 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode, we're getting hot. Of Mind Pump. We got some estrogen for you. Yeah, we interviewed. So Adam coached young lady Melissa for her first contest. And we didn't talk too much about it. We just kind of followed along. First contest ever, and she killed it, of course. She has the first, first, and second. She's got Adam in her corner. She's got the genes, and she's got Adam coaching her. Adam took her through, and we talk about in this episode how what her strategy was like with her nutrition, with her cardio, or lack of, how her metabolism didn't get damaged. She actually ate 6. 1,600 was her lowest. 1,600 calories was the lowest that she ate, and she's a tiny girl. I've never heard of. Pretty awesome. But we also talk about her training. And for the most part, she followed the program that we have that's designed for specifically for advanced trainees, and for competitors, Maps Aesthetic. That's the program that she followed. So here's what we're going to do. After we finished with the episode, we decided we wanted to do something kind of cool for our audience. We have never put Maps Aesthetic on a massive sale. So we're going to do a flash sale with Maps Aesthetic. You can actually get it for half off. However, we're going to give you one hoop to jump through. You've got to go on Instagram and go to Melissa's Instagram page. Her page is Melly Wolf with 2F. So it's M-E-L-I-W-O-L-F-F on Instagram. Go there. In her bio is going to be a coupon code. That code is going to give you 50% off. We're only running that for what, 48 hours? 48 hours when this air. So this episode is going to drop. It should be Sunday when you're listening to this. Is the final day for this. Then the coupon code is going to be gone. So if you go to her page on Instagram again, it's Melly Wolf M-E-L-I-W-O-L-F-F. In her bio, you're going to find a coupon code. It's going to give you half off of Maps Aesthetic. And if you have any questions about the program, you can find out more at mindpumpmedia.com. So without any further ado, here we are talking to Melissa Wolf. We are all hot. Smoking, smoldering. What's the name of the competition? You just crushed everyone in, Melissa? Yeah. You didn't quite crush everyone. Well, the one you won. Retro V Champion. It was the Central Californian Championship. We are sitting with Miss Central California Biskini of the World Champion of the Universe. Melissa Wolf. Oh my God. Good job on your victory. Thank you. That was very, very good. And you did it all naturally too, which is good. I really did. That's very, very good. What was your experience like competing? Overall. That's a vague ass question. That is a super vague question. Like, was it generic and brilliant? Tell us, what do you think about life? Why are we here? What do we do? Where are we going when we die? Were you nervous getting up there and doing all the poses or something? Oh my God, I was so fucking nerve wracking. Am I allowed to say that? Of course you can say that. This is mind pump. Before you even go there, let's talk. You broke your fucking chair. Why don't you share with the audience? Because I think a lot of people don't know that you weren't somebody who's always wanted to compete in bikinis. So what even led you to even think about that? Why did you not do it in the past? What made you decide to do it now? Okay, so starting out with why I didn't ever want to do it in the past was, I think, because what I saw of what it meant to compete was people trying to prove something to themselves that wasn't even there to prove in the first place. So it was like people pushing their bodies to get to this point in an expedited period of time to push their bodies to a point that their body shouldn't even be in in the first place. Did you have friends that did it before? I did have friends that did it. Did they have, did they get like metabolic damage and stuff afterwards or? I mean, from my perspective, yes, I'm not somebody who can diagnose whether or not that happened but I- We do it all the time, don't worry. I see people who have competed that I know. I have a close friend that struggles a lot with weight gain after shows and that's been something. That was probably her experience was the biggest deterrence for me because I would see her jump into a show, grind, grind, grind, look really great on stage and then come out of it so hard and so fast and gain so much weight and just have and get so depressed and upset and down on herself and unhappy and then she would resort to prepping again because that's what she felt. The only way she felt that she could look the way that she wanted to look. What made you finally change your mind to compete? Well, I, a few, there are a few factors. I was really into, well, I got even more, I got more and more into the gym, more and more into lifting. I saw changes in my body that kind of started to resemble what a competitor might look like in an off season and I got comments all the time, like, you look like you compete, do you compete? Like, you should compete and I would brush it off a lot often, all the time actually and then eventually I started, actually started listening to Mind Pump and I started hearing Adam talking about competing and you guys talked a lot about competing and I first identified with how you guys spoke about how bad it is. And then Adam would mention every now and again that there's a better way, there's a better way, people aren't doing it right, there's gotta be a better way and I thought to myself, well, if there's a better way, maybe I should try doing that and I reached out to Adam and... What was that like conversation like Adam? Well, the very first time that... Like, did you try to talk her out of it or were you like... No, because the way we met first, right? So kind of the missing piece to that story she just told was she, I know that she started listening to Mind Pump, I think it was the Lane Norton episode is what you told me was the first one you listened to, right? And I think it was your boyfriend that turned you on to the episode first, right? And it was more they were like listening to listen to Lane Norton because I think he's a fan of Lane Norton. Yeah, so I'd never heard, I'd never heard of who, I didn't know who Lane Norton was and my boyfriend did and he knew that Lane was really controversial and wanted to see what my opinion was about him. So kind of sent me, he sent me an episode that I, he thought that I could listen to that wasn't a super aggressive Lane Norton episode. So he sent me, your guys' episode and I listened to it and I got back to, he said listen to this, give me your feedback and I got back to him and was like, I don't know about Lane Norton but I really liked the guys who interviewed him and I started listening. That's what we do to everybody. She's smart. And I started listening to you guys. And then you started following the Mind Pump media page, right? I started following the Mind Pump media page and