2875: How to Look Your Best This Summer (With 30 Days or Less)

0:00Hi, I'm Jake Rez, also known as Nurse Jake. As a travel nurse, I've worked in all kinds of places, different settings, cities, and climates. Every assignment brings on a new challenge, which is why I always bring my figs. These scrubs are built for whatever the job throws at you. They're breathable, flexible, and comfortable in any environment. No matter where I land, I know they're going to keep me looking and feeling my best. And don't sleep on the details. The pockets, the features, the finishing touches, everything has a purpose and it makes a real difference when you're moving nonstop. The fit is clean, tailored, and super polished, and they come in a huge range of colors.

0:34In other words, they feel great throughout a 12-hour shift, and they always look good. See every healthcare professional on Instagram. If you work in healthcare or know someone who does, check out Figs and get 15 % off your first order at wearfigs.com with code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

1:07Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we talk about the hacks that you can use to look your best this summer, which is right now. By the way, all MAPS workout programs, every fitness program, every bundle, every guide, every mod, all of our fitness stuff, 40 % off right now for the massive summer sale. Go to MAPSFitnessProducts.com. Use the code SUMMER40. This episode's also brought to you by Roe Nutrition. So Roe Nutrition makes supplements and utilizes something called liposomal technology. This is a medical-grade delivery system.

1:45Adam Schafer:them. So what it does is they take compounds like NAD, I'm sure you've heard of NAD, boosts cellular energy, makes you feel much better, encapsulates it in liposomes, and this helps protect it through the digestive tract so you absorb more of it. They also have liposomal creatine. If you've tried creatine, but you get a little gastro distress, many people report zero gastro distress from liposomal creatine that Roe Nutrition provides. They have many products, by the way, not just NAD and creatine, but they also have TMG, TMG, excuse me, and much more. Again, it's all using liposomal technology.

2:21Adam Schafer:So you get more of what you're taking and it just works more effectively. Go check them out. Go to ronutrition.com. That's R-H-O nutrition.com forward slash discount forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump and get yourself a discount off of everything. All right, real quick. If you love us, like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Okay. This episode is all about hacks, hacks to help you look your best this summer.

3:00Adam Schafer:That's right now. Let's get to it. All right, Adam, I'm going to start with you. You got invited to a pool party in three or four weeks. You're going to go in three or four weeks. What do you do? What do you do to look your best in that short period of time? Let's say it's four weeks. We got 30 days. What are you doing?

3:19Sal Di Stefano:I mean, I don't think there's much of a difference between three and four weeks. I think I'm going to load build as much as I can until the final weeks, recognizing I'm not going to put on 20 pounds of muscle in three weeks.

3:31Adam Schafer:You're also not going to lose 20 pounds of body fat. Exactly.

3:34Sal Di Stefano:I'm not even going to go that angle. I feel like that's like the last week is to do like a little bit of leaning and pulling water is probably the direction that I'm going to go. It's like, okay, the next three weeks, the diet's going to be clean, but good amount of calories, push weights, carbs. I'm going to push carbs as high as I can, push water as high as I can. And then the final week, just like I would like a peak week for bodybuilding, I'm going to start to taper on carbohydrates. carbohydrates so like seven days out from the pool i'm going you know let's say and just to say hypothetical numbers i get up to four or five hundred carbs a day i'm gonna go down to 400 300

4:15Adam Schafer:200 100 so every day scales down yeah every day i'm scaling down that's interesting yeah a little

4:21Sal Di Stefano:bit and then and you could so by the way you could do this different you could go hard for like low like right away and then refeed to get in but i'd rather just taper really really low and just kind of pull pull it out deplete uh simultaneously kind of reducing my water intake that i've pushed over a gallon down to a gallon to a three quarters to a half a gallon a day and so i'm kind of doing that at the same time and then like the literally two days before i'm about to hit the pool now i'm low i'm keeping water kind of where it's at right with that half gallon or whatever and i'm starting to load carbohydrates so now i'm going to go back the other direction so that i'm i'm hitting you you know, peak fullness in my muscle bellies.

