Melissa_Neill: [00:00:00]  I was pretty active. Yeah. I enjoyed sport. I did ballet of all things and gymnastics. And then there comes a time when you have to choose between the two and at school, I was always quite active. I took part in a lot of sports. Yeah. So as a child, pretty active.

Kevin_English: [00:01:39] And did you maintain that through most of your life or what happens after school? Do you, maintain some of that activity?

Melissa_Neill: [00:01:46] well, as a teenager, I kind of got into the club scene and going out and partying. So the sport just took a bit of a backseat. Really? I just became a bit, a bit of a party animal. I enjoyed in my early twenties, the summer of love in the UK, which is kind of like all the house music acid house music scene.

So yeah, the fitness lifestyle side of things completely took a back seat.

Kevin_English: [00:02:14] I think a lot of our listeners can relate to that. Right. Many of us were as kids, we were active. There was less distractions electronically when we were younger, obviously. So there was much more of that get outside and play. A lot of us still play some sport. And then in our twenties, kind of that takes a back seat as we were distracted by other activities.

So you're going along. You're in this party scene. What, what happens next in your life?

Melissa_Neill: [00:02:39] Well, I kind of settled down and got married really. And then I'm in my mid thirties, I did kind of decide to start getting active again. And it was prior to having my two youngest children, I did start sort of in my mid thirties, taking an interest in lifting weights and also running. And the two things now I realize now they actually don't go very well together, long distance running and lifting weights, because the thing is long distance running, you know, I used to sort of do half marathons that actually breaks down your muscle and you lose muscle or so one's kind of trying to build muscle

and the other one is, is getting rid of muscle in a way. And so, but because I was young, I think I sort of got away with it, Kevin. It was okay. Yeah. It's certainly not something I could do now and really see or experience results, which I'm sure we're going to get to.

Kevin_English: [00:03:40] Yeah, absolutely. And to your point, it is really tough to build muscle while you're also doing endurance events. So let's back up and pick that apart just a little bit. How did you get introduced to weightlifting?

Melissa_Neill: [00:03:53] Used to like a magazine called muscle fitness, hers. And it's, it's a really big magazine. Isn't it? In the, in the U S. But they also sell it here over in the UK. And I started sort of picking over images because they sort of tell you in the fitness industry and I wasn't in the fitness industry at the time to kind of look at the cutout images and put them on your fridge, just a sort of motivational tool.

So I've got this magazine, I thought some images on. And then I approached one of the personal trainers at the gym and he was luckily he was a competitive bodybuilder and I showed him the pictures and he just said, Oh yes, I can help you with that. And he was absolutely brilliant. But he was a really good personal trainer, one of the best I think I've ever had.

Cause a lot of them give you quite bad information, but he wasn't afraid at all of working with a woman to kind of build muscle that what he did tell me to do, and this is where I kind of switched off, was actually start weighing out my food. And he showed me all his meal prep, which was basically chicken and broccoli

in those days. It's got a bit better now for bodybuilders, but in those days it was basically chicken and broccoli. And rice, I think, and I just thought, well, that looks really dull. So this is what you need to be eating and you need you'll get really good results, which he was right. And I just thought, but I didn't want to do that.

I don't want to be weighing out my food. I don't want to eat that kind of food. And I looked pretty good on what I was doing because your body, when you're in your thirties, you find that your body's more forgiving and you can get away with so much more. And I was actually making some pretty good progress building muscle, which at the same time, you know, I was doing this, this running as well.

And you know, looking back on the pictures I made, I sort of went through a body recomposition. That's what it is. But then in my late thirties, I think it was 38. I got pregnant and that kind of all went out of the window really. I went into my pregnancy looking absolutely amazing and then sort of had the child and he's 15 now.

And so got back in shape really quickly because I went into the pregnancy in really good shape. But then when the other child came along, that was a different story. And by then I was 41 and I'd kind of put on a lot more body fat and just found it was really difficult to shift. And I had, but information really, because what, what I thought I would do was

do the running to lose the fat. And that's actually the wrong thing to do for women over 40, doing lots of cardio activity, which is kind of what common sense would tell you to do was the wrong thing to do. And I actually just started gaining more and more body fat, even though I so say thought I was doing the right things.