Taylor who manages that page reached out to me and asked if I would consider coming in to do videos for, I don't know what ever happened. Yeah, it was videos and a photo shoot because at the time we were getting ready to do some YouTube stuff. So he had came, I remember when he had showed me your profile, I'd never met you before. And we've brought Taylor on board and Taylor is kind of the marketing side of the business and social media back in stuff. So he's working a lot with the YouTube and the Instagram and working with our kind of rebranding that we're going through. One of the things that I think everybody knows that we're kind of missing this female presence, right? I know we, all of us guys, the three of us are in touch with our feminine side, but we're missing a little bit. Not really. Especially Justin. We're missing that estrogen and it was really tough because we weren't just gonna attach anybody to us. And so Taylor was kind of on the hunt for a girl who he thought fit our brand and had a good message and was smart and had a very natural real look. We didn't want somebody who was super shredded and all kinds of shit to look that way. And like he was looking for someone. And when he showed me your profile, at first glance, I said, yeah, I like it. You don't have her come in. I trust you if you've been paying attention to it. And that's where we first met. And you and I shot the... Yeah, and we all noticed the mechanics when you did a barbell squat. And I was like, oh, finally, somebody that has like really good mechanics, we can work with this, you know? Cause we're trying to get all these like exercise photos accomplished and all this kind of stuff. So that was important. So at this time, I think you are really just getting to know us and really starting to go through the Mind Pump episodes, right? I remember after I came in, you guys mentioned my squat on an episode and I listened to it. And I go, oh my God, did you have a squat? That's right. Right, so I think it wasn't until later that she had thought about doing the competing. And that's where she, and from, like she said, the episodes that she'd heard us talk about. And then she had mentioned it to me. And I thought it was great cause I thought, I already, we knew the whole purpose why we thought she was a match. We already thought she had the look and we could use for photos and videos and marketing purposes. And I thought, well, this will be cool. She's got, she's a smart girl. She's got the look already. And then she wants to compete. So I was actually totally pro her doing it because I knew who she was though too. So I mean, you gotta know that she's going through DPT school right now. I was going to say, yeah, why don't you like mention what you're doing these days and like what your background is? Oh God, okay. Well, my background, this is the past two weeks I've been in. I started my doctorate graduate program at Samuel Merritt University. And, oh my God, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I have no time. I live in cadavers and books and it's really freaking hard. And I used to spend a lot of time here with you guys and now in the past couple of weeks I haven't at all because I can barely find time to shower. You're all open organs and yeah, cadaver parts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the only reason why I would, I didn't normally a normal person that would ask me I'm like you, Sal, I would probably try and talk them out of it because I knew her level of education. And then I also knew her view of competing in bodybuilding and all that stuff before because when we first met, we kind of briefly talked about it and she told me she had friends that competed and she was totally turned off by the industry originally and for those reasons. So I think she had the right head on her shoulders to be somebody. And then plus I knew I would be guiding it. So of course, as I'm guiding her through it, there's lots of, I'm talking to her daily. So there's lots of communication of this is why we do this. And of course she challenges and asks everything that I do. You know, it's like, why did we do that? You know, well, this is why we're doing that or this is the theory why we're doing this. So, you know, a lot of the times, you know, she's asking all the right questions and I think her relationship with food. I mean, shit, we, what was the lowest calorie I think you ever, we ever took you down to? For an extended period of time, 1600 was the lowest that I ever did. Which is, that's high, that's high calorie for someone prepping for a show for a girl. Very high calorie. Especially for someone, your size, you're tiny. I'm tiny. Yeah, you're not a super tall girl. Most girls your size walk into a competition eating around a thousand calories, sometimes less. Yeah, she's a hundred, you should know, she's 115 pounds. So 1600 calories and we at one point. And that's towards the, that's towards competition. Yeah, yeah, that's right. What do we, what did we pick up before we, before we actually started cutting? What'd you peak at? What was the highest? I was at 2600. Which is a man, that's man calories. Which is man food. That's half as much as Justin eats. So you, so you, you guys ramped up calories going in. So when you first started your prep, it wasn't, let's start cutting. It was move calories up. Now when Adam is telling you, listen, we're gonna have more calories. Are you thinking, okay, he's crazy. This guy's an idiot. He's skeptical. Or were you like, okay, I'm gonna trust him because he has a podcast. That's a total reason to trust him. Well, I mean, you know, you have a little bit of a problem. No, this is a great question. I'm actually, I've never asked her this. It'd be interesting to hear. Yeah, what were you thinking when he's like, no, we're gonna increase your calories. Were you thinking like, what the fuck? No, I mean, I know enough about, you know, the way your metabolism works to know that you can boost it and make it more efficient. And I knew that that was the goal and it made sense to me to incrementally boost those calories so that I was then boosting my metabolism. And how many weeks out did you guys start? Like, what was the, how many weeks total was this whole prep period? Do you remember when we started? What week it was? We started in, I think it was July with the boosting of my metabolism. And then I think that that lasted for maybe a month. Which we should, I think you should talk about that too because I didn't wanna pick a show until I felt our metabolism was in the right place. Let's talk about that because most people pick a show and then start. And it's the countdown, yeah. But the way you did it, Adam, which I think is the best way to do it is to start getting ready, see how your body responds and then start to say, okay, I think I can do a show around this period and then start looking. Well, I mean, Melissa can share this. She asked me like, when are we gonna do a show? Like write out that when