The Lee Haney & Fred C. Hatfield Seminar
(Two Iron Game Super Stars Put Their Heads Together)
By Dennis B. Weis "The Yukon Hercules"

Recently I had the good fortune to obtain an audiotape seminar on nutrition and training. The seminar was sponsored by Bio Chem Supplements (a division of Country Life) and was hosted by eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney and power lifting icon "Dr Squat" Fred C. Hatfield.

As I began to listen to the audio seminar, two things became quickly apparent. First, this seminar wasn't about pushing or praising the Bio Chem product mix. Second, the seminar wasn't a sham toying with the emotions of easily manipulated bodybuilders. The seminar is about two superstars with the right credentials talking about the "Supplement Game."

Some of the insights and expressions from Lee and Fred may seem somewhat dated, and rightly so, because this seminar was conducted three or four years ago in Anaheim, California. Rest assured, however, that these two intellectual representatives of the iron game inject plenty of educated research on nutrition and training that is still applicable to 21st century bodybuilding and nutrition responses. Now, here's the transcript of the seminar.

Haney: It's an honor to be here with Fred. Fred and I have worked together over the course of several years, and he's a dear friend of mine. As you know, I have had a chance to work with several athletes. I worked with Evander Holyfield. When Evander wanted to become a heavyweight champion of the world, he gave me a call, and the first person I called to consult with was Dr. Fred Hatfield. We worked together for a course of a year. When I lost my first Mr. Olympia my first time in 1983, I peaked at 240 lbs., and he saw me and said "how is this possible?" However, for the contest my weight dropped from 240 to 233 lbs.

As some of you may not know, Fred squatted over 1,000 lbs. and set a world record, not a senior's record, a record, period. So I've nicknamed Fred "the missing link," because it didn't make sense to me that a guy 45 years old at that time could squat over 1,000 lbs. I wouldn't even think about it. So it's a special gift that God has given Fred, not only in the way of his strength, but in the way of his know- how and expertise in the area of exercise physiology.

Hatfield: The story behind Lee is, when he won his first Olympia, he weighed 223 lbs. The following year he weighed 245 lbs. and was far more cut up, and all of the guys who are winning now, Lee beat systematically. If Lee was still competing, he'd still be winning, and that's the bottom line.

We want to talk about the science behind sports nutrition, behind peak performance, whether you're talking about bodybuilding, power lifting or general fitness, or just feeling better. It doesn't matter if you're an infant in a crib or a geriatric patient in a hospital. It doesn't matter if you're an elite athlete or just someone looking to stay fit. Everyone on Planet Earth is subject to the same laws of performance nutrition, and there are laws. This goes far beyond mere speculation or opinion. There's a lot of scientific rationale behind the way that Lee and I, for years and years, prepared ourselves for our respective competitions. They apply to everyone on the face of the earth from cradle to grave. Those are the laws that we want to talk about today.

Haney: And as Fred was saying, those are the laws that apply to everybody. A lot of times, I have people coming to me saying, "I want to train and get in good shape but I don't want to look like that." Believe you me, you're not going to look like this.

There's a certain genetic blueprint that each and every one of us is given. However, the laws of nutrition, the laws of training apply everybody; there is no difference. We want to help you so when you leave here today, you have basic principles that have existed forever. We're going to reiterate on these things so, when you leave here, you have something solid that you can apply to your life, and more so, to help apply to the lives of others.

Hatfield: How many of you followed the Congressional hearings into the fat loss industries some years back? Congress decided to indict Jenny Craig, Nutrisystems, Physician's Weight Loss Clinics, Weight Watchers. All of these other big fat loss moguls that controlled the fat loss industry for years and years were criminally indicted. Let me tell you why. Here we are talking about a man, which could just as easily be a woman, who weighs 200 lbs. He's 30 percent body fat. It's not horrible, but it's borderline obesity, we all know that. Which means, if you do the mathematics, this poor sucker really only weighs 140 lbs. soaking wet!

Haney: Of lean muscle!

Hatfield: He walks into the weight loss clinic and there sits a retired doctor looking over his spectacles. He's fat himself, typically, and he says to the guy, "you're really fat; you're going to die young if you don't lose that fat. I'll tell you what -- I'm going to give you a script, and maybe your doctor or maybe you're insurance company will honor it, and you can pay for this through third-party sources." So over the course of the next hour and a half, he's given this huge sales pitch and walks out with a monthly supply of, you know, that nice powder that Tommy Lasorda says "if you drink two of these a day and eat a sensible dinner, you can get to look like me."