Kevin_English: [00:07:01] Melissa makes an insightful point here. The prevailing exercise wisdom for weight loss is to do tons of cardio to hit the treadmill. But exercise science is beginning to paint a different picture. Especially for people over 40. We're learning that excessive cardio is not the best exercise modality for healthy weight loss.

In fact, tons of cardio without a strength training component often leads to a dangerous condition known as skinny fat. Skinny fat is essentially a term used to refer to a person who has a normal weight and BMI, but has a poor muscle mass to body weight ratio. Melissa obviously had a great introduction to weight training early on.

And at the same time was introduced to the importance of nutrition via the classic chicken broccoli and rice bodybuilding diet. But after two children, she's hitting the cardio pretty hard in an attempt to get back into shape. I asked Melissa where she went from there.

Melissa_Neill: [00:07:55] well, I mean, I was trying sort of that kind of thing, doing a little bit of strength training because I've done it in the past, but not a lot. And I hadn't connected the dots between the strength training was the thing that I needed to be prioritized. And then meanwhile, I was sort of going through a marriage break down and eventually I got divorced.

And I was just very, very unhappy and depressed going through a marriage breakdown and divorce. Not just with my physical appearance, just mentally and emotionally. I was in sort of really bad way, you know, really, really bad, really struggled to get out of bed I would say I was sort of in depression, but instead, instead of turning to alcohol and drugs, like most people do

I actually started to turn to exercise because I thought that's going to be the thing that's going to help me through. I think it's because I'd had a background in fitness before, and I knew that when I was sort of in my mid thirties and what I recall. Almost a physical peak, but I feel I'm in better condition now than I was in my mid thirties.

I knew that that could help you mentally in lots of areas of your life. So I thought, well, I'm going to turn to exercise. And then a mum on a school run said to me, you know, why don't you come along to CrossFit? So I thought, Oh yeah, that sounds all right. And she sort of described it. And if anyone listening doesn't know, it's kind of mixture of sort of powerlifting and gymnastic six, all sorts of things.

It can be really dangerous. But yeah, so I thought, well, that sounds all right. Cause you know, I'd done lifting weights before, but I'd never done power lifting. And so I sort of went along to that. Didn't really sort of change my body shape, but  it was really working in terms of my mindset and actually getting somewhere, going and do some fitness and taking my mind off my feeling low all the time.

And it was really good for that. And what it did is it gave me some skills. So that's, you know, I'm actually not a big fan of CrossFit, but what it did give me is learning how to work really, really hard, pushing your body really hard. Like you, like, you've never pushed it before. And then I learnt how to do a pull up, which I'd never done a pull-up in my life,

ever before, because women, we believe we've got the self fulfilling prophecy that we don't have good upper body strength, which is not true at all. We can build our upper body strength and that's what I've did, but I always believed I didn't have good upper body strength. So I learned, I learned to pull up and that built my confidence mentally being able to do a pistol squat, a pull up, starting to squat, you know, really ridiculous, kind of think as a hundred kilos, which I can't remember what that that's over 200 pounds.

And so, I mean, there were some very strong women at this you know, because it's men and women, but equal amounts of women tend to do that sport. But what I did find Kevin is I was picking up a lot of injuries and most people would tell you this when they, I did that for two years and I thought I'm going to have to stop.

And so that's when I decided to switch to bodybuilding. That's when I thought I'm going to join a gym, I'm going to focus on strength training, and I'm going to sculpt my body.

And that's when I started to understand the effect it can have in terms of body re composition. So reducing your fat levels, but actually increasing your muscle mass. Because as we get older, both men and women, we losing my muscle mass. Meanwhile, I was going, you know, starting to get perimenopause or, and that's when you're going to, you lose a significant amount of muscle mass.

