Bodybuilding Nutrition Advice - Lee Labrada Talks About Bodybuilding Nutrition

CS: One thing that I feel compelled to point out is that you don’t mention the intake of any alcohol. I know that many young bodybuilders and even some older bodybuilders like to drink alcohol, and some of them aren’t aware of its effects…

LL: Well, let’s face it, there are a lot of people out there who like alcohol. But, normally, during this pre-contest stage, I had no alcohol at all. I’ve never been one to drink before a show. Alcohol is basically empty calories, and for a pre-contest bodybuilder who is trying to get superly human low body fat, alcohol is a no-no.

CS: Another thing that I feel compelled to point out is that all of the foods that you mention are very clean foods. You did not mention any processed foods.

LL: That’s exactly right. In fact, we would avoid any kind of processed foods like bread and refined flour products. Sugar was a big no-no. We knew enough back then to know that sugar intake had to be kept at a minimum, because it was super important to keep insulin low. By keeping insulin low, we kept the fat burning process going.

Early on, I convinced myself that if I had anything that was sweet, it would rapidly raise my blood sugar, that would bring my fat burning to a halt. So I avoided that like the plague because I wanted to be burning fat 24 hours a day. I didn’t want to be working for nothing!

Going hungry was difficult enough, but imagine throwing something sugary or fatty on top of that and destroying an entire day’s worth of progress.

CS: Not to mention activating hormone triggered cravings…

LL: Exactly. When you are eating a very clean diet and you insult your body with something that’s very sugary and fatty, it does set off a hormonal cascade that starts the fat storing process and that interrupts the fat burning process.

CS: I also noticed that the foods you would eat pre-contest were low in sodium…

LL: yes, they were very low in sodium. That is a good observation on your part.

I was never one to salt my food, and I think that foods contain enough sodium naturally. It is a very unnatural thing – a man-made habit – to salt food. I’ve never been one to salt food, and I’ve never had any problems with high blood pressure, or any kind of cardiovascular or kidney problems. Most importantly, I’ve never had any fluid retention problems, particularly on the day of my big Mr. Olympia presentations because of that – because I did keep my foods relatively low in sodium.

CS: It seems like your plan was relatively thorough but simple to follow…

LL: It is a very simple plan to follow, and like all things in life, when you follow the natural approach and give your body what it was meant to consume in the first place – foods in their naturally occurring form – the results can be tremendous because you are optimizing your body and you’re working with nature.

CS: That’s a lot of information for our readers to take in. Let’s try and par it down to some solid take-home points, some rules to live by.

LL: In terms of protein, I’ve always gone by the golden rule of protein that says that you should take in 1 g of protein per pound of body weight. So, a 200 pound man should consume 200 g of protein per day.

For carbohydrates, you should consume approximately 1 to 2 g of complex carbohydrates per pound per day. And, in the off-season when you are trying to gain muscle, you can consume up to 2 g of complex carbohydrates per pound of body weight – that’s a lot of complex carbohydrates.

Before a show, I will reduce my carb intake to as low as 1 g per pound of body weight – as little as 200 g of carbohydrate; but as high as 400 g of carbohydrate in the off-season.

In terms of fat, I always kept my fat intake lower than 15%, particularly before the Mr. Olympia, at which time I would drop the fat intake to below 10%. And looking back, Clayton, to be honest I think that maybe it was a little too low. It was based on the nutritional know-how that we had back then, but if I had to do it all over again I think I would’ve let my fat intake go a little higher, say to 15% and maybe even 20% in the off-season. However, that fat would have come from oily fish like salmon and mackerel or from fish oil and flax seed oil; and maybe even some monounsaturated oils such as olive oil. But, essentially, fat intake should be limited to healthy fats and should not come from saturated fats such as you find in butter and cheese and beef and things like that.

CS: When it comes to protein, there is this constant debate about which kind of protein is the best. And there is an overwhelming sentiment that male bodybuilders should avoid soy protein at all costs. What is your take on that?

LL: You know, I don’t buy that because soy protein is actually higher in some amino acids than whey protein, believe it or not. Soy protein is rich in branched chain amino acids, of which leucine is a key regulatory for enhancing muscular growth , arginine, which may bolster growth hormone levels and glutamine, which is great for the immune system and for recovery.

And, there have been some recent studies that show that a combination of whey proteins or the dairy based multi-blends combined with soy works better than just the whey protein by itself. So, these proteins can complement each other. It’s just that soy has gotten a black eye because in the past the products that were introduced into this marketplace which used soy protein, used very inferior grades of soy protein which were typically used for animal feed or were used to texture food. Consequently, they had a terrible flavor. But, the soy proteins which are available now – the soy protein isolates – are absolutely phenomenal and can complement dairy based proteins. Because of this, we have actually included soy isolate in small amounts in our Lean Body MRPs.