I'm sorry, Tommy, but I don't want to look like you. You used to be a big fat man, and now you're a little fat man. So this guy buys into about four hundred dollars' worth of glop and in six weeks' time he comes down to 170 lbs. Mind you, the numbers I'm giving you are in the Congressional Record. I did not make these numbers up. He still is 30 percent body fat, which means he came down to 119 lbs. In six weeks this poor fool, besides being fleeced of his money, succeeded in losing 21 lbs. of lean tissue and only 9 lbs. of fat.

They go back up to their original weight but are 35 percent body fat because they failed to gain back the lean mass that they lost while crash dieting. This is called the "yo yo effect" -- it is a killer, and it is why Congress prompted criminal charges against these fat loss moguls. Now, does everybody understand how foolish this is? There's a better way. I'm going to show you the way that Lee did it. I'm going to give away Lee's secret.

So now we have the same guy, 30 percent body fat, and he weighs 140 lbs., but now instead of six weeks, let's take a reasonable amount of time. You know that tissue remodeling and the weight training process and careful nutrition over months of time is what puts muscle on, amplifies metabolic function, increases immune function, and all of those kinds of things. So let's get real and let's take 12 weeks, maybe even 24 weeks, whatever. Whatever time it takes. Certainly 6 weeks is not long enough; it takes a lot longer than that even to lose a few pounds of fat and do it properly, without losing muscle at the same time. So now we're going to come down to 170 lbs., let's say, but we'll be 10 percent body fat, which means we have actually succeeded in gaining 14 lbs. of lean muscle mass and lost 44 lbs. of fat. Now, doesn't this look more appropriate, folks?

Man or woman, beast or child, it doesn't matter. We all must do it this way. Any questions? I didn't think so. That's how Lee did it. It's through a careful manipulation of calories on a day-to-day basis and a meal-to-meal basis. Because what you put in your mouth now is going to get used over the next two or three hours, right? So how can you sit down and eat after a good workout, after a long run, or after a session in the gym and say to yourself, "boy, that was a good workout, I'm starved," and then pig out? How can you do that to yourself?

Haney: See, there are certain principles that follow your eating, and number one being, You eat for what you're going to be doing and not for what you've done. As Fred was saying, how can you, after a hard workout, say, "oh, that was a great workout; let me sit down and take in 8000 calories." Of course, that is exaggerated, but a lot of people do that.

The majority of your calories should be taken in when you're the most active. Breakfast means break fast. The body has slept for 8 hours, and so it needs nutrients to begin its daily function well. So that means breakfast should be the number one meal of the day. You can't skip breakfast or skip lunch and expect to lose weight. There's a certain body clock that Mother Nature and your mom have given you from day one. She makes sure that, even as a little bitty guy, you wake up and you have breakfast. Then normally you start whining for another snack around 10:30, then you get hungry again around 12:30-1:00 for lunch, then you want another snack around 2:30 or 3:00. Then you have dinner rolling in, and you want to eat another meal then.

That is the natural body clock that the body already has, so when we tend to mess with that and throw it out of line, thinking we're doing something that makes sense, it's actually not making sense. The body is a very well fine-tuned machine. It will rebel. You're not going to starve it. It will compensate by holding onto those calories and utilizing and saving them when it needs them. That's why you see some people who are very obese, holding a lot of body fat. Well, it's not that they are eating more than they normally do; it's just that day-to-day process of the metabolism being thrown off balance or the fact that they are eating at the wrong time, causing them to hold onto these calories. So keeping their metabolism functioning properly is very important, and the quantity and the quality of the calories.

Hatfield: Mythology in this country is rampant, and particularly in our industry. I don't think anyone in here would deny the fact that, because there are so many nutritional companies out there, there must be a lot of nutritional experts, some of whom are not. But some of whom are legitimate, and I recognize that and think all of us do. The problem is that the so-called experts who have an axe to grind, very frequently in a loud voice, because they have a lot of money behind them and a lot of marketing clout behind them, are dictating how we should eat. I'll give you one example; Lee just touched on it.

Breakfast is the main meal of the day. Well, it's a very important meal. Years ago it was the main meal for a very practical reason. Farmers who had to get up and work out in the field prepared for that eventuality by eating a lot of calories. Nowadays, you get up and sit at a typewriter. Do you need a big breakfast? No, not by comparative standards. You need calories, to be certain, and you can't skip breakfast, but you certainly don't have to eat a half a rasher of bacon, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. If you're working on a farm, you do, and that's the bottom line.