And so I was spending time in the gym, building up my strength and that enabled me. Then I sort of discovered it by accident in some ways it enables me to drop more body fat, but it was something I knew I could turn to because I've done it in the past. And so I didn't have a problem with technique and obviously CrossFit has strengths

exercises in it. So kind of knew my way around the free weights area anyway, from my mid thirties. But what I did do was hired myself, a trainer, and one of the mistakes that he, you know, you tend to get all that sort of old school sort of training as he was telling me to do high reps and sort of lightweight high reps lightweights.

That's what he was telling me to do, which completely wrong. And I didn't like doing that because I'd been doing the CrossFit and I'd worked out with a strength trainer before with a, with a bodybuilder before I liked doing, you know, medium to heavy weights, heavy lifting. You know, reps sort of eight to 12 range sometimes drop down to four or five.

And sometimes it's okay to put in a few high reps on specific exercises here and there, but in the main, what women over 40 we should be doing, and this is more enjoyable anyway, is lifting heavy, doing compound movements. And that's what I was starting to do. So I ignored this trainer so I looked around and thought, he's not getting any results with the women he's working with.

They're all overweight and coming in and seeing him. And they'd been seeing him for years and not seeing results. I thought I'm just going to go back to what I know, which was lifting heavy. And doing compound movements. And that's when I started to see results, I started to see my body was actually changing shape and transforming.

I was losing body fat and not doing a massive amount of cardio because I don't really like lots of cardio, you know, I, I don't enjoy it that much. And you don't, you don't really need to be doing, ton of cardio anyway. And as we've just discussed, it's detrimental. If you start getting on the treadmill and like doing an hour of running or doing an hour of outdoor running, it's going to be detrimental to your strength training.

So I tended to just do hit. High intensity interval training. A lot of that kind of thing or circuit training circuit is more enjoyable. It's interesting.

So it was kind of hit circuit training, strength, training, and that's what I did. And then, you know, I decided I want, I'd been thinking about it in the back of my mind for number of years, but I thought wouldn't it be a fantastic idea if I could compete in bikini competitions. I knew a couple of people that did it, and I thought this is something I can sort of push myself to do and just see if I could do it in my late forties, early fifties, it was kind of in the back of my mind and then age 52,

so it was 2019, I kind of decided yet that's the route I want to go. I want to see, I want to see if I can do this challenge and I want to see what it's like. I want to see if I can get to that level of muscularity and leanness. So that's what I did.

Kevin_English: [00:15:29] Yeah. Fantastic. So in your fifties to make that decision to get on stage in a bodybuilding bikini Competition is amazing, but I want to back up a little bit on pull apart some of your story here. So you had mentioned that you went to a trainer and got that very, unfortunately, that very classic advice for women is going to be either a lot of cardio or a lot of cardio mixed with the low weights and the high reps, because everybody knows that

heavyweights is going to make you bulky and manly and not look feminine. Right? I mean, that, that seems to be still the prevailing thought around women and weights. And you just don't see, when you walk into say a global gym, you see a lot of the women are over there in the aerobic section or with the very light weights.

And it's certainly it's changing now, right? There's people like you out there and there's more and more voices saying, Hey wait.

So  what advice would you have for women who are concerned with lifting heavy? Because I think that's still a concern.

There are women out there saying, well, I don't want to, I don't want to get big. I don't want get bulky.

Melissa_Neill: [00:16:31] Yeah, really good point. And you know, it is something particularly women in my age group, I would say younger women. And that's when she's in thirties, because a lot of the fitness influencers in YouTube is out there. They're not afraid of going and doing heavy stuff in the gym, but I think it's something that older women are a little bit more afraid of.

Because we've grown up with all that kind of, you know, aerobics and sort of a different style of fitness. So it's a different mindset, a different way of thinking, isn't it. And I think it's just really, I do actually think that the messages starting to get out there, Kevin, and it's about sort of showing and not telling.

So in a lot of my YouTube videos, I put up the pictures of when I was sort of had more body fat on me. And I show that. And then they look at how I look now and how I looked on stage. And I see this is how I got like this through lifting heavy weights. So if you show people the pictures and as you said, if they can see me, I'm not perhaps that classic bodybuilder shape that people might think of, which is known as thicker in the competitive world.