should we look at the date? So you took a little while to even pick. Yeah, so right at the gate, she wanted to know like timeframe and shows and I was, I couldn't give her the answer. I said, ah, I don't know yet. And I explained too that I think this is also the big mistake that most these girls do before they get ready for a show is they base it off of, hey, in November or whatever, I wanna get in great shape. Let's do a show just to do a show. Like I was more like, let's figure out where your metabolism is right now and where you're at, like as far as your overall movement and let's figure you out. And then from there, we can kind of map out what's a realistic timeframe. I did have kind of a map of what kind of timeframe I wanted and needed because I was starting school in September and I knew that I wanted to do a show before then because I didn't know what school was gonna be like. So I told him that and he knew that but that was three and a half months out when we first started. That's right. And I do remember that, I remember actually wanting to go longer and you were like, oh, can we get it before the school? And I was like, okay, we're not pushing it that bad and she was in a very healthy situation to do it. But even in a perfect world, I think I remember I wanted even more time. I wanted a couple more weeks to feel confident of, and to be honest with you, looking how she presented herself on stage, hands down, I think we were at first place. I think that she presented probably one to two pound stage weight away from a prophesies on that stage. Our conditioning was one to two more weeks. I think we have a pro level physique for sure. The mat posing is shit. Yeah, it's part of the game. You know that. I told you that from the very beginning. That's probably nerves. I would say a lot of nerves. It totally is. So starting off with the boost in calories, you're doing your training. How are you feeling with the more calories? What are you noticing at this point? Do you remember? Are you feeling stronger? Yeah, so at first, I was feeling full all the time. I was shoveling food. I mean, I don't know if people, I feel like whenever I tell people that I was eating 2,600 calories, they're like, okay, yeah, but I'm like, no, no, no, that means I was eating this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this and also this and that too. And then more. It was like, I was eating so much food and I was stuffed all the time, but I was super, super strong. I felt like I was throwing weights around the gym and that's what I would say to Adam every day. I'd be like, I threw everything around the gym all day today. And, but then as, and I started to notice too, as my body would kind of acclimate, I would, I would still be hungry after 2,600 calories. I was like, oh yeah, 2,600 and I'm like still eat. And then- Are you gaining any body fat at this point? Yeah, so I did gain a little bit of weight for sure. I gained maybe like three or four pounds. Wow, that's nothing at all. Yeah, so it was not the, I mean, and a lot of that was probably muscle cause I was lifting like crazy. Now at this point, I'm assuming you changed your training or was it, how different was your training under, cause you guys use a map's aesthetic. That was the- We started on map's aesthetic and then towards the end of the, towards the very end of the show, I broke down a few like muscle groups that I wanted her just touching from there on out and said, okay, this is all. Cause all the work had been done. Yeah, that's what- And now were you, what was your training like before doing maps aesthetic? Was it similar or was it a very different change? Before I was doing more of a two body parts a day kind of a thing. So like a split, more of a split. Did you notice a big change when you changed over to like, you know, map style training? Did you notice any differences in things like strength and the way your body looked? Sure, yeah. And the way that my body looked, I mean, my shoulders are, so Adam had me focus on shoulders and hamstrings because those I guess are to the big judging points for bikini competitions. And I worked on those as my- Focus. Focus days. Focus sessions. And my shoulders, I mean, they're, my rear delts and my delts overall are bigger much and my hamstring, I've never seen, I never saw my hamstring tie ins until this prep. And they're there. It's pretty cool. I sprouted wings. That's awesome. Part of the, what was really important, and we kind of touched this on the show when we actually talked about metabolic damage, even though this has nothing to do with metabolic damage. But what I knew when I, when I boosted her calories that high, I also knew how she was training before and I knew Maps Aesthetic would create a new adaptation. So it would just go to muscle? Yeah, it would go to muscle. It's like her body is not used to this, regardless of it's the best program for her, the best gain she'll ever seen her live. It didn't even matter to me. I knew that it was different enough from what she was currently doing, that it was perfect for, especially since in phase one, the way we were in phase one were lower reps and heavy weight, just like we talked about pulling somebody out of, the same theory of pulling somebody out of metabolic damage is the same theory I'm going to apply to trying to speed someone's metabolism up. That's trying to- It's the same thing. Yeah, it's the same thing, right? So I'm, you know, we're not doing cardio at all. So that's something too. She was prescribed without the gates, no cardio. So zero cardio and let's lift some heavy ass weight. And we, you know, we got a chance to actually work at, I got the chance to train her, you know, quite a few times. And when I would train her, I would kind of show her like, this is the intensity or this is how I would rather you go heavier right now on these things then, you know, lighter and get more repetitions. Cause it's important to me that we are throwing something at your body. It is just not used to while we're also increasing these calories. So I know that even if we do put a little bit of fat on, we're going to, most of that's going to get allocated over to building muscle. So that was the strategy when we, when we first start off and it's no different than how I would approach somebody who I'm trying to speed their metabolism up. That's got metabolic damage. Now during this whole period of time, you know, weeks or whatever, you know, calories are going up then you start to drop them. You're training a particular way. You're throwing cardio towards the end. How was that right before contest period? Because I hear everybody who competes talks about that those weeks leading up to a contest as being hell as hating life. Everything sucks. I feel like shit. What was that like for you leading up to the contest? Was it what you had expected? Was it easier or harder than you expected? It was not what I expected and everything I expected all at the same time because I definitely, I mean, I'd be lying if I said that it was easy. