HSOS #20: Soy, Breast Cancer, and Menopause: What Women Should Know

Kim kicks off with a behind-the-scenes peek at the Stronger, Not Softer Holiday Plan and why guiding women to feel confident with weights never gets old. Then she dives into the wild world of soy — the poor little bean that’s been unfairly villainized for years. She breaks down what soy actually is, why the early fear-mongering got it all wrong, and what today’s research says about breast cancer, hormones, and midlife health. You’ll walk away knowing how to choose the good stuff, skip the junky versions, and try soy in simple, delicious ways that actually make sense in real life. 

Let’s talk. 

Welcome to Her Season of Strength—where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy—registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman when it comes to aging like you mean it. 

This show isn’t about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles. It’s about building real strength—physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I’ll share straight-talking nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies, and conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin once again. 

Menopause is not an ending, it is only the beginning. This is your season of strength. 

What You’ll Hear 

• Starting the Stronger, Not Softer Holiday Plan and remembering how much she loves teaching women to feel confident lifting weights 
• How new women often feel intimidated in the gym and why community support matters just as much as education 
• Introducing soy as another misunderstood food, especially for women concerned about breast cancer 
• What soy actually is and the whole-food forms it shows up in: edamame, tofu, tempeh, soy milk, miso, and natto 
• The benefits of soy for midlife women, including protein quality, isoflavones, hot flash support, and heart health 
• How to choose higher-quality soy foods vs more processed versions, plus simple cooking tips for enjoying tofu 
• Clearing up old fears with current research and offering easy ways to try adding soy into everyday meals 

Links & resources for this episode:

Fit After 50 Plus Program: 8-Week Nutrition Coaching & Fitness Program for women 50+. Next session starts winter of 2026. Join the interest list today for the best bonuses and discounts offered.

Free cheat sheet: "20 Tips to Crushing Menopause"

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there, and welcome to her season of Strength, where women over 40 reclaim their bodies, their energy, and their voices, without apologies. I'm Kim Duffy, registered dietitian, personal trainer, mom, and your biggest hype woman. When it comes to aging like you mean it, this show isn't about chasing skinny or counting wrinkles.

[00:00:20] It's about building real strength, physical, emotional, and hormonal. Each week, I'll share straight talking, nutrition tips, sustainable fitness strategies. And conversations that help you feel powerful in your skin. Once again, menopause isn't an ending. It's only the beginning. This is your season of strength.

[00:00:40] Hello and welcome back to her season of Strength. I'm so happy you're here and thank you so much for taking just a couple minutes to listen in today. So this week we started in with the stronger, not softer holiday plan, and it just, every time I start a new program with a new group of women. It makes me realize just how much I [00:01:00] really enjoy that education piece.

[00:01:02] And I think sometimes when you're in the midst of a job, if this is what you do and this is what you live, you don't realize, you take for granted. You know the little parts that people don't understand and. Especially if you've been working with women, like I have women that I've been working with for the past four years, since I started this business, and obviously they've learned a lot and they've come a long way with strength training and they, know all about how to challenge their muscles and what weights to use and stuff like that.

[00:01:31] And so when I get a new group that, it just helps me to realize how women can feel intimidated and can feel scared. To go to a gym and to lift weights and to act confident, like they know what they're doing and just we've, we're afraid of judgment and we're afraid of looking we don't know what we're doing and stuff and oh my gosh, it just helps me to realize how much I love.

[00:01:56] I love teaching women. How to feel [00:02:00] confident in that and how to understand it and how to truly start to see results when it comes to building their strength and toning their bodies and just gaining confidence in all that their bodies can do. So anyway, thanks for letting me, get off my, on my soapbox for just a second and talk about that.

[00:02:18] So anyway, I just love it. It's so much fun. I don't know the stronger, not softer holiday plan, I don't know if I will offer. That again until before next Black Friday. It's going really well and I think people are really enjoying it. So I may very well decide to offer it up maybe in the spring.

[00:02:36] Obviously, I won't call it the holiday plan, I'll call it something a little bit different. But basically what it is if you haven't heard about it it's just a six week. Plan. That's six weeks of strength training. It's six weeks of basically meal plans and tips and tricks for just incorporating in healthy eating and high protein meal planning into your days.