So it's much more muscular. I started off in a section called bikini, which is how it sounds. It's like somebody that looks good on the beach. So what you look like, some people would describe it as being toned. I don't like to use the word toned because that actually is having muscle on your being toned is having muscle on you.

But that's the kind of look. And even though I've gone up to a bigger category now called fitness, it's more like looking athletic. That's what I would say. You look like you don't actually. To get bulky. It's actually really difficult. I mean, I took six months out to put some muscle on a significant amount of muscle in

2020 on my lower half of my body, my legs and glutes. And I'm a natural athlete and it's actually really difficult to get bigger. You know, you have to go into a calorie surplus and, you know, I was lifting, I was I've got to think of pounds now, 600 pounds on my leg press and doing over 200 pounds squats, and over 200 pounds, hip thrust, that kind of thing.

And you know, you have to go into a calorie surplus, which is eating more calories than your body needs to be able to put the muscle on. And, you know, I was training my legs. Three times a week to get any kind of where we're putting a significant amount of what people might call bulk, but they probably still look at me and think, well, you don't look bulky.

And most of the women that look so say bulky, unfortunately they probably take drugs. Most of them to get like that. And as a woman and particularly as a woman over 40 or over 50. You can't get bulky from lifting heavy weights. You just can't, it's impossible. You're going to get what would look like muscle definition?

That's all you're going to get. You just cannot get that shape that you see, that you might see in the competitive body world, where the women are massive. You can't get like that without performance enhancing drugs or taking years and years and starting when you're young. So that's really the reassurance.

And then I just show people pictures and say, this is what I looked like when I wasn't strength training and I was doing cardio, and this is what I look like on strength training. And usually people are then sort of convinced about it.

Kevin_English: [00:20:20] Yeah. And thanks for sharing that. I think that's very, very well said and you're right. I think that certainly that perception is changing, you know, as you go through the supermarket and you see the women's fitness magazines, women that are on the cover, they're looking less and less like they were when maybe we were kids.

Right. We're kind of that very kind of skinny kind of look. And it's more of a tone deaf to your point in athletic. Look, I think that CrossFit has done a fantastic job of putting barbells into a lot of female hands as well as older people as well, right? To your point that we can argue about maybe some of the safety and in doing some of those movements as, as competitive, but or for time.

And I can certainly see where the CrossFit has come into your, as I see what you're doing these days, you're you talk a lot about lifting heavy and the importance of that. And you also talk about the importance of hit and that intensity. And I imagine that you've probably got some of that from that couple of years of CrossFit background.

Cause certainly they're all about that intensity and the metabolic conditioning. And I see you doing things like thrusters and whatnot and your videos, and I'm guessing some of that came from those years as well. So I want to switch gears just a little bit here and let's, talk about what a workout week looks like for you today.

Melissa_Neill: [00:21:33] Okay. It's pretty intense at the moment because I'm getting ready to compete.  I do five strength training sessions per week.

So that's three lower body, two upper body. And the reason you can do that because you shouldn't. overwork your muscles, but your glutes are a little bit different in that you can actually work your glutes. They're one muscle that you can work a little bit more without having so much rest time in.

And I've been trying to build my glutes and legs, as I've said. And then I do four walking sessions per week. I'm a big fan of walking 45 minutes. I use a weighted vest, which is about 18 pound weighted vest for my walking. But you know, anybody listening to this don't, you don't have to do it with weighted voice vest.

I'm a big, big fan of walking. I do about three jump rope sessions per week. And then I do kettlebell swings for my cardio as well. So, and then I do one 45 minutes circuits training session.

So that's a lot of training now. I don't do it like that all year round. Sometimes if I'm going through sort of building phase, I'm just doing strength training. I'm not really doing any cardio activity. And then when I do the cardio activity, I might do like 15 minutes, three times a week. But at the moment, because I've got to get the body fat down, I'm preparing for show, I'm competing, I'm getting onstage, it's stepping up.