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't super grumpy and that I didn't snap at my boyfriend maybe five or six or seven plus times. But it wasn't as bad for an extended period of time is what I found is I had bad days and I had good days but I didn't ever really feel like there was a stretch where I was just like I cannot do this and the closer I got to my show which was counterintuitive to me was I felt better and peak week I felt great and I didn't I mean not I didn't feel strong. I didn't and I wasn't even working out towards the end. So you were grumpy, not lead not up to the contest. I can be in the middle. Well, think about this, right? So there is going to come a time, right? And I remember talking to her and like setting her setting the table for on this like it will get hard and there will come a time where you're hungry. Like that's part of like getting shredded and cutting, right? At one point when you're getting lean, you will face feeling hunger because if your metabolism is roaring and going and you're restricting it, you're eating all that food prior to that and it's a pretty stark contrast. Yeah, it's inevitable it's going to come but the goal was even when you're hungry like that and that feeling you'll still be actually eating a good amount of calories that your body is being well nourished, right? So it's not like you're doing damage or hurting your body as much as it's just having the discipline to refrain from eating more calories. And I think that's what you mean by like it was everything you thought and what you did and right as far as the challenge, right? Right, I mean I think that what I noticed most actually was every time you gave me a change so every time you're like, okay, we're dropping calories or okay, we're increasing our steps or okay, we're increasing volume in the gym, adapting to that were the hardest any time you gave me a change. So for like three days I was like, I fucking can't do this, this is hard and then my body would kind of acclimate and I'd be fine and then you'd give me a change and I'd struggle for a couple days and then I would be okay and then you'd give me so it was kind of just like a up and down, up and down graph that there wasn't a consistent like, okay, we're going down now, we're going down, we're going down or consistent, we're going up, we're going up. It was like, okay, this is hard, okay, we're leveling out. So this is hard a little bit and we're leveling out. Now Adam talks about on the show a lot about how much he learned about his body during when he competed about, cause he mentioned this all the time. Like I know when I would add this little thing, my body would change and when I take this thing out, my body would change and I knew what was doing what because I was so meticulous about my track and all that stuff. Did you learn stuff about yourself and your body through this process that you otherwise wouldn't have learned do you think? Yeah, definitely. It's hard to pinpoint because there's so many things that changed and I think that it's really, it's hard, yeah, it's hard to pinpoint things when everything is changing and your body is changing and you don't really know what it is, but I think that one of the biggest things for me was realizing that I could do so little cardio and be so lean. That always blows people's minds. I had never done that little cardio in my life. I mean, I was the girl who'd get on the Stairmaster every day after she lifted weights and go for 20 minutes of HIIT every single day and I've never done so little cardio in my life and I've never been so lean in my life. Let's talk about that. You did cardio when? At what point did you guys start throwing actual cardio into your routine? Well, I mean, that's a hard question to answer because we never really did throw in actual cardio. So Adam would give me movement, I call it the movement goals. So he would- So like your neat? My neat, yeah. So he would tell me, okay, we're trying to get, you know, 13 to 15,000 steps every day this week and then it would go up to 17 to 20 and then I never really got past 20,000, which is a lot, that's like 10 miles. So I get that question actually a lot of people will say, you know, okay, well, I don't really get it because you're preaching that you're not doing cardio and yet you have to hit 10 miles a day that seems that I don't see the difference. And for me, I mean, the difference, even though there might not technically be a difference in terms of what you're burning, for me it was the lifestyle difference was I never allotted a time to get on the treadmill and I think that a standard time is two hours for these bikini girls that compete and that's standard. And I don't know how much it varies up or down but I hear two hours all the time, that's like the number that I hear. And I never spent, I mean, towards the end or days that I was busy or whatnot, I would get up early and maybe walk on the treadmill for 30 to 40 minutes on, but those were days where that was my only option. And that's closer to the contest. You're talking about like. And that was a lot closer to the contest, yeah. Like weeks out and a couple weeks out. So when you're hitting 15,000 steps or whatever, what did it look like for you? Was it like I did a little walk here, I did a little walk there? So I would go on a hike, I would walk to the gym and so I would drive to the gym. I would walk to the grocery store. So it was like, for me, it was a lifestyle change deciding, okay, I'm just gonna be active in my life versus I'm gonna sit on this treadmill for two hours a day and a lot that time. Now the cool thing about this is the evidence, cause they've done studies like this where they've taken people and had them do all of their cardio in one session versus taking the total amount of cardio and splitting it up throughout the day. And when you split it up throughout the day, you actually burn more body fat and you keep more muscle. And it kind of makes sense if you think about it. When you're doing an hour or an hour and a half of cardio straight, you're really asking your body to become super efficient. You're really asking your body to reduce its muscle mass, slow its metabolism down versus doing 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there, 30 minutes there where it's less of an adaptation towards efficiency which is another word for slower metabolism. So it makes sense that it would be more effective. It's much easier too to scale up and down too. It's more realistic to take cause you gotta remember too and I know we say 20,000 steps but there was a very gradual progression. And that's like towards a contest. Right, exactly. That was leading all the way up to almost show time. So early on I was only asking 10 to 12,000 steps and then it was 14 to 16,000 steps and then it was 16 to 18,000 steps and then really it became a point where and I remember telling her like, you know coming up to the last couple of