I'll give you an example. Years ago, when I was senior vice president at Weider Health and Fitness in charge of research and development for that find company, a group of medial doctors from UCLA came to my office, and they wanted to know if I had a secret on what I did with fat pp and with bodybuilders and athletes in general to get them to lose fat without losing muscle at the same time. When you take a look in the research literature on fat loss, on the whole concept of obesity, there's thousands upon thousands of research projects done on obesity, particularly in this country, where two thirds of the entire adult population is obese. You're going to find that it has never been the case that people lose more than ten or fifteen pounds of fat without also losing muscle.

When you strive to lose twenty, thirty, forty, fifty pounds of fat, you're always going to lose muscle. It's inevitable. At least so say the scientists and the so-called experts. Well, I have news for you. It's not inevitable if you do things right. When Lee came into Mr. Olympia weighing 243 lbs., he was leaner than he was the year before. The proof is in the pudding.

I want to talk about the rules and how you can accomplish this. These medical doctors from UCLA actually did not know how to put muscle on and take fat off at the same time, and I guarantee you nobody in this room does, either. You may think you know, but I have enough years of experience doing this thing. When I walk around to people--and I do seminars like this all the time for the International Sports Sciences Association--I find that the mythology of fat loss is so crippling in this country that I fear that nothing is ever going to get done on a scientific level. I am going to give you the secret to it right now. And it's so simple, it's going to startle you.

Can you lose fat if you are in a positive calorie balance? No. It does not make sense, does it? You cannot lose fat unless you are in a negative calorie balance.

One more question: Can you put muscle on if you are in a negative calorie balance? No. It's not possible. In order to put muscle on, you have to be in a positive calorie balance, or more scientifically, in a positive nitrogen balance.

Does everybody understand that? How can you do both at the same time? We have a paradox, do we not? You can't put muscle on and take fat off at the same time because, on the one hand, to take fat off you have to be in a negative calorie balance; to put muscle on, you have to be in a positive calorie balance. So how can you do it? The answer is forthcoming.

Haney: You know, as Fred is getting ready to give you this formula -- The same thing Fred has talked about, I've watched people train hard and run and do all of these different kinds of things. They start with twenty percent body fat and end up with twenty percent body fat. They say "Oh, I look wonderful I've lost twenty pounds," and yet they've got their skin flapping around everywhere. Then they'll say "What I'll do is lose strength first and then I'll start weight training." A lot of you may think that is the way to do it, to lose the weight and then start training. Well, that doesn't work.

When I prepared for my Mr. Olympia competitions and all of my competitions, I will begin my contest training weighing 256 lbs. I weight 256 lbs., 257 lbs. two weeks before the competition. I started my competition training twenty weeks away from the competition. Gained muscle, lost fat. I didn't have a lot of fat to begin with. Because for a lot of you, if you can't flex it, don't carry it.

Hatfield: So how many of you have children? Those of you who do know exactly what I mean when I say that infants, particularly in their first six months to a year of their lives, eat in spurts. You all know that, right? They'll go for days and days eating very little and then they'll go for days and days eating a lot, right? Keep that in the back of your mind for a second, because it's really important. The Papuas of New Guinea -- how do they eat? They're hunting-gathering people; they run around through the forest, through the fields, looking for food. Sometimes they find some, sometimes they don't. Keep that in the back of your mind.

I used to watch Tom Platz, another bodybuilder, a contemporary of Lee's, who worked for the International Sports Sciences Association as one of our professors, and I would watch how he would eat. Tom had the particular reputation of coming into competitions more cut up than anybody in the history of this sport. You could see crossed striations on his thighs that made his legs look like they were from another planet. People used to marvel at how cut up Tom used to get. So I was watching carefully how Tom used to eat, and I'd see he'd be dieting carefully. He'd be entering that frame of mind that we all know as ketosis, where the blood sugar goes down and glycogen depletion is nearly one hundred percent. And then he'd start garbaging out again, eating as much food as he can. Usually Pop Tarts. I love Pop Tarts.

They were Tom's favorite, and then he would be good again for another few days and then he would garbage out again, etc. Now, don't you see a pattern here? In all three of those groups of people, sometimes they're eating in positive calorie balance, and sometimes they're in negative calorie balance. Does that make sense to everybody?

So there are five rules. Let's start on them one by one. You've got to eat a minimum of five times a day. Now, there's a lot of science behind this, folks. I don't want to get into the research literature. This is neither the time nor the place. We don't have enough time, anyway. But clearly, in research literature we find that five, six, even seven or eight small meals a day is far superior to eating once, twice, or three times a day in regards to keeping blood sugar stable, to reducing the urge to binge, in making sure that there's a constant supply of amino acids in our blood to support tissue regrowth and rebuilding, and so forth.