The intensity of my training is pretty full on. It will go up because as I move into next week, The six week mark is when it really gets solid with the training. There's a lot. And normally you're doing cardio twice a day, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone else. And it's just for that six weeks leading up to the show and then, you know, any other time of the year, I wouldn't be doing that kind of, and I don't recommend it for other people, but we have to go as competitors.

We have to go to extreme measures, particularly competitors over 50, because we've got to get really lean. And it's just not that easy. Getting really lean as you know, Kevin. It's hard. You have to make sacrifices. The diet is pretty, it will get pretty extreme. It's not too bad at the moment. I'm on about 1800 calories, which is not particularly low.

People might be surprised cause they think, you know, 1800 calories. Well, that sounds all right. It will go down a bit. It probably won't get to anything under 1600 calories, but what happens then is your level of tiredness goes really high, six weeks leading up to the show. You're kind of walking around like zombie pretty much all the time.

So yeah, the, the training is not that's me. That's what I do. I don't recommend it for anyone else.

Kevin_English: [00:24:43] Yeah, no, that's, that's an incredible amount of volume. And to your point, yes. It's. If you're six weeks, seven weeks out from a show, this is probably atypical, but it leads me nicely into my next question. As someone over 50, especially when you're at this stage of, of contest prep, what does recovery look like?

What are you doing for recovery to ensure that you're able to work at this intensity in this volume?

Melissa_Neill: [00:25:10] Well, that's a really good point. Yeah. Because it's really important that you get your sleep in and it's important for any menopause or women to focus a lot on getting sleep because rest and recovery is good for muscle building. And it's also important for weight loss and our hormones and everything else will be coming into play.

Hormones are an important part of weight loss anyway, but as we get older, that becomes more important. So what I tend to do is I might have a sleep a half an hour sleep in the day. Just to sort of be, to get a bit of recovery in.

So it can be difficult, you know, fitting in all the training, typically if you're commuting or something like that as well, but you've just got to make sure you're getting your rest in. And it's the coach, so I have a coach knowing when it's time to pull back. So what she's done this week, because next week we're going into six weeks.

She's put more calories in for me. so I've actually got something called a re feed where you do more carbohydrates. My fats are increased. I'm actually having a de-load week with my strength training, which means that you go 50% of what you're normally lifting. And so I'm doing that as a recovery for this week, before I go on the final push in the final six weeks.

And that's really important because it's going to be draining. I'm going to be tired. You get this terrible brain fog as well when you're competing. So I have the double whammy of menopausal brain fog, and it's called prep brain where you just forget things. Your mind is all over the place, because if you're putting yourself through a physical test and it's really challenging, it's really challenging physical test preparing for, you know, a bodybuilding show.

Physically, you feel tired, but mentally your brain starts to go as well. So it is quite a lot of the challenge and your mind psychologically, your mind plays tricks with you.  So yeah, it's just really, really important. It's certainly important for me that I work with a coach, which is quite ironic because I'm a fitness coach.

But to get me to that point of getting on stage, I need it psychologically. I need having a coach to, to tell me what to do because my mind I'll look in the mirror and think, wow, I don't look any different. This is terrible. It's all not working. And your coach is a person will assess and, and actually be objective about it.

Because now when I look back on my leanness point in 2019, which was the last time I competed, I was so lean. I look back on it and I almost feel a little bit tearful about how lean I was, but at the time I didn't see it. You look in the mirror and you see your old self looking back on you, you, you just don't see what your, you know, what you're actually achieving.

So you need somebody else with an objective pair of eyes. And that really knows what's going on. That's got the experience that can just help you to get through this process, because it's really tough. And I was talking to another competitor and she's over 40. I've had her on my YouTube channel a couple of times.

And she was saying, she's done all these tough challenges. You know, marathons, these really long bike rides. And she said, this was the most difficult one compete.

Kevin_English: [00:28:52] that prepping, prepping for a bodybuilding show. Yeah.

Melissa_Neill: [00:28:55] It's hard mentally. It's really hard. It can be quite lonely as well. Cause you don't want to be going on and on about it to your friends and family members.

And also they're probably worried telling you to eat. Cause you look a little bit and  and stuff.