weeks that if you gotta get on the treadmill to get to those steps, that's fine. Our goal is to get it through activity. So the goal is to do it through movement. But if you need to, because she did, she'd have some of these days that were, you know working like a long eight hour day or gone all day or sitting down somewhere like, okay well that then we might have to get on a treadmill at that point just cause it's almost impossible not to get, you know, to get 20,000 steps and not do that. But really the idea was to like she said is to incorporate it into our lifestyle. So it doesn't feel like this huge daunting task which also allows us, it was easy for us to reverse out when we come out of it too. It was just like, okay, well let's scale back. You don't have to quite do 20,000 steps. Let's get 15 to 16,000 steps. Let's not quite jump you all the way to 2600 calories. Let's put you back up to 16 or 1800 calories. And so reversing out of it is way easier and then it helps, it's not much easier to maintain their weight where she's at. I mean, she went right back, she decided to go right back into another prep and it won't be a hard transition for her at all cause she didn't rebound. I think, I don't know, you didn't only put on a couple pounds after a show, right? Yeah, like five, five-ish. Yeah, three or four, yeah. Average competitor puts on like 20. Oh yeah. At least after a show. Yeah, you can guarantee that putting five pounds on I guarantee you four if it was water. Have you talked to any of your friends that have competed before? Like you had mentioned previously that did it, you know, the whole martyr way and like kind of your whole process. Yeah, what do they think about all this? I mean, everyone's asking me for Adam's contact information. Boom! DMs are flood. This is why I told her not to put me. People go back and they're like, I'm just a guy behind the guy. Hey, aren't you helping that girl? I'm like, yeah, but we're not telling anybody that. We're not posting it because the day after she posted that thanking me, my DM like crazy. Yeah, no, we talked about that on the interview I just did right now. I was like, hey, my wife competes and I saw that you helped to have Melissa. And I'm like, no, it's a dude, I just, that was something else this night. But, you know, I'm glad you did because I think sometimes we come across as anti-competing a little bit and it's not that. It's that the way people tend to do it is what I'm definitely anti. And if there is a way to do it, that is the right way to do it. And I'm glad you kind of presented this example of how to compete and not come out of it with a damaged metabolism or with a bad relationship with food and exercise, you know? Because it can really promote that. It can really cause something like that. And you can be a big influencer in this whole process. Melissa, was there anything that we did that you did ever question or that? Yeah, what did you guys debate over? Did you, was there anything that you pushed back? I know you want, I remember when I first had her carb cycle, she wanted me to break the science down better and I'm like, oh, we don't want to go there. We did a little bit though, right? Yeah, carb, well, yeah. Carb cycling was something that I didn't quite understand. I still don't quite understand. And I try, I mean, I reached out to Sal too, I didn't. She's like, don't tell Adam. Yeah, she's trying to fact check me. This guy over here has got me carb cycling and this guy in the group, he sounds pretty confused telling me right now. I just want to make sure you trust him, Sal. No, well, it's a gray area, right? We don't have a lot of stuff studied around this. And so some of the things, this is the area that I found myself in when I was getting ready for a show was what do we know for sure? What is supported by science? What is bro science? And then what is kind of like in the air because we just don't have a lot supporting it? And there's a lot of bro science surrounding carb cycling, but there is a lot of good truths behind it too. And at the end of the day, the body does very, it adapts. And if you give it the same thing all the time, your body can become desensitized either hormones, types of foods, cycling macros gives you more variety. It's probably gonna give you a more diverse microbiome. It's going to resensitize your body to certain hormones. For example, I do this with my clients too. I have clients that I work with and none of them compete, but I have almost every single one of them cycle their macros and it's because I know when you go very low carbohydrate, you're going to promote more insulin sensitivity so that when you do eat carbohydrates, they're utilized a better way. And the anecdote, and again, there's no science really to support this yet, but the anecdote's pretty strong. Right, and so that was kind of like when I was explaining to her, I'm like, because she wanted to write about it. She's like, you don't want to write about this. Could you explain the science better to me? Like, ooh, that's going to be a tough one because you're going to get this type, you're going to hear this, and it's going to sound very bro-y, and they're going to hear this and this is going to sound very incomplete. And so that's like carb cycling in a nutshell for me, but you know, I believe that, I mean, you can ask her too, like I can't remember off the top of my head how many different macro profiles we did too. I mean, how many times did we shoot fat and lower carbs, higher carbs? Like, yeah, we incorporated fasting. So she, through her prep, we manipulated macro profiles. So those that are wondering right now, oh, what was her macro ratio? Did she run a 30, 30, 40? Or what did she run? All of them. All of them. We literally messed with them all the time. And just like she said, I would give her these little goals every week or so. Now, what did you notice anything, any changes when you would do that? Like if, like when Adam said, okay, you know, for the next two days, you're going to lower carb higher fat or for the next two days, you're going to fast. Or did you notice differences in the way you looked and performance that you can connect to those? Did you, are you there yet? Or do you need to do it more before you can start to see? No, I mean, I definitely did. I mean, on the higher carb days, I felt like I could move way more in the gym. And I, I love carbs. So I was always so excited for high carb days. And I know it's not, it's not your shit, Sal. But, What are we talking about? Everybody loves carbs. I love carbs. Yeah, they're good. Yeah, no, I felt way better when I was eating more carbs. And then, I mean, but that's the thing, the carb cycling. So I saw a lot with carb cycling. And I don't necessarily think that's because, so as soon as I started looking at it as fluctuations in calories by way of carbohydrates, that made more sense to me. I couldn't look at it as carb cycling because that's just really convoluted. And I feel like there's just