But there's another reason for it another reason that has been overlooked for years and until recently has not come to light. And that is that the various enzyme structures in your body that control deposition of body fat are kept at a low roar, at survival levels almost, so that you become biochemically incapable of storing fat if you're eating frequent meals. You actually turn yourself into an organism that cannot store but minimal levels of fat. Now, we all know that fat is important in a body for padding, for protection of reproductive organs and other organs, for lubrication beneath the skin, and for our nervous system. Fat is very important in a diet; you can't eat a no-fat diet and expect to be healthy.

Hatfield: Lee, how many bodybuilders do you know who don't eat egg yolks?

Haney: There's a whole lot of them who are not smart concerning that.

Hatfield: Do you eat egg yolks, Lee?

Haney: I love egg yolks, whole eggs, 'cause when God created the egg, he did not separate it. The yellow here and the white there makes no sense. Then scientifically the egg yellow has Lecithin and choline, which are lipotropics, which are fat burners, right? How can chicken be one of the best foods as far as the diet is concerned, protein, and something be wrong with the egg? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, does it?

Hatfield: In fact, I think one of the reasons Lee was so dominant as a bodybuilder for years is that his diet was head and shoulders above the diets of his competitors. They did not understand; they were subjected to and were victims of the mythology that persists in this industry about what proper diet is. That's item number one.

Item number two is how we control the ratio of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. We like to call it the one-two-three rule, not so much because your ratio of fat, protein, and carbohydrate ought to be one to two to three, although that's probably a pretty good starting point. But we want to emphasize that you keep your fat down to a low roar, moderate protein, and then your carbohydrates are taken in according to your energy needs. You all know that your body's preferred source of fuel is carbohydrates, do you not? OK.

Rule number three -- we're going to modify rule number two a little bit. One-two-three rule, one part fat, two parts protein, three parts carbohydrates, or something around that.

How many of you are familiar with the zone diet by Dr. Barry Sears? Well, I want to tell you something funny about that. I wish he was here right now. I'd confront him in a New York minute. In this beautiful catalog you're going to see a protein chart on how you compute protein needs based on your activity level and also based on your lean body mass. I created this chart for country life. Guess who purloined it and listed it in the appendix of his book without giving me credit?

Haney: You know there's a lot of thievery out there. You get these guys about yea big around who come out with all of this research, saying this is the way. Well, not to cut these guys down, but we actually live what we write about. It's not looking under some microscope; we've actually lived it. This is the only job we have, and what you see in this book, you're going to be getting one of these through Bio Chem, this is top of the line. We've simplified nutrition; we've simplified a way for you to know how many grams of protein, grams of carbs, and so forth, you need to apply to your customers you're going to be dealing with.

Hatfield: That's not a sales pitch, either. They were just lucky enough to get Lee and me.

So rule number three, let's say we have a guy who needs 3,000 calories a day in order to just maintain his current lean mass, and we're going to eat five meals a day just for argument's sake, although five is a minimum. I like six or seven or even eight meals a day, but five is an absolute minimum. Divided by five meals equals 600 calories per meal, right? Wrong! If you do that, you're going to get fat.

Haney: Eat for what you're going to be doing and not for what you've done; keep that in mind.

Hatfield: So let's say these are the five meals. You wake up in the morning. Are you going to sit down at a typewriter, do you eat 600 calories? No, you're going to eat a little bit less 'cause you're going to be inactive for a period. Maybe 500 calories. Where do you subtract your calories from, your fats, your proteins, or your carbohydrates? You subtract from your carbs. You never skip your fat or your protein. You need protein because the process of hormonal manipulation, the process of all your glands that need fat, and the process of tissue regrowth and repair is an ongoing process. You cannot delete protein and fat; every single meal should have protein and fat in it. Let's say you're going to take a nap. Right there, just for argument's sake, do you need 600 calories? No; we know that when we're asleep we burn about 20% less than our basal metabolic rate, so not only do we not need 600 calories, we probably need only 100 or 200 calories, so we completely eliminate the carbohydrates and have some protein and fat, maybe 100 or 200 calories.

We're going to be working out right here. Do we need 600 calories? No! You figure out the intensity of your workout based on past experience. You know you're going to be burning 700-800 calories during the workout, so you'll take the 600 plus the 7600. You may need as many as 1,000 calories or more. Now, that's not a big meal by anybody's standards. All of you eat 1,000 calories every time you eat a double Whopper with cheese. It's not a huge meal; I don't recommend a double Whopper with cheese, though.