[00:02:57] So it's very two kind [00:03:00] of two simple things. It's the nutrition piece and the exercise piece. But the community piece has, that's huge. Is I think as women, we just really love to. Chat with other women. We love to help motivate other women. We love to hear other women are going through the same thing we are.

[00:03:14] And so that, I think that community piece is even worth more than, the education piece that I'm giving. But anyway, so lots of fun. So in last week's episode, I talked a little bit about creatine, right? And broke down some of the myth. Or some of the misconceptions that we have about it and talked about how it really can benefit US as women over 40.

[00:03:34] And so today I thought, you know what? I wanna take another food slash supplement that we hear a lot about in the news that we as women, especially women who. Have gone through breast cancer treatment or maybe have family members that have gone through treatment and they, we can be very fearful of this and it's based off of research that wasn't very good and how the news media [00:04:00] blew it up and scared us for it.

[00:04:01] And that's soy. If you've ever stood in the grocery store, staring at tofu like it's some. Beige mystery block from outer space. Today's episodes for you. 'cause I wanna talk about soy, the food that somehow became both that hero and villain, depending on who you ask. And don't worry, I'm not here to convert you, to be some kind of tofu or soy connoisseur.

[00:04:23] I just want you to have solid information not fear-based nutrition from headlines that. That some, for some reason refused to die. So he's been wildly misunderstood, especially for women in midlife. And it's time to clear it up with some. Let's talk about some evidence-based real life talk.

[00:04:39] So let's start at the beginning, because before soy turned into this whole personality on the internet, it was just a humble little bean. Soybeans are nutrient dense. They're a lagoon, a legume that's grown all over the world in a lot of Asian countries. It has been eaten for thousands of years in whole more [00:05:00] traditional forms, things like, tofu or Tempe or miso.

[00:05:04] And people in the United States, we often picture soy as something new or processed, but the truth is whole soy foods, they're some of the oldest plant-based proteins that humans have eaten. And the reasons we see soy everywhere is because it's so versatile. We can steam it, we can blend it, we can press it, ferment it.

[00:05:22] It shows up in lots of different forms. There is a big difference though between soy grown for human food. And soy grown for industrial use, and I wanna talk about how to choose high quality forms in just a little bit. Now that we've talked about its kind of origin story, I wanna talk about what it actually looks like on your plate because spoiler, it's not all squishy tofu cubes, right?

[00:05:46] Whole food soy looks like edamame, if you've ever heard of that. Yes. That's soybeans. It's like young green soybeans that make perfect snack. And you can even find them already shelled and in the frozen section if [00:06:00] you want. I love to get. You know me. I love Costco, right? And Costco has some really awesome, it has a.

[00:06:06] A big bag full of individual bags of AMI that I put in my good old little steamer container and throw it into my microwave for a couple minutes, put some salt on it, and then you just, I guess it'd be similar to sunflower seeds. You're just, it's easier than sunflower seeds, but you're just pulling the soybeans out of the shell.

[00:06:26] You're not eating the whole thing. Or I don't, at least it's tough on the outside, but then you eat it and it is really good. It's very satisfying. It's almost it's a really, a lot of times I'll eat it even before I eat dinner if I'm really hungry and I just need something.

[00:06:40] Then of course tofu, which tofu, yap. It comes in those blocks, but it does range from different consistencies. So one is called silk and toy silk and tofu, which is gonna be much more kind of creamy. And then you can go all the way to that extra firm, which, if you cook it, if you can get some of that extra water at it, [00:07:00] you can really make it almost have a meaty type texture.

[00:07:04] Then there's Tempe. Tempe is a fermented soy, has a nutty flavor and it's got a nice texture as well. It's not gonna be quite as, as soft as tofu. Then of course, there's soy milks, which can be great for someone who maybe doesn't tolerate cow or dairy milk because it's gonna be higher in protein than your nut milks like your almond milk or your coconut milk or your, like oat milks. Okay. Miso. Miso is actually a fermented paste. It's like a soy paste and you've probably heard of miso soup, so we can put it in soups, we can put it in sauces, and it gives us that nice savory flavor. And then lastly is nato. NATO is it's this, it sounds gross, but there are a lot of different cultures that love it, that eat it.

[00:07:48] I think it's just more of that acquired taste, but it's a sticky, strong smelling, but it's really high in probiotics, so it's very good for your gut and maybe something to try. At some point just to say that you did [00:08:00] it. Then I wanna talk about the more processed soy products.

