soy protein shakes

Are soy protein shakes good for you? I workout a lot and lift weights. I want to stay toned and lose weight but not necessarily gain a TON of muscle mass. Should I stay away from the protein shakes? Or is it good to have them every once in a while to give me a protein boost? I also heard that soy protein shakes are better for women than whey protein shakes. Any thoughts?

Did this never get an answer? I'll take a crack at it..

Soy Protein shakes can be good, depending on the ingredients. Look for drinks that use Soy Protein Isolate, since other forms of soy aren't nearly as good in terms of being quality protein. Obviously stay away from the sugars, etc, which those shakes are very commonly loaded up with...

Don't worry about your protein intake causing you to "gain a ton of muscle mass." That's very difficult for a woman generally (you're not going to add muscle like a man would without serious hormonal changes), especially if you're not doing low-rep (4-7 per set), high intensity, high-weight type weight training. Eating even in the range of 150 grams of protein a day wouldn't cause you to gain a ton of muscle mass if your resistance training wasn't aiming in a particular direction. Most of it wouldn't even be used by your body.

However, the extra protein intake (as a percentage of your overall calories) is very helpful in terms of feeling more satiated, etc, so it's generally a good thing.

It's excess calories (with the right amount of protein) + intense training that cause you to gain muscle mass -- not protein alone. It's like when people ask me how I lose weight while still eating butter, mayonnaise, and cheese. I tell them that I could eat two sticks of butter a day and still lose weight, since weight gain and weight loss in most cases is just a matter of caloric excess or caloric deficit. To maintain my weight, I need to take in 2400 kcal/day, and two sticks of butter is only 1600. Not that I'd recommend that diet, and I would be losing muscle as well as fat, and my body would be going through some abnormal chemical changes, but I would still lose weight.

Protein is just another macronutrient, like carbs and fat. Protein and carbs = 4 kcal/gm, fat 9. Protein is made up of amino acids, which are used to build new muscle cells when you break down your existing ones with intense exercise, especially weight training. With a caloric deficit and a meager protein intake, you will lose weight from both muscle and fat loss. With a caloric deficit and a high protein intake, you can spare muscle while losing fat.

Here's what I do:

-Weigh myself Sunday morning immediately upon waking.
-Eat normally and track calories and protein
using Fatsecret. (That means accurately, weighing and measuring food, etc., and even entering snacks or tastes of food, no matter how small; no cheating!)
-Weigh myself the next Sunday morning immediately upon waking.
-Average out daily intake for the week. (Add up Sunday through Saturday and divide by 7).
-If my weight stayed the same, this is the number of calories I need per day to maintain my weight at my current activity level (X). If I gained a pound, I subtract 500 from this number to get X. If I lost a pound, I add 500 to get X.
-Basically, to lose a pound a week, I would increase my activity level to burn an extra 500kcal/day or cut my intake by 500kcal/day.
-Since I'm currently trying to lose weight while doing intense weight training, I cut 250-500 kcal from X while keeping my protein intake at or above 1gm per pound of bodyweight per day.

I have found in the past that cutting my calories or increasing my activity level without keeping my protein intake high, my biceps and quadriceps measurements would shrink, and the amount of weight on my 1 rep max deadlift would drop. The protein intake makes all the difference in sparing or building muscle while losing fat.

Did anyone besides me follow that? lol

As for the soy shakes, I used to drink them because they tasted a heck of a lot better than whey, and I never had a problem. There were some researchers who claimed that they caused excess female hormone production in men, but I think that was recently rebuffed. I've always heard that they were better for women though. Soy is also a complete protein, meaning it contains all of the essential amino acids. These are the amino acids essential for protein synthesis at the cellular level which cannot be manufactured by the body. This is why soy is a good substitute for meat.

Wow, that post took much longer than I expected. Feel free to make me clarify anything that I made extremely confusing!