5:04Adam Schafer:Yeah, because so what you're talking about, a lot of what you're talking about is getting your muscles to deplete, right? So kind of pull the water out.

5:13Sal Di Stefano:Yeah.

5:13Adam Schafer:Pull things out and then fill them back up, which makes them appear larger and fuller. This is a bodybuilding strategy. Bodybuilders do this on show.

5:21Sal Di Stefano:I also think what matters south of that question is where I currently think I'm at, like body fat percentage. Like I said, I would push calories in carbohydrates going into that final week if i'm somebody who is relatively decent body fat percentage if i'm in like i'm probably mid-teens right now and so if i'm mid-teens or lower um making a difference of one percent down in body fat like cutting more probably like well it's a

5:48Adam Schafer:good it's a great point because i think realistically i mean aggressively you could lose in 30 days three percent four percent but your body fat that's at the most uh but you're going to end up probably losing some muscle with that i'd say more realistically you could lose like two percent yeah body fat in a 30-day period which isn't a ton and i just want people to understand that because i think sometimes people are like oh 30 days out i'm gonna lose tons of weight no what ends up happening they lose a lot of water muscle along with it so they end up hitting the beach or the pool looking kind of smaller and not leaner what you're saying is so

6:21Sal Di Stefano:important because you could absolutely lose a bunch of weight on the scale in 30 days yes 30 days that won't necessarily mean you look you won't look better that will be the mistake we'll be cutting calories running like the mistake that most people make is i got 30 days to look my best and because they think they need to go in the body fat direction they will go low cal lots of activity looking at the scale every day is their their barometer of i'm doing good or not and it's like yes i got down 15 pounds in those 30 days but it's like half of it was muscle and so you look worse or at best the same as you did when you started this whole journey where it's like i'd much not rather do that approach the only way i'm even thinking about doing cut for those first three weeks is if i'm at higher percent body fat then you know if i'm at 20 body fat bringing myself down to 18 body fat so i might stay in a cut till the final week but the final week still looks about the same so no matter what i'm gonna probably gonna i'm gonna pull down carbohydrates, pull down water, and then push back up.

7:25Adam Schafer:So the, the, the one time I can think of that I actually, um, approach something like this where I said, okay, I have 30 days was one year, uh, I was going to go visit my family in Italy. Um, and obviously we're going to be at the beach quite a bit. And so I did something totally different. Um, I, my diet was relatively clean at that point. I was already relatively lean. Again, you're not gonna make dramatic changes in 30 days. But what I did is I changed my training more than anything. And what I did is I slowly increased my volume and shortened my rest periods. And the only reason why I shortened the rest periods in my workouts wasn't because I was trying to get a cardio workout.

8:05Adam Schafer:It's because I was trying to fit more volume in the same hour. I would do the same. And so what I basically did is over four weeks is I increased my volume over time, did a little bit more supersets to cram in more. volume. My food intake stayed roughly the same, although I did, and now I was there for a whole month. So what I'm talking about would last a couple of days, but I did cut my carbs to make myself look like I was a little bit leaner. And then when I got there eating with my family, obviously you're eating everything there. And I looked great for like a couple of days doing that. But what I did is I just increased the activity through the strength training

8:44Sal Di Stefano:while maintaining uh i would do the same thing so that's part of why but that doesn't work long term right no no no this is when i think about uh this advice it's when i get somebody who talks to me about i've got a wedding day i'm going to be i'm going to be at a vegas i'm going to the miami beach for these these three days like like you have a you have a small period of time and this is very dual i mean uh like people that have been getting like shoots like for models things like that they understand most of them especially they've hired a trainer to help them with this like there is a way to optimize the way you look for a day and it can look dramatically different and the more in shape you are the more dramatic i think you can actually make yourself look the leaner you are the more dramatic yeah and so and that's why i bring up that point of like it does depend on where you're at like i know that i'm i'm i'm not lean right now but i'm lean enough that i can manipulate the way i look just by playing with carbohydrates and and literally pushing volume up and I wouldn't be pushing volume up while simultaneously cutting calories.