So you're watching TV here . . . and so forth. You see how it goes, folks? Every time you sit down, you say to yourself, what am I going to be doing for the next 2-1/2 hours of my life? And that's how many calories you eat, and that's what controls your intake of carbohydrates. It's quite simple. Don't make it rocket science, and you don't have to be precise. You've got to get into the ballpark with your calorie manipulation.

Haney: You know, for the most part we're creatures of habit, so once you get into the groove of doing this and taking out some time, because if you want to be the best that you can possibly be, you have to put time into it. Each and every day, when I train for competition, we would jot down every meal. I knew to the "T" how many calories I was taking in. And, because we're creatures of habit, once you get into the flow of doing this, it'll be just like clockwork. For the most part, the amount of calories you had yesterday you had the day before; just manipulate them to fit your activity level.

Hatfield: I'll bet you, if all of you charted the food that you ate over the course of a week's time, and even a month's time, you would find out that with few exceptions--perhaps the exceptions being times that you go out to eat--with few exceptions, you eat the same 20 foods throughout your entire life. You tend to recycle the same foods over and over and over again, so you're job is really quite simple. It's not like you have to get pharmacopeia or USDA book that has the listing of every common food eaten in America and try to wade through that to figure out the nutritional value of your diet. You already know that, if you eat asparagus 3 times a week or if you eat a T-bone or if you eat chicken breast or if you eat eggs, you already know the value. Jot them down or have a master sheet inside the cupboard door so you already know the top 20 foods that you're eating. You know about what portion size you need to get X number of calories. It's really quite simple. You do it one time, and it's there for the rest of your life, and you'll never forget it. It takes a little bit of work the first time you do it. After that it's done forever. How many ounces, how big a piece of steak, for example would be a 4-ounce steak--it's about the size of a credit card, one inch thick. That's a 4-ounce steak. Only big men need eat more than that at any given sitting. How many grams of protein are in a 4-ounce steak? Anybody? 22, so that's a good number, isn't it? The average American will sit down for breakfast and have a sweet roll and a cup of coffee and for lunch a McD's greaseburger and then at night he'll sit down and have a T-bone steak. One of the 16-ounce jobs that's got over 100 grams of protein in it. Now, scientists will tell this guy that he's getting too much protein in his diet. Is he? All day long he's been protein starved, and then at night he's taking in more protein than his body could possibly use. What happens to the excess? He either stores it as fat or it converts to urea, causes all kinds of problems. Certainly he's not going to be using 100 grams of protein as protein for muscle building, so it's important to proportion your meals based upon upcoming activity level. If you eat 3,000 calories a day, any other way than I just said, you're going to get fat. It cannot be otherwise, because your body does not work on a 24-hour schedule in regards to how it uses calories. It works on a 2-3 hour schedule; that is how long it takes for the food to be broken down, assimilated, and spread around the body for use. If it's going to be operating on that 2-3 hour circadian rhythm Lee was talking about (your body rhythm), then why in the devil are you SO concerned about eating 3,000 calories a day when you should be going from meal to meal?

Rule #4, and here's the one that the UCLA scientist completely overlooked. They didn't really overlook it; they just weren't smart enough to figure it out. You want to put on muscle? Everybody does, because we all know now that from years and years of iron heads like Lee and me preaching it, and finally scientists catching hold of the unbelievable pedestrian concept that lean muscle burns more calories than fat, and the fat loss method of choice is to put muscle on, not do aerobics.

Haney: You've got to keep in mind that exercise is still a form of stress--it's still a form of stress. I mean, you can work and train yourself into the ground, and aerobics is a prime example of that, running around, jumping around, knees, joints, tendons. I mean, do you want to do that 25-30 years? You know what I'm saying? It's an ongoing process.

Hatfield: Hey, Lee? You're in the gym business, and I know that you've got an aerobics room at some of your gyms. Tell me if I'm even remotely over exaggerating. When you walk by that aerobics room and you see ladies there exercising aerobically, and you walk by that room a year later and the same women are in there, and they look the same.

Haney: Look the same, period. And what I emphasize time and time again, but try to get it in the heads of people that aerobics alone would not do the job, I'd rather have a deal where I can sit and my metabolism is going steady, burning calories efficiently when I'm sitting down. Well, that is possible, possible only through having good lean muscle, because muscle burns fat and fat stores fat. It's like you would see some people are very heavy, carrying a lot of body fat, obese. It's not that they eat any more than they ate yesterday or the day before, it's just the fact that they don't have any lean muscle there, so their body is contained to store more and more calories and they're not being utilized properly, where that could be fixed through weight training.