way too much that goes into that for me to see like a straight line. It was like, okay, we're trying to give you lower calorie days and higher calorie days so that you can still get in good training sessions, but we're dropping in on days so that we can promote that fat loss. And we're just gonna take that out from carbs. So I think that, and that's probably a good thing to expand on because it is something I know that I do different than almost any other coach that I've ever seen coach because the standard is they carb cycle but then they replace the fat, they replace the carbohydrates with fat. And so the calories stay the same and we weren't doing that. It was low calorie, low carb. Yeah, it was a lower calorie, a medium calorie day and then a little like 10% over what a normal day would be. So we had established where her medium was. Well, you guys were underlating calories, exactly. So we were underlating calories through carbohydrates. And that's kind of how I told her to approach it. I'm like, approach it like that. We're not messing with carbs and keeping the calories the same. We're lowering carbs and lowering carbs again and we're reducing calories. And then I'm refeeding you and I'm giving you actually more than keeping you low and losing. We're kind of refeeding a little bit and the idea and theory behind that is that I'm gonna spike leptin back up. We go low, low, low, knowing that's gonna slow her down a bit. And I don't wanna... And there's also the, there's also, cause I do this with my clients too, is when on their high fat days, their calories are usually lower. And the reason is because fat is satiating. It's very satiating. So it makes sense to have somebody, if you're gonna have them eat more calories on a particular day to make it a higher carb day, because if I say, we're gonna have you eat, 1700 calories, low carb. So you're gonna eat all this fat. Usually by halfway through the day, I'm getting a text. It's like, I can't eat anymore. I feel so full. I think that was actually, I'm pretty sure. I know I use this strategy a lot with competitors. I'm pretty sure I did this with Melissa where we know days that we incorporate fasting, then the first meal she ate, I would say high fat, go after a lot of fat for your first meal. So that's a strategy that we incorporate inside there too. And yeah, there was so much different stuff. There was no set like macro profile, or I mean, every week we were tweaking something. And that, to me, again, and we say this on the show all the time, right? Which, oh, you have to bring this up, Melissa. I was just gonna say what I know you got into with your school, which was, I always say that, you know, we're always trying to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. So make the, and you brought this up in class. Which class was it? In my exercise prescription class. What's your teacher's name? What was the conflict? What was the problem? There wasn't a problem. She was, she gave us this graph. They were so, okay. So it's an exercise prescription class. So they're trying to teach us, I'm going to school for physical therapy and they're trying to teach us how to prescribe exercises to our patients or clients. And they gave us this graph with a bunch of thresholds on it. And I just didn't understand the graph. And I was asking her, I was like, I really don't get why there's so many thresholds on this graph. Can you explain it to me? And she was trying to, so she explained it. I don't really, I don't remember her explanation, but what came up in my mind was minimal amount of effort for to elicit the greatest outcome, which is what Adam would always say to me is what the goal is. And so I thought of that and I brought it up and I said, oh my coach always says, minimal effort for greatest outcome. Heaven forbid, you refer a coach in a fucking academia world, oh my God. No, they're all super, for the most part, open-minded people. And I mean there was, so there are two instructors for this class and one of them was like, oh yeah, that's exactly a nail that run on the head, done. And the other one kind of gave me a little bit of a, I don't know about what you're saying there because in the context of physical therapy, minimal effort is rarely, minimal, seeming to be minimal effort. I could see where you can argue that with physical therapy because with you, frequency and consistency and patterning good habits becomes Trump's actually a listening change. They're thinking minimal effort as an easy, what Adam is saying, I'll translate, very simple. So do the least amount of work for the most amount of change literally means the perfect amount of work. That's all it means. All it means is you're doing the right dose. And that's what I told them. But it's just, it's sticky jargon or wording or rhetoric when you're in the physical therapy realm where oftentimes the smallest amount of work is so taxing and it's like somebody can't even sit up straight and that, and even maybe sitting up, going all the way into a full set is just too much work. So to think about minimal effort, just that, just phrasing something in that way where you're making it seem easy by saying minimal effort, it's just the association. Yeah, the capacity further, right? So they're always trying to kind of increase range of motion or increase the work that's available there. I just don't think they don't like the word. Yeah, I think it's because it started, my coach told me, that's why I fucking think it's, I don't think it matters, how great it was. It applies to the same example you just gave. Person can't sit up, then we do less. We do less to get your change, it's just perfect. It's a perfect prescription, that's all it is. But yeah, I think I agree with Adam. I think starting any sentence with, my coach says, my bodybuilding coach says. I know, right? Instant discredit, right there. We don't believe anything he's saying. Oh, bro sign. So did it caught, was it just you and the two teachers? No, no, it was the whole class. Everyone was chiming in. Everyone was trying to give examples that were missing the mark. I mean, we're all noobs. It's like, we're all figuring it out. It wasn't like a super great intellectual debate that I have a whole lot to report on. Oh man. It was basically name calling for all that. So I mean, what was the consensus? Did we win? Did we win or we lose? I know, we won. Okay, good. That's all that matters. We were just wondering if we had to go up there in person. You ever need backup, you just stay there. We'll be your entourage. We'll show up. We won. Who wants to debate? What was the hardest part of the whole process from everything from the dieting, the training to even getting up on stage and presenting your physique? What was the hardest thing? The hardest thing was just feeling really isolated, I think, feeling like, because I mean, I like to socialize and go out with my friends. I like to have a drink. I like to, you know, do things that normal people do. And I just felt