eat food.

Shawn: Right.

Tim: I think it’s better to think in terms of food. So when I think of starchy foods, I’m thinking about things like potatoes, rice, whole grains, and things like that, which may also contain some fiber. But, I guess when most people think of fibrous foods, they’re thinking more in terms of vegetables, even though legumes have a ton of fiber, they also have starch. So I don’t necessarily like the classification. But be that as it may, that’s kind of an idea there. Then simple carbs would, I guess, refer to sugars; you know, your glucose, fructose, lactose, sucrose, and things like that. So the sugars that you’d find in fruit, you can find them in dairy, naturally occurring in places. But my guess is that Peter’s kind of referring more added sugars that you would find in processed foods.

So, there’s fructose in fruit, and we’ve been told that fructose is bad for us. Is fruit bad for you? I don’t think so. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to include a moderate amount in your diet. Fruit’s packaged with a bunch of other things. Polyphenols, fiber, antioxidants, and things that, to me, if you classify a thing as simple sugar, then fruit has simple sugar. But is that the same as a coke? Not even close, in my opinion, in terms of nutritional value and how your body responds to it.

So, that’s kind of an overall idea, I think. Going back to the fibrous carbs, like we’ve talked about, basically any kind of green vegetable is going to have some fiber in it. But even fruit has some fiber in it. Like we’ve talked about, whole grains have fiber in it, but they also have starches in them. And I guess when we’re talking about starches, we’re talking about “complex carbohydrates,” so longer chains of sugars together. They theoretically digest slower.

Shawn: Yeah, exactly. So there’s kind of a glycemic index that we’re talking about of these of these different starches, as he puts them. The old kind of thinking, and I think it still holds up, and this is what I was talking about with my targeted keto is that you could probably get away with “more of the high glycemic carbohydrate around periods of activity,” when you have upregulated these GLUT4 transporter. You know, that would be a time that you could probably have more flexibility in terms of having sugars. Then periods where you’re going to be less active, and you want the satiety effect, you want you know better appetite control, to feel full, maybe that’s a time that’s better with these more fibrous.

Tim: Yeah, I think that’s a really good way to kind of boil it down, Shawn. And like we’ve talked about in our recent episode on circadian rhythms, it does seem like our insulin sensitivity and carbohydrate tolerances is better earlier in the day, like your typical breakfast time. So maybe breakfast time and around exercise time are the best times, in general, to eat your higher carbohydrate foods, which may be some starchy foods and simple carbs. It may have both. Your fibrous veggies is probably just fine to eat at any point in time. I’m not sure that there’s a bad time to eat vegetables. But yet, to your point, things like beans and even true whole grains that have the fiber in them, there may be some more flexibility in terms of timing in them and just how your body responds to them because of a slower release of glucose into the bloodstream. And finally, just on carbs, I’d probably say that in general, if you’re not following a ketogenic diet and you do include carbohydrate in your diet, then carbohydrate intake probably should be proportionate to activity levels.

Shawn: Exactly.

Tim: You know, so if you’re more active, you probably can handle a little bit more carbohydrate, and maybe inversely proportionate to how much body fat you store.

Shawn: Exactly.

Tim: So, just kind of some general guidelines there. So if you tend to store a little bit more body fat, then maybe a little bit less carbohydrate.

Shawn: Yeah, I agree completely. Great stuff. So, Tammy Kelly, “Are liquid aminos a big deal? Do we need to specifically look to put those in our diet? Can we get them from somewhere other than soy-based products, such as… ” I’ll just leave that blank. There’s a popular soy amino product that’s liquid that’s out there. “I switched to the coconut‑based liquid aminos from the same company, but not sure if I even need to. Is any soy good? I understand soybean oil is in products as a bad ingredient in all our GMO, I think. But edamame, is it okay?” Let’s just let’s hit that from there.

Basically, the question is there’s a lot of fear around soy. You know, there’s questions about certainly with males in particular, the phytoestrogens potentially having some impact, hormonally. There is a great point here about most soy and corn. I think about 90‑whatever percent is GMO, meaning genetically modified. There’s conflicting data—we’ll say—on whether that’s a bad thing. It’s certainly not a good thing, but whether it’s a bad thing.

So where do you stand on her question about you know first the aminos? I’ll answer that one. With the aminos from soy or coconut, I would say the source isn’t that the biggest deal if it’s concentrated aminos. The difference is going to be the amino acid profile and then whether that’s conducive to what you’re trying to accomplish. If you’re looking for skin health and integrity—hair, skin, and nails—that’s where the collagen profile, like hydroxyproline is ideal. Obviously, whey is phenomenal for the BCAAs and leucine. It’s the highest source, really. So, that’s a great one. Egg is a great source for amino acid profile. But some of the vegetable sources aren’t as good, and it just depends. That’s where like that whole complementary protein thing can be ideal. I know when we were looking at Harvest Protein that we developed a plant protein, we looked at how the sources complemented each other to get an ideal profile. And we actually have a 2:1:1 BCAA ratio in our Harvest Plant Protein.

But I’ll ask you, is soy, any soy in your diet, a good thing or a bad thing? Where do you fall in that?