Hatfield: Anybody have any idea how many calories one pound of muscle will burn? On the average, during a normal course of a day? One pound of muscle will burn somewhere between 30-40 calories, give or take. Let's say you put on 10 pounds of muscle over the course of a year. That's 36,000 calories, which equates to 10 pounds of fat loss just by doing nothing. Scientists finally figured this out, that bigger muscles burn more calories than little muscles, and the littler your muscles get from inactivity, the lower your metabolic rate becomes, the easier it becomes to put fat on, which is why so many people in this country are getting fatter and fatter. How many of you have looked at those brown photographs up in your grandmother's attic? You ever see any fat people in those photos? I never did.

Haney: Grandma was busy, active, physical. I recall cruising through Germany doing a seminar some years ago and I was coming around this curb. I hear this noise; I look and I see these two little old ladies. They had to be around 60 years old. One was on one side of a saw and the other was on the other side, and they were cutting this log, two 60-year-old ladies, better shape than men, very physical. That's why exercise is so important, weight training. I happened to oversee the wellness program for all city of Atlanta employees and the club there in the city. I don't have any aerobics whatsoever, but in one of my other centers I do. But I always emphasize the combination of the two because I know aerobics alone would not get it; I know that diet alone would not get it. You could starve yourself to death trying to lose body fat when you end up losing lean muscle. You have to have the right combination of protein complemented with training, then complemented with aerobics. Control aerobics because you could become anaerobic. Jumping around and all of this, you burn calories that way but a majority of those calories are muscle calories; you want to burn fat calories. Control aerobics, speed walking, treadmill, not jumping around burning your knees out.

Hatfield: So rule #4, then, I alluded to it, you cannot put muscle on unless you are at a positive calorie balance; you can't take fat off unless you're at a negative calories balance. You've got to use heavy weights to make things happen; you can't mess around with 5-pound dumbbells.

Haney: Just getting started, of course, your body has to readjust to resistance, and that way you start yourself off gradually.

Hatfield: Now, I want to get to rule #5, because this is one of the 5 laws, and all 5 laws are important. Law #5 is just as important as every other law, and that is, I don't care how good of a cook you are or where you buy your food or how natural your foods are or now nutrient-laden they are, I don't care if your mom is a great cook -- you've got to use supplements. There is no other way of doing this. Now, there's a lot of reasons for it, not the least of which is normal food from the supermarket is less nutritious. You know, things like when you take a pepper off the vine, it's got 40-60 milligrams of Vitamin C in it; by the time you eat it 6 weeks later, it's only got 5 milligrams of Vitamin C in it. You all know this, yet the USDA, the book they put out, says a green pepper has 60 milligrams of Vitamin C, and we know better. There is no way you can get the nutrients your body needs from the foods we eat. You've got to get supplements. But there's another reason, and I'm not talking about nutritional supplements here, and I'm not talking about drugs either. I'm talking about that thing in between, for lack of a better phrase some people are calling them "nutri-ceuticals," because they're neither drugs nor are they food in the strictest sense of the word, things like creatine monohydrate, L-glutamine.

Now, here's an example--those Type-2B fibers I told you about that everybody's got and we want to keep them, we don't want to lose them from the explosive lifting and stuff like that, because they'll go away real quick. How do you keep them? Well, you take some L-glutamine before a workout, which acts sort of as an anticatabolic agent in a sense and helps spare lean tissue from being broken down. So, even for Mrs. Jones, a person who has just walked into a gym for the first day, I'm all for the use of these types of nutri-ceuticals for her. The big guys are using it for a very good reason. Lee uses it, all of the top Olympians use it, all of the top bodybuilders in the country use L-glutamine as an anti-catabolic agent, why shouldn't Mrs. Jones? Same thing with creatine monohydrate. Now, here's another perfect example. Take a look at the research literature on creatine monohydrate and stop thinking bodybuilders, stop thinking elite athlete, and start thinking poor fat Mrs. Jones who, for the first time in her life, is going to do something about her condition. Whats the matter with using creatine monohydrate with Mrs. Jones' weight training program if it works so well with the big guys? Won't it work for her? This is not the perview of elite athletes' performance nutrition; it's the perview--indeed, the requirement--of every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth.

Haney: The whole gist of it is, if we want to kick up the metabolism, burn fat, we've got to develop good lean muscle and try to lower the body fat we have to save the muscle. That's why L-glutamine is so important. In order to give the fiber more fire, to give the cells more fiber to develop more fast. twitch fiber, that's the creatine. It's got to be there. Without those things you will not save muscle nor will you be able to build more fast twitch fiber, so it's got to be there. Weight training these supplements have got to be applied to that if you're going to reach a goal, if you want to drop body fat you've got to increase lean muscle.