9:47Sal Di Stefano:That's why I made the point of like, I would actually be pushing calories, pushing carbohydrates and also increasing volume in my training. I wouldn't be doing that while cutting calories, like cutting calories and pushing volume and training is counterproductive.

10:01Adam Schafer:No, no, no. I was, I was not, my, my caloric output was naturally going up because my volume was going up, but my food intake stayed roughly the same. It wasn't really changing much of it except for the carbohydrate manipulation. Also, another thing is creatine is great. If you're 30 days out and you're not taking creatine, this will fill up your muscle bellies. Now, what scares people with this is their weight goes up on the scale. And typically women are more afraid of this than guys, but they'll take creatine and be like, am I going to gain weight on the scale? Yeah, you might gain two or three pounds.

10:31Adam Schafer:But it's your muscles being more hydrated. And so what happens is in a bikini or a bathing suit, you kind of look like you have a little bit of a pump in comparison to how you looked before. You're not bloated. You just have more, your muscles are just more full. And so if you don't take creatine, like 30 days is enough time to take creatine to get some of those effects of a little bit of that muscle fullness that you can get from it.

10:54Sal Di Stefano:Justin just wears the t-shirt with the guy with the abs. I was going to say, you guys want to hear my thing? Let me hear what you would do. Haircut? Hey, actually, that's fair. Spray tan. Oh, do you need a spray tan? Spanx. No, you don't. hey do you know that what's the no but i do a haircut for for for every shade i forget however for every shade darker you are it's supposed to make you look a certain percentage leaner no yes it's science come on yes there is science to this yeah though there's a reason why we we all get tanned up as like put layers on before you go like yeah it's gonna no do you really do spray tan no i have one time like so i'm like trying to think of why as you guys are talking if I've done this like crash, you know, hustle to look better.

11:41Sal Di Stefano:Tell me the story where you spray tan. Please tell the story where you spray tan because I don't know about this. It was for like when I was doing a website shoot for myself because it's like, you know, like somebody had convinced me that I was too white, you know, for camera. And I'm like, so? And they're like, well, here. Yeah, I got some spray tan where they just like stand you up and spray it. With the airbrush thing? like slightly orange and then they just were able to you know manipulate it with like photoshop but yeah i i did that i basically did that and then i reduced my calories obviously and i did like every wrong thing you could do like where i'm like doing cardio and i'm like you know totally like depriving myself um but yeah if i was to do it all over again it would be totally i would come to you guys for advice can you can you think of a time oh this is for all of you or both of you like what uh like when you looked your absolute best trying to do that like i you probably yours was your photo shoot that you did for your oh for maps anabolic yeah was that that when you think back at times like this was the best uh physique i ever presented i think it looked

12:50Adam Schafer:i looked the most dramatic for that but i don't think i looked the best i was really lean i mean i was four percent body fat and i was like really lean yeah what was your favorite version and you More like 7 % because I was healthier. Oh, interesting. If you saw me in person, I looked probably better. Yeah, yeah. I had gone to, what's that place where people take houseboats? Is it the Delta? Yeah. Oh, yeah, Delta. We had gone to the Delta. By the way, you guys have been to the Delta? Yes. That place is interesting. It's a little bit of, it's like that bar scene in Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.

13:25Adam Schafer:Where am I, dude? Anyway, I went with lots of creatures. Listen, sometimes you get good ones.

13:33Sal Di Stefano:Listen, it was wild, dude. There's a nickname for it. I cannot think of it right now. But you're, God, what's it called? Is it Ski Beach? I don't know. I think Ski Beach is out there. Yeah, I think I went to that. It's been a long time since I've been out there.

