Bodybuilding Nutrition Advice - Lee Labrada Talks About Bodybuilding Nutrition

by Clayton South and Lee Labrada

Lee Labrada is unquestionably one of the most successful bodybuilders in history as well as one of the most knowledgeable ones in the subjects of bodybuilding training and nutrition. Placing third in his first-ever Mr. Olympia contest and thereafter placing in the top four in the Mr. Olympia for the next six consecutive years, Lee Labrada established a reputation for consistency and bodybuilding excellence.

In 2004, Lee was inducted into the IFBB Pro Bodybuilding Hall of Fame. He has appeared on the covers of more than 100 bodybuilding and fitness magazines and has been featured on CNBC, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and ESPN as a fitness and nutrition expert. Lee is the author of the best selling The Lean Body Promise (Harper Collins.)

After retirement, Labrada founded Labrada Nutrition. In this interview, Lee Labrada shares his extensive nutrition knowledge and reveals his bodybuilding nutrition secrets for building a championship physique.

Bodybuilding Nutrition Interview with Lee Labrada

CS: Lee, lets get right to the chase and give the readers some straight talk about bodybuilding nutrition. How important would you say nutrition is for bodybuilding success?

LL: Clayton, when I’m asked what’s more important – nutrition or training – I always tell them that they need both. Nutrition and training are similar to the two wheels on a bicycle. If both are in working condition you can go anywhere, but if one is out of commission – if you have a flat tire – you’re not going to go anywhere. So, the nutrition has to be just right in order to support the training, and to get the desired muscle growth that bodybuilders want.

CS: I see. So, to use the example of the bicycle, with a tire there must be a certain amount of pressure and the pressure must be distributed in a certain way to move it forward. Would you say that that’s also true of your diet and that your diet must be fine-tuned?

LL: I do, because your diet has to be balanced in order for you to build muscle. In other words, you must have enough calories, the right foods, nutrients and sufficient protein in order to support muscle growth. And, if you don’t have those things, you can train as much as you want and you can train as hard as you want, but you will never see the results that you desire. You must have that nutritional component down pat. Without the nutritional component, you will be spinning your wheels.

CS: as a nutritionist, I know that diet is one of the major areas that people need to work on. Do you think that diet is as understood as it should be and needs to be?

LL: No, I really don’t, and particularly when it comes to bodybuilding. The problem is that there are a lot of myths that persist to this day. If you go into any gym and you ask the biggest guy in the gym how to get big and how you should eat, chances are they will say “just eat everything in sight, and eat as much of it as you can!” That’s well and good if you want to get big and fat, but if you want to put on a lot of muscle as rapidly as possible – which most of us do – then you better understand that the quality of your food calories, and the makeup of your daily diet is just as important as the quantity. So, I think that is one of the areas that is misunderstood.

Another myth is that you have to overeat in order to gain muscular weight, and nothing could be farther from the truth. If you have the building blocks in place, if you have sufficient protein and amino acids to help build muscle and just enough calories – but not an overload of calories – you can gain good-quality muscle tissue without putting on a lot of fat.

CS: Let’s explore that for a moment. For some of the readers out there it may not be clear why overeating a lot of solid food can actually be harmful for muscle growth.

LL: One of the major reasons why overeating is harmful is that it overtaxes your digestive system. Every time you eat, your body has to secrete digestive enzymes and it takes energy to digest food. So, you had better make sure that what you put into your body is of sufficiently high quality so as to provide the nutrients that your body needs. Otherwise you are making your body do a lot of excess digestive work for nothing. You will be storing junk calories. Some types of foods will unnecessarily raise insulin, which is a fat storing hormone, and just wreak havoc on your health in general. High sugar foods are bad for you – we all know that intuitively – but the reason is that they raise the insulin levels too high, and the calories end up getting stored as fat.

Another thing that is really misunderstood, Clayton, is the place of supplements in the diet. A lot of the young bodybuilders are misled by the marketing that they see in the magazines. They’re misled into thinking that what they should be doing is eating a lot of supplements and not worrying about their food – but nothing can be farther from the truth.

The fact is, any good bodybuilding diet is based on the intake of whole foods – wholesome and naturally occurring foods.