Kevin_English: [00:29:13] Right. Which is the point, if you're trying to get down to

Melissa_Neill: [00:29:16] Yeah. You look absolutely terrible. You kind of have to, you know, I had to brief my partner, that it was just going to be for certain amount of time for a couple of weeks. And then I was going to put more body fat on after the show and I wouldn't look like that forever. It was just for the show that you look like that otherwise it's a bit worrying for everyone around you.

Kevin_English: [00:29:39] so that, yeah, that brings up a good point. I think that a lot of people don't realize that when you get into the extreme end of fitness, there's a bit of a social issue there, right. Because you're very, very focused on your workout. That's a key priority, but I think even more so is that nutrition piece when you're really dialing in nutrition, certainly you would be seven, six weeks out from a show, right?

you're not going to be going out with friends and having drinks or having, it would be tough to, to be social in a lot of ways. And certainly as you're dieting down, I can see how family and friends might say, Hey, are you sure this is healthy? And yeah, that certainly could be some social repercussions there.

All right. So you'd mentioned a couple of things there for recovery and the first is one of my favorite sleep. Absolutely. We could all use more sleep. And I think certainly as we get older and we're pushing our bodies to do more and more sleep as the number one go-to. And I'm, you had also mentioned in there kind of the de-load in your case as you're doing this progressive overload and specifically preparing for a show to actually have a coach will say, okay, we're going to drop the weights.

We're going to add a little bit of calories to help you recover that way. And we had talked several times about your, we just mentioned a couple of times about nutrition, but obviously nutrition for show prep is one thing let's kind of leave that aside. Talk to us a little bit about just your thoughts in general for that the woman over 40 population.

what is your advice around general nutrition for women over 40, who are looking to become more active and improve their body composition?

Melissa_Neill: [00:31:10] I think that's a brilliant question. I so glad you asked me this, because it's something that I actually finds I'm fighting a battle against more than the bulky thing. The getting bulky with strength training, it's women taking their calories too low and going on low carbohydrate diets like Keto.

That's the big problem for me. And it actually just doesn't work. But the problem is, is that women were told, and it's the classic thing that it's a bit like the taking the reps high and doing low weights. we're told by doctors to take our calories low as a way of losing weight when we're over 40 to take the calories really ridiculously low.

And I just believe that anything under 1400 calories is just not sustainable in the long-term. You're going to do yourself some long-term damage and all that stuff around sort of dieting down really quickly to kind of get results will in the long term, just make you gain more weight. And so I don't like low carbohydrate diets.

I tell you why Kevin. So we already established that women over 40. What we need to do is build muscle because we've lost muscle through the aging process and a diet with carbohydrates is a really key component of that. So what I ask women to do is always eat

both protein and people understand about protein generally and carbohydrate before they strength train directly. Before we strength, train, we should be eating carbohydrate and protein. What's that going to do? It's going to enable us to have better performance in the gym or at home.  And it was a massive game changer for me

personally, because I was doing intermittent fasting, which I'm also not a big fan off for women over 40. I think it can be great for men. I don't think it's good for, you know, menopause or women and women over 40 intermittent fasting, and then one of the reasons being is that you should eat directly before strength training and directly after.

So unless that intimate fasting fits around that, then that's not going to work. So, yeah, carbohydrate and protein, as they're both really key components of muscle building and the carbohydrates going to just give us performance to be able to, you know, more strengths during our workouts. So I'll give you an example of this leading up to a show and I wouldn't recommend anyone does this, but we take our carbohydrates out for about five days

prior to the show. And then we put them back in the day before the show. So what that does is it depletes our glycogen stores and then we put it all back in. So our muscles look really pumped the day before the show, we have this huge intake of carbohydrates. But what I know is when I, I reduce my carbohydrates, so they go quite low.

I think I have one meal of carbohydrate per day when I'm reducing my carbohydrate. I can't lift. There's no strength. There's no strength there at all. I cannot do it. So although I've had protein, I cannot do the strength training without the carbohydrate. And I really notice it. So I always encourage women

you know, we should be in a good amount of food and it's going to give us the energy to actually function when we're going through the menopause. Anyway, we don't want to be taking our calories really low, some good carbohydrates. So sort of things like oats and rice and potatoes are great, whole grains, all that kind of thing.