like I couldn't enjoy those things that I used to really enjoy because, I mean, they were more chores than whenever a friend would say, oh, let's hang out on Wednesday. I'd be like, okay, on Wednesday, I have to hang out with this person and I really don't want to, but I know I have to because it's a relationship that I want to fuel and I need to make sure, like making sure that I was keeping the connections that I had with my friends was a chore. I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't fun for me. Unless, you know, they were like, let's go for a hike. I'd be like, oh yeah, let's do that for sure. But if it was like, let's go for a drink, I was like, okay, I'll go with you and sit there and just wait for it to be over. I think that's the hardest part of competing is that piece right there is that people don't realize just the sacrifice that it takes to take your physique to that level and to time it at a certain time becomes very selfish, you know? Like if it was a lifelong goal to get fitter and better, like, oh, okay, well, you can still incorporate getting drinks and doing these social events and, you know, those are just minor setbacks to the overall journey, but when you have a goal in mind, and I think this is what I always try and explain to even people that don't want to compete but they have these goals that they feel so passionate about, like I want to lose 30 pounds, like it's so, and I want to lose it by my birthday, you know, and it's like, and it's doable, like it really is. Like I can mathematically break that down for somebody and say, yeah, yeah, you could get there, but you know that that's got to become like your priority. You know, you can't be like, oh, hey, well, Wednesday, I hung out with my girlfriend and we had some drinks, you know, like. Did you have any nutritional hacks or anything? Like, did you like have, I don't know, mineral water or something when they're drinking? Like, what'd you do, like when you're hanging out? Yeah, I drank a lot of sparkling water and I also drank a lot of BCAs and I know that there's no- Was your coach telling you to do this? Yeah, yeah. It was all about the BCAs. Cause I feel like Adam would tell you not to. Yeah, he always told me, he always, that was a good, that was something that I actually really liked about the way that Adam would coach me is he'd give me a lot of freedom to do what I felt like was the right thing to do. So I- You have to learn mistakes on your own. No, tell them how I presented BCAs to you or how you brought it up to me and then how I handled it so people understand. Well, I mean, when I told Adam that I drank BCAs, he was like, you don't need to do that. Don't do that. And I knew that already. I don't drink BCAs because I think I need them. I don't drink BCAs for any reason other than it's like a diet soda for me. It makes drinking water fun and it's pretty. And that's it. That's colorful. And I was okay with this answer. I said, okay, if it helps you not drink alcohol and not drink other poisonous shit for us and it's your one vice right here, I said it can stay in the diet until we get towards the end. Now I will say this about branched amino acids, the overconsumption of them will or can at least interfere with the production of certain neurotransmitters and has been connected with low levels of depression. So be careful with drinking all those branched amino acids. It's true. But you'd have to drink- You were doing all that. You'd have to drink, you'd have to take a lot of them but you know, if you're drinking it all day. Sal also got on me for microwaving my plastic. Oh yeah. I'm just fucking up to the right. No, other than that, I mean, I really liked any way that I could figure out how to increase the volume of my food was like, I'm there. I want my plate to look full as full as it can. So I ate so many vegetables. I was like a veggie monster and that's why I also, and that's part of the thing with carbs and fats for me is just the mental game of like fats are so little and carbs are so much. And right now I just wanna at least feel like I'm eating a lot. And it's crazy because I was never eating a little but it felt like a little. As I was pushing my meat and moving more and more and more, I was like, and not changing the way that I was, you're not bumping up my calories at all. I would really just like, I just always diverted towards okay, how can I make all my food look like it's more than enough? And there's a psychological component too where 1600 calories for a 115 pound girl is not bad at all, but there's a psychological component of knowing you can't eat more. You know what I mean? Like this is my target, I can't eat more. Now you feel restricted and now it feels like it's a little bit. Because I have clients that I work with who are heavier than you that I have them track and I'm not telling them to eat anything yet cause I'm just observing them and they're averaging like 1200 calories a day just cause they don't have that big of an appetite. But you better believe if I tell them that's all you can eat, then that psychological component starts to set in and you know that, oh, I can't eat more than this. This is all I'm allotted today. It feels restrictive. And so that's probably I would assume has got to be the most difficult part of all this coaching is the psychological piece. And that's another hack that I used for that was fasting cause I mean Adam never even really instructed me to fast but I would, I just chose to fast almost every day until like noon or one so that then I felt like I had all this food to eat for the rest of the day. It just made it so much easier if I could get through that first part of the day and now I like it. Now I choose to eat that way and I choose not to eat my food until later because I don't feel like I got used to it. Excellent, now you're gonna compete again. And now I am going to compete again. You got the bug. Are you coaching her still Adam? Are you doing it on your own now? Most everything she's done on her own so far. Like I haven't really, I mean, we talked yesterday about kind of the overall plan but yeah, she's pretty much. Have you changed to the focus sessions at all? I know you said hamstrings and delts. Are you changing anything? Is it still those? No, I think that's the same focus to keep developing them. Still doing the maps, aesthetics. Yeah, cause she's only, when you think about it, and this is what we talked about, right? Cause she asked me, hey, do you think I should do a show right again or should I wait for, cause she's qualified for national. So she could technically go to the big Miami show, go to the big Pittsburgh show or go to the big USA show and go after her pro card. And I said, well, there's a couple of things that we can do. One, you can do another show and just treat it as practice. Like we really don't give a shit what your placing is, get up there. I mean, obviously you're gonna get there and try and win, but I mean, we're going up there to