Hatfield: The most frequent question asked of me and Lee, too, is, what kind of supplements should I use? Even the elite athletes who we both coach and Mrs. Jones or Mr. Jones alike, when they first walk into the gym, is there something I should be taking? I want to give you my personal preference. Now, mind you, I already told you one of the laws of training is the law of individuality. Everybody is different; everybody's got similarities, too. And you've got to be aware of that. In fact, in my opinion the similarities are just as important, maybe even more so than the differences between us, so there are some things that we all have to use--vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, the L-glutamine, creatine monohydrate, amino acids. These kinds of items are part and parcel to an active lifestyle. You need them; everybody needs them. That Mrs. Jones just getting into a weight training program, Mr. Jones, and the elite bodybuilders alike, everybody needs them. There are a million other supplements out there that are really great that each of us needs on an individual basis for health, for various other reasons. Mind you, there is a lot of stuff downstairs that I wouldn't use, not because it doesn't promise me wonderful things, but because it simply isn't going to deliver those wonderful things. There are some bad supplements out there. There are some scrupulous supplement salespeople out there and supplement manufacturers out there. How do you know you're getting top quality stuff? That's another big question.

All right -- Fred, Branch Chains! Who's? Creatine Monohydrate! Who's? Even the casual user of these supplements realizes that there are hucksters out there selling bad stuff, and there are--I know one company in particular (I don't name names here) that sells creatine and it's not creatine monohydrate; therefore, it's worthless. You see what I'm saying? You have to be very careful. My personal opinion is that you find a company that has a good reputation, that's been around a while, and that simply cannot, because of virtue of their position in the marketplace, provide people with bad supplements. They're going to give you only top quality supps; that's my personal opinion, and that's what I usually tell my clients.

Haney: You've got to be so careful with these companies, fly-by-night. They send you information saying this is great, that is great, this is the hottest thing on the market. You've got to be very careful with that, because I recall some years ago this company came out with this stuff, HMP, [phomotomax?]. As you recall, a few people went into a coma. I think there were actual deaths from that stuff, too. Who produced this stuff? So let me tell you something. Yd better get that stuff out of the store; it's a drug, and somebody is gonna die.

Hatfield: Last year in Argentina 36 bodybuilders died from mixing up their own brew of this stuff based upon the recipe given them by this one nutrition company. They all died, 36 of them. In New York, Long Island, 3 bodybuilders were trying to mix up a batch of this stuff and they killed themselves; they poisoned themselves. This is from a supplement manufacturer, so you've got to be real careful. Creatine monohydrate, not creatine, get it right because you're going to be misled if you don't, is stored inside the muscle cells, and it's there for when you need it. So when you listen to the bodybuilders and the other supplement companies who say that you must take creatine monohydrate right after a workout or right before a workout, and you must take it with high glycemic grape juice and you must take 10 or 15 grams of this a day for the first 4-5 days.

Folks, the research literature is quite clear. You take it any doggone time you want, whenever it's convenient for you, preferably on an empty stomach; it'll get absorbed and get into your blood stream and get stored inside your muscle cells, maybe not as quickly as if you took it with grape juice, but that's not important. I personally don't like the idea of taking my blood sugar and therefore my insulin on wild rides, so I'm very careful on how I take anything, and so creatine monohydrate, the answer is, it doesn't really matter when you take it, because it's gonna get stored and used when it's needed, but you'll hear a million different stories otherwise.

Question: How do you keep from losing muscle during down, zag, periods?

Hatfield: It's very simple. The down, zag, periods are not very long that that could happen. Atrophy will not occur. Typically, in an up (zig) period, for example, for this person right here, you're gonna have 4 days of up (zig) and 4 days of down (zag) and 1 day of up (zig), or 3 days of down (zag) and 2 days of up (zig). The point is, you have more down (zag) days for this person, an dif you have more up (zig) days for this person and the number of up (zig) and down (zag) days are equal for this person. Doe that make sense? Typically never more than 2, 3, 4 days at a time.

One of the basic principles of science (referring to the supplements just talked about) is that you have replicated studies and some of the more questionable companies don't.

Haney: Make sure when dealing with supplements you get a company that has been out there with a track record, period. Not a Mom & Pop; all they are going to do is make a bunch of money, close shop after the FDA catches on to them. Then they go out and create another name.

Hatfield: That's not to say small companies can't also be excellent; many of them are. Find out first.