Tim: I love what you just talked about with the aminos. I think with Tammy’s question, specifically, the liquid aminos that she’s using are more of a flavor enhancer. Kind of a replacement for soy sauce. And I, personally, I agree with you, that I’m not sure that it matters too much there because you’re just getting the amino acid. You’re not really exposing yourself to the soybean oil or any potential phytoestrogen. But I also don’t think you’re getting a substantial amount of amino acids. I wouldn’t even consider it a substantial source of protein. So, I think it’s basically a flavor enhancer and use what tastes better to you. I like the coconut liquid aminos, personally, but it’s just personal opinion.

So, with regard to soybean oil, my concern there is that it’s just heavily, it’s just found in processed foods.

Shawn: Right

Tim:I mean, most people aren’t really consuming soybean oil by itself. They’re getting it through processed foods. So the way that it’s packaged is a big concern to me.

Shawn: And it’s pro-inflammatory, like vegetable oil.

Tim: Yeah, exactly. So, one of the things that we’ve seen over the last several decades is a dramatic increase in omega-6 fatty acid intake; which they’re essential fats, but just most people over‑consume them, especially in relationship to omega-3s. It’s like, on average, a 20:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3s, and experts estimate that that ratio probably should be closer to like a 2:1 or 3:1.

Shawn: Right

Tim: Somewhere in the area of like 7 to 10 times more than we “should be.” And in large part, that comes from an overconsumption of processed foods, which if you look at the back of processed foods, they usually contain things like soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil. They’re omega-6 rich.

Shawn: Why? Because they’re super-cheap. [laughs]

Tim: They’re super-cheat.

Shawn: That’s why they’re in all your foods.

Tim: Exactly.

Shawn: And they’re genetically modifying them so that they live longer and they can be even cheaper.

Tim: Exactly. So, I just think that I would recommend avoiding soybean oil, in large part because of the packages that they’re found in. What I mean by that is if you say I’m going to avoid soybean oil, you’re automatically going to eliminate a lot of processed foods in your diet, and we’ve said many times that the more whole foods you eat, the better off your health and your body is going to be. Heck, this even goes back to what we were talking about with emotional eating. You can create a healthier food environment for yourself—and reduce the chances of emotional eating—by committing to eliminate processed foods. Boom—emotional eating begone! And I certainly wouldn’t recommend cooking with soybean oil because it’s so rich in these polyunsaturated fats.

Shawn: Which can oxidize.

Tim: Very, very susceptible to oxidation, when they’re heated. Plus they’re probably already refined, bleached, deodorized, like we’ve talked about before, ahead of time. It wouldn’t be a choice for cooking. It wouldn’t be a choice for me to consume in general because it’s found in processed foods; salad dressings, especially. So, I just think that would be something that I would recommend avoiding for those reasons.

Shawn: The last thing about soy protein and maybe the whole phytoestrogen thing.

Tim: Yeah.

Shawn: That is a reality, that isoflavones in soy can have an impact on you hormonally. Essentially, a phytoestrogen is a weak estrogen and it can bind to the estrogen receptor. So, in a male, this can result in more estrogenic activity than is normal for that male. In a woman that has a certain level of estrogen, it can lower her effective estrogen; unless you’re like postmenopausal. For a peri-menopausal or pre-menopausal woman, I don’t know. There’s definitely some impact. And hormones don’t act in and of themselves. There’s a whole cascade, the endocrine cascade. Everything kind of falls into everything else. There’s DHEA, progesterone, estrone, estradiol, testosterone, and all this stuff that’s being impacted by one another.

So, having this thing bind at the estrogen receptor isn’t good. There’s also metalloestrogens there’s xenoestrogens that are from plastics, that we’re getting highly exposed to. So all these things are like weak estrogens and it could have a correlation to lower testosterone levels in men over the past so many decades. Poorer outcomes in those trying to be reproductively active and have children. You know, there’s a higher cancer rates. There’s a lot of different things that could be happening as a result of having these weak estrogens. So, something to think about.

Tim: I think just to add another thought to that, I think that was great that you covered that. Just from a protein standpoint, so you have soy protein options in terms of supplements. When it’s compared head-to-head with like a whey protein, it underperforms. Not just in body composition, but also appetite control and things like that. So for me, as long as you don’t have a problem with dairy, then whey would be a superior option to soy protein. So just head-to-head, it doesn’t match up.

So, there are there any soy-based foods that would potentially be okay to include in your diet? I would say that, to me, one exception would be like traditionally fermented soy-based products such as like miso, natto, and things like that. But even then, it’s not like I don’t know that you’d be consuming those things every day, so a bit here and there would probably be okay.

Metabolic Age Quiz

Shawn: Right, yeah, it’s definitely about how much exposure you have.

Tim: It’s probably time to put the wraps on this one.

Shawn: All right, well again, I’m pumped to be doing this, to answer everyone’s questions out there. Please keep sending them. Go to the BioTrust VIP page on Facebook and ask your questions and we’ll address them on air. So, appreciate it everyone. Thanks.

Tim: Yeah, great questions.