just get reps in because we know we need to get better at our stage presence. You're not gonna become a pro until you get at least comfortable and you get your, at least your solid poses down. And she's at that point right now, right? She's gotten incredible shape. I think we smoked everybody on the stage. It wasn't even close. I think the only thing that we can sharpen is we could have came in a little bit leaner if we're talking about the professional level and if she could have, I think we're not presenting her. I think her physique is much better than how we presented it on stage. And this is, and I told her, I was very transparent from the beginning too. Like, I'm the worst to help you in this. Like, I'm like the worst posing pro. So, you know, here I am trying to help her and coach her on getting a, be a better poser. So I'm like, nothing is gonna get you better than just fucking reps. So getting in there and getting in there. So this next show doesn't really do anything for her as far as- Have you guys seen Adam's bikini routine? It's really good. It's fantastic. When he drinks a lot, he does it for us. Can you fit in your heels? I'm a bad men's physique poser. I am a horrific bikini poser. He looks like a noodle. Like a walking noodle. I can't even do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. So yeah, I'm over it. And so imagine that, right? Imagine me trying to teach her. So we were lucky. We actually had, oh my God, drew a blank on her name. Ramontha. Ramontha. Dave. Pedalaros. Yeah, his girl, one of his clients. She's an excellent poser. Yeah, so she came down and she spent some time. Her and Melissa got together quite a few times. But yeah, this next show- You filmed that. It's on YouTube, didn't we? Filmed the whole thing? Yeah, yeah. It's on YouTube. This show really, like I said, it's not her placing first place in this show right here isn't gonna do anything other than really just give her reps and then probably feel good to take the whole show if she can. So that really is what this show is about. How many weeks out is that? It's only three and a half weeks from now. So how do you, how are you structuring your training now? Do you go phase one, phase two, or do you go straight to phase three through the training with aesthetic type? So I've been bumping up my calories again. I just, I was eating, well, I got up to 2100 calories. And now I am cutting down again. So this is day two of being lower. Back to like 16 to 18, depending on how much I move that day. But this one, this time around is gonna be a lot different. It will, it's for when it's shorter and for two I'm in school and I'm sitting for like 10 hours a day at least. So that's really hard and it's already proven to be super, super tough because I go to class at 8 a.m. I have class until noon. I have one hour break in between for lunch. I don't take lunch, I run to the gym. I left as much as I can and I go back to class and then I'm in class until five. I go home, I study for another couple of hours and in between my studying I take a break and I go to the gym in my apartment complex and I left more and then I go to bed. So my day, my day for the past couple of weeks has been because I'm trying to increase volume which is, I mean that's coach's orders. So I'm lifting more and now I'm starting to move more so that's gonna call for me to get on the treadmill probably at like 5 a.m. in the morning. Really at this point when you think about somebody who is running back another show that's only three or four weeks out from the last show realistically we're not gonna make any real gains because we're putting her back in a caloric deficit. There was only a short period where we ramped the calories back up so the gain train ain't here right now. Like we're in a deficit, we're catabolic so the likelihood of her building right now is gonna happen. So it's just preserve, preserve and lean. Exactly, preserve and lean, get up on stage, present the best lean physique we can in that short period of time by doing it correctly and healthy and get up there and get reps in for, now of course her competitive ass I know wants to win but my attitude and coaching wise is like, listen it's not about that you've decided to pick a show that's four weeks right after your other one and if we wanted to really go and build your physique and re-sculpted and sharpen it more we would give ourselves some more time, right? We would go through a bulking phase and put some more muscle on her than come peel back down again but to run back another show I think this is a great point because I see this a lot with Bikini a lot of these girls they get trapped in this show after show after show and they don't have a pro physique yet. Like Melissa's a little bit different like I knew it when I met her that she already had the structure she'd put the real work in like I don't get the credit for that like she built that over years and years and years of training and I can see somebody and go, okay if I peeled her down to three, four percent body fat she's got what it takes to win she has the look for sure but I see a lot of Bikini girls that get into competitions because they just want to or the girlfriend does it and they really haven't been training correctly for very long or no one's really built a really good program or they're not genetically gifted and so they don't have the aesthetics and then they just get in this Bikini show after Bikini show and they're catabolic, catabolic, catabolic and it's like how are you gonna progress your physique if you're always catabolic and doing show after show after show and the only reason why I would even let her do something like that and be totally not against it is that she already has that physique I think she already has the pro physique I think she just needs to get reps under practicing, getting comfortable on stage and like I said, to win I think the overall or to go pro I think our conditioning could have been one week tighter, that's it maybe and even then I think she could technically win it what she brought I thought for sure we had the formula to go pro so. Well awesome, good luck in the next competition where can people find you on social media? And on Instagram at mellywolf, M-E-L-I-W-O-L-F-F You had to think about that. I was like I'm gonna spell my whole name right now. Excellent and the video of you posing you can find it on our YouTube channel Mind Pump TV, subscribe to it, we post a new video every single day also 30 days of coaching it's available for free at mindpumpmedia.com Thank you for listening to Mind Pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com The RGB Superbundle includes Maths Anabolic, Maths Performance and Maths Aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos The RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price The RGB Superbundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com If you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and until next time this is Mind Pump