Question: Fourteen and 15-year-old kids walk into the store and want to gain weight. What do you recommend?

Hatfield: The same thing I just told you. Zig-zag diet (visit www.drsquat.com to read about the diet), my friend, train hard, take your supplements. It'll do it. IT WORKS EVERY TIME! That's the nice thing about it. There is no hit or miss; this is not rocket science. And you shouldn't try to make it that difficult.

The science that controls Lee's training is no different from the science for the 15-year-old boy or Mrs. Jones. There is only one science. The difference is how you manipulate the frequencies, intensities, and duration of your training. But to me, the way you eat and the supplements you use ought to be identical.

The theory behind nutritional supplementation over the long term is like this: I told you about periodization, right? When you break down your workout and your nutritional supplementation schedule into discrete periods of time, each one having its own short-term objectives--you know, like fat loss, tissue repair, explosiveness, whatever your periodized schedule requires. And you have your short list of objectives under each cycle of training. Now all you have to do is look on the shelf for the nutritional supplements that help you achieve each of the specific objectives. Those are the ones you take. That is the whole theory of nutritional supplementation in a nutshell.

Now, over the course of the entire period of time you still have to take your branch chain aminos, your antioxidants, your protein of course, and your vitamins and minerals. Everybody needs vitamins and minerals.

Haney: Multivitamins are number one. They should always be the building block of any nutrition, and protein.

Hatfield: And everybody needs antioxidants. And I gotta tell you, folks, vitamins A, C, and E are powerful antioxidants, but they are not enough in and of themselves when you start looking at the whole science behind free radicals and the damage it does to your body. You are going to find there are seven different species of free radicals, and vitamins A, C and E will get about four or so of them in any significant degree. There are several other antioxidants that your body needs besides those vitamins.

So those are the biggies (A, C, and E) that everybody needs. Now, if you are training hard, and everybody ought to be training at least somewhat, now you are going to need your L-glutamine on high-intensity days to block cortisol. You're going to need creatine monohydrate; you're going to need your branch chain aminos.

Haney: You're going to need your protein. Very, very important. Cross micro-filtered whey is the best that is out there now. Get about 40 grams. Like Fred was saying, as you increase your level of activity or as you're falling into different training phases, your supplement needs will change. If you are doing a lot of pounding on the joints and tendons, ligaments, that's what glucosamine is going to be needed for. A lot of explosive movements and ballistic training. So it (supplementation) does change. We do account for these changes in the brochure here. [author's note: Lee was referring to a brochure entitled Getting Started With a Weight Training and Nutritional Approach to Fitness. The brochure was an excerpt from the International Sports Sciences Association's (ISSA's) text for certified personal trainers.]

Question: Do you think it is best to eat something just prior to working out or should a person train on an empty stomach and eat later on?

Hatfield: I personally never saw the logic or science behind training before eating. I've never seen the logic or science in it. To me, at least what you ought to do is BREAK FAST before training hard. Because I'm telling you right now, if you're training hard before eating early in the morning, you are going to burn some muscle tissue. And that's stupid. It doesn't make any sense to me, so at least take in a small amount of carbohydrates to get you through the workout, a little bit, because carbohydrates are going to be muscle sparing.

Question: What ingredients in supplements boost testosterone levels?

Hatfield: In my humble opinion, there are no testosterone-boosting supplements on the market today short of hormones--DHEA, Androstenedione. Obviously, though, I don't classify them as nutritional supplements. I personally regard them as borderline drugs. Not that they are bad, don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong about the word "drugs." But they can be very powerful, and they have to be used appropriately and carefully. They are nutri-ceuticals is what they are.

Question: What about Smilax? Is it a testosterone booster?

Hatfield: No, no. Smilax does not boost testosterone, I'm sorry. Young boys who take Yohimbe get stimulated in an aphrodisiac sense of the word. I guess they like that! But it's not going to boost their testosterone, of which they have too much already.

Question: If I follow the program, how long will it take to add muscle and lose fat? 6 months? 6 years? 2 months?

Hatfield: It depends a lot on your ceiling, where you are in relation to your ceiling. Lee Haney is closer to his ceiling than you are, for example. You would gain muscle a lot faster than someone who is near their ceiling. So it is very difficult to say, but there are ways to figure it out.

Typically, for a girl your size, my experience tells me you want to put 10 pounds of muscle on; it ought to take you a year, maybe two. But certainly no more than that; otherwise, you are being lazy. You might be able to do it in six months. (Seminar ends)

Follow the wisdom contained within this seminar and you will achieve the most phenomenal gains you've ever experienced from your workouts as fast as humanly possible.