[00:08:04] Okay? So those are gonna be like your soy protein powders, your imitation meats. A lot of times you'll see in the frozen food section, you'll say, you'll, I always find it so funny, they call them. Like nuggets or like chicken nuggets or veggie nuggets, right? So they'll make all these different type vegetarian products, and a lot of times they'll use less quality, lower quality, more processed soy products to make those.

[00:08:28] Okay? So I don't love those. I don't think those are, it's processed carbohydrates. It's not as good for your body as that whole real foods. Reading, look in the labels, read the ingredients. A lot of times it can be put into those bars and those snacks to help boost.

[00:08:42] Protein content. And just any category of food, the more processed something is, the fewer nutrients you get and the more additives that it can contain, right? And we know that process can sometimes mean that it's stripping the good fiber and things from it. And so the more that [00:09:00] we can move to more of those whole real foods, the better.

[00:09:03] So let's, talk a little bit about the benefits of soy. 'cause this is where it gets really interesting 'cause you look past that noise. The research on soy for women over forties, honestly it's really impressive. It is one of the only plant-based proteins that contains all essential amino acids.

[00:09:20] That means that it's gonna support our muscle maintenance. It's a better, more whole protein for us, which as we're trying to increase our protein intake, it's, it can be super easy to help boost our protein. It's rich in something called isoflavones, which can help with menopausal symptoms like our hot flashes and can support hormonal balance or.

[00:09:42] It can support hormones. And studies have actually shown that soy can help lower LDL cholesterol because it's got that unique protein structure and fiber content. If you're working on weight management or metabolic health, whole soy foods can really offer some good protein. It can offer some [00:10:00] good fiber and nutrients without being overly calorie dense.

[00:10:05] Okay, so it's satisfying, it can pair beautifully with our strength training and our higher protein needs. But just like any food, not all soy is created equal. So let's talk about how to pick the good stuff without needing a chemistry degree. So let's first of all look for that whole or minimally processed form.

[00:10:25] So tofu and Tempe ate Mame soy milk. Soy milk was simple ingredients. So look at the ingredient labels if you can. Two or three ingredients is fantastic. Organic soy is an option if you prefer to avoid gen, genetically modified crops or GMOs, not because GMOs are inherently dangerous by any means, but because a lot of GMOs, soy, it's grown for industrial use rather than food.

[00:10:51] Okay, so imitation meats and soy-based package products can be convenient, but they're often higher in salt. They're gonna be higher [00:11:00] in, those added oils as well as preservatives. And they can be great sometimes, for here and there, but they're just not great as that daily source of your protein if you're like a vegetarian.

[00:11:10] Or a daily staple. And if you've only ever tried tofu once and hated it, I'm begging you to try it again. Press it, marinate it, crisp it in the air fryer. It's a whole different experience when it's cooked well. And the thing about tofu is it doesn't have a lot of flavor in and of itself, but it can take on flavors so wonderfully.

[00:11:34] So you know, if you marinate it with something or put it with a lovely, sauce or stronger herbs or. Or, garlics and stuff. It can really be tasty and can, like I said, it can, be meat like. So we do have to, take a step back and because no food is perfect, not even little, our little legume friend soy.

[00:11:54] So here's a few things to know. We do know that soy allergies exist 'cause, they're far [00:12:00] more common in children than adults. Some people, just like with any other bean or legume, you, some people might find that they get gas or bloating from the whole soybeans. So if you're new to soy. Don't start by eating a pound of it.

[00:12:15] Maybe start small and increase as you go to see how you tolerate it. Now, soy does not cause thyroid issues, but it can interfere with thyroid medication, so don't take it at the same time. Okay. And really if you are taking like levothyroxine or other soy, soy meds, you're not supposed to be taking those really with anything.

[00:12:34] You're supposed to be spacing 'em out, not taking not eating anything two hours before or one hour after you take those medications anyway for the best absorption. And variety is still important because soy is great, but we know that no single food should dominate your diet. So I don't wanna hear that you've just suddenly loaded up and the only thing you eat is soy.

[00:12:51] No, don't come crying to me. When your stomach hurts, right? So now let's talk a little bit about why soy ended up [00:13:00] with such a reputation problem, especially UN among women. So fear of soy, it really took off because of early rat studies. These studies used massive amounts of isolated isoflavones, so not whole soy foods like we've been talking about, and gave them to rats, to whose bodies process estrogen very differently than humans.