13:44Adam Schafer:Yeah, because we got on the houseboats, and we drove it to a place, and we'd anchor down. Yeah, and everybody's. And then people start pulling up next to you, and there's a lot of characters out there. Yeah. But I was like 7%, and I just felt healthy. And I think I looked the best. Yeah. 4 % was just, it was like, okay, for pictures to look dramatic yeah but i don't want to look i don't think that looked yeah none

14:05Sal Di Stefano:of my so none of my stage photos or me on stage do i think is my mine either it was always no not always but many times it was after two or three days afterwards was the my favorite look now that again to your point when you're on stage the more shredded you look the better it is but then when

14:27Adam Schafer:you see yourself in person oh yeah or even even when i'm in the mirror i'm looking at myself in

14:32Sal Di Stefano:the mirror i don't like that look but i know that on stage with the lights with the five coats of tanning all over you yeah you know it just looks different it looks it looks different than what walking around does switch in my programming though like in more hypertrophy for a month did do a dramatic oh i bet that was because you don't train that way it really did make a difference especially my arms and my chest was like you know what's more defined yeah what interesting two

14:56Adam Schafer:things I did that I noticed because these are like, these are like aesthetic things. Okay. So you're not going to build, uh, this is not a general, well, maybe it is for the core. So here's what I do with my, my core is I, I, I train them to build them. This made a big difference. Like to build my abs and obliques, not just train them, not do like a thousand reps and do a lot of twisting exercises. And just to like, I'm like, I'm, I'm actively going to try to make my abs bigger because i know when they're bigger you're going to see them at higher body fat percentages

15:28Sal Di Stefano:huge difference in the way they look so you bring that up what a great add that to my strategy that i said that i would do if i had four weeks because i don't think a lot of people train abs like that no no and i'm telling you that i would be pushing carbs and calories and volume like you're saying and another place to push the volume would be ab training great idea yeah great idea to do that because you could be at 13 to 15 % body fat and see visible abs if you build your abs. That's right. Otherwise, most people have to get to single digit or under 10 % body fat.

15:58Adam Schafer:So I used to, before this, before I figured that out, I would have to get down, I would get down like 9%, 10%, which is, that's like what they would call six pack territory, right? Yeah. But if I wasn't flexing, you could tell I was lean, but you couldn't really see my abs. And I would see sometimes guys at the beach or even at the gym that really built, like i remember one time i seen this dude uh who had he had like a tight it was kind of like a spandex like vest on and his abs were sticking out of his shirt i'm like damn you can see his he's not even flexing like you can see his abs yeah and that's a guy like that yeah that's when it dawned on me i was like his abs are developed mine are just lean yeah but they're not developed yeah so i started doing decline sit-ups with weight so i started doing real slow like i'm like okay i'm gonna build them so i'm gonna do i'm actually getting strong abs instead of doing a million reps.

16:47Adam Schafer:So I would hold a weight and I'd unroll and come up and I'd try to keep the reps low. So whatever weight would allow me to do eight reps or 10 reps with lots of resistance. And I rest three minutes in between for ab work, which before I was like, there's no rest. You just keep going. Uh, I started doing dragon flags, the exercise that Rocky does in Rocky four. Um, I started doing, uh, ab rollouts, uh, and I do them off my knees, but real slow and crunch up. and I would do heavy twists, heavy chops. And dude, in a very short period of time, my abs went from being just lean and flat to like sticking out.

17:21Adam Schafer:And it made a huge difference. And then I had the six pack without even -

17:25Sal Di Stefano:You know, like you telling that, because I think that's such great advice, Justin bringing it up, that makes me go like, you know, what's funny is we're all probably in very different places, both body fat percentage, training volume, where our physiques are now. Strategically, I bet if we each had four weeks, strategies would look different. Like, I totally think that your point. Yeah, you need tan. Obviously. But so your hypertrophy training would be a brilliant strategy. It's a novel stimulus. You don't train aesthetics like that very often. Your body's going to respond really well to it. Yeah, and I'd want more emphasis, I guess, on my arms and back and more width.

18:01And I think that would help balance it out. And you're already really lean. I'm relatively lean.

18:06Adam Schafer:I probably don't know what I'm at right now, 10, 11. Oh, you think you're 10, 11?