[00:13:23] The media or the news heard quote unquote estrogen-like compounds and they ran with it and suddenly soy was labeled as something that could cause or worsen breast cancer. But phytoestrogens, which is those which are those plant compounds, we find in soy, they don't act like human estrogen. They, in actuality, they bind weekly to estrogen receptors and can have more of a balancing effect.

[00:13:52] So what really fueled that fear was the rise of soy supplements and isolates not traditional foods. Meanwhile, there's women [00:14:00] in Asian countries who eat soy regularly and they have a significant lower breast cancer rates. But fear is tricky, right? It's like with hormone replacement therapy, we've been, we've had this fear of it because, there was a bad study that was done relating it to increasing risk of breast cancer.

[00:14:19] And every woman has been scared since then. And now we're coming back from that and realizing, oh, wait a minute. That was a bad study. And we're finding how beneficial menopause replacement therapy can actually help. You know how beneficial it can be. Which brings us to that million dollar question.

[00:14:35] What does the current research actually say about soy? Whole soy foods do not increase breast cancer risk. In fact, moderate intake around one to two servings a day may actually have protective effects, and we're talking about the whole real soy foods. Okay? I am not talking about a supplement or a pill or a powder Soy is considered safe for breast [00:15:00] cancer survivors unless for some reason their doctor, their metal medical team says otherwise.

[00:15:05] Again, the key distinction is whole foods versus supplements. So whole foods, they're gonna behave very different in the body compared to pills or powders or isolate. So the benefits that we see in studies come from foods like tofu and edamame, not capsules. So this is one of those places where nutrition misinformation created fear and that outpaced the actual evidence.

[00:15:29] So I want you to know the science is on your side here, not the headlines. So let's bring this home with some real life doable ideas. If you're open to trying soy or trying again, here are some simple places to start. If you want, if you think that maybe, cow's milk or dairy might be causing you, stomach issues or whatever, you can swap out your regular milk for soy milk in your coffee or in your smoothies.

[00:15:55] See how you tolerate it. Now cow's milk high in protein also. But if [00:16:00] you are someone who is doing almond milk or coconut milk, or oat milk, and you're trying to increase the protein that you're taking in, if you change that over to soy milk, you'll actually be getting a little more protein. Okay?

[00:16:13] You can snack on edamame. I tell you, like I said, those frozen bags make it so incredibly easy. You can just, they have it all. They have it all. Removed from the shells for you and you can just sit and cook it up and snack on it. You can try a tofu scramble instead of eggs some mornings.

[00:16:30] Yeah. You'd be surprised at how much it, how similar it can be to that consistency of scrambled eggs. You can add Tempe to maybe if you're having a bowl, a rice bowl, or a grain bowl, or even try it in place of meat, like Turkey or ground beef. You can replace that with Tempe.

[00:16:48] Crumbles, crumbles on Taco night or on Mexican night. You can stir a spoonful of miso into your soups or dressings. Great way to add in a little bit of good probiotics. [00:17:00] You can use soy yogurt with fruit for a protein packed breakfast. So maybe if you struggle with regular cow's milk yogurt, or maybe again, if you use almond milk yogurt or you use other yogurt with alternative milks in it.

[00:17:15] You can try soy yo soy yogurt. I'm gonna give you a little more protein. And then you can also experiment with those different tofu textures. They're not all the same, or experiment with different marinades or experiment, by putting it into the air fryer, which can make it so easy and helps to pull some of that extra water out of it and make it more meat like.

[00:17:32] And remember, you don't need to overhaul your diet or force yourself to love tofu. I'm not saying that, okay? This is just expanding your toolbox. It's not restricting your food choices. Because here's the bottom line, soy is not the villain it was made out to be. It's a nutrient packed, it's research supported food that can absolutely play a role in, in helping us as women over 40 feel stronger, more energized, more balanced, right?

[00:17:57] And if you decide you're still not a tofu person, that's [00:18:00] totally okay too. This is about making choices that feel good in your body, not forcing anything that doesn't fit your life. And if you've enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you shared it or left a review or messaged me your favorite way to cook tofu, because I promise you, someone out there needs your recipe, right?

[00:18:18] And remember, this is about progress over perfection. We're in this for the long haul, and this is your season of strength. Have a fantastic day.