And that's going to help us get through the day and actually spreading our meals out because of our hormones and the way that our hormones work as women, it's better to spread our meals through the day. So we don't get those sugar cravings and all that sort of thing that it. It's very prevalent in women over 40. Sugar

craving sort of stop it, spreading the meals through the day and having protein at each meal and not taking your calories particularly low is just a really great way forward. And the reason I know about some of these things that don't work is because I've done them myself. Cause we've we've, we get a lot of poor advice.

So when you look online for women over 40, or just say, you know, go on a thousand calories a day or something like that, you know, which is just, it's not, you can't live like that. That's not a life visit. That's just pain every day consuming a thousand calories to be in shape. And you know, when I not sort of preparing for a show I'm on over 2000 calories per day, And that enables me to get my strength training and have proper performance either in the gym or at home and build muscle.

And what the muscle is going to do is burn off fat. And so we're going to have increased metabolism. So, you know, I'm probably saying the opposite of what a lot of the information out there says is increasing your calories, eating more food, which will enable you to train much harder, lift heavier, and therefore what your body's going to do is turning to a fat burning machine.

And that's what's happened to me. So you're going to get much better metabolism because you've got that muscle mass that's constantly burning fat. And even when I'm kind of bigger and heavier, I've still got abs. I don't do any kind of situps. I'm doing them at the moment to get ready for a show. But at the times of the year, I don't do any kind of situps or anything like that.

And I've got, you know, a waistline I've got abs because I'm doing the strength training and I've got the nutrition where I'm getting enough nutrition in my body to feed it correctly, you know? And when I go to the doctors and I have tests done and everything, and they, they look at me and they just say, well, you know, you're really fit they actually don't believe some of them said to me, they thought they had the wrong records when I've gone in to see my, see the doctor, because they've lived 1967.

They said, Oh, this is the wrong record. Sorry, I'll pull up your records. And like the, and then I had say to them, actually, that is me. And they, they can't believe it. And I think sometimes they can't believe my protocol as well, because they probably think even doctors would tell women to do lots of cardio, take your calories low and all that sort of thing.

And that's no life visit. That means you're existing on quite a small amount of food and you're going to be miserable and you're going to be hungry, which is that's not life visit. You don't want to be hungry all the time. What I do, I'm hungry.

Kevin_English: [00:38:22] right. And to your point, it's, it's simply not sustainable. Right? And that's the big problem with the diet, especially that those really low calorie kind of lose weight, fast diets. They just, they don't work because they're not sustainable. It's not a lifestyle change, a small lifestyle change that you can sustain over a long period of time, or actually weave into the fabric of your actual existence.

Right. You're just not going to be able to make these drastic changes for a short period of time and expect that to have a long-term result. I love the way you talk about nutrition. I love the way that you encouraged to eat more. You make a big distinction between building muscle and burning fat.

We've used the word you've used the word body recomposition a couple of times. And I think a lot of people, women, especially maybe have this idea that they want to lose weight, but they don't have the clear distinction that what they really want to lose as body fat. And to your point, if they can increase their muscle mass, then they're going to be burning more fat at rest.

Right.  And so you had mentioned a couple good carbs sources. You said the whole grains, the oats, the vegetables, et cetera. And I think that a part of the reason that carbs end up getting kind of a, getting a bad rap here other than it just being a Vogue thing right now, is that a lot of the quote unquote problem with carbs is that

most of the people's diets consist of processed foods. That's where their carbs are coming from. And I didn't hear you mention anything about Pop-Tarts or macaroni and cheese out of a box or anything like that. You're talking about these nutritious whole foods, right. As a part of a balanced diet and I'm building muscle building strength and yeah.

All good stuff. so let's shift gears again. You like I said before, before we started recording, my wife had forwarded me one of your tech talks. You have a fantastic energy. You're very upbeat and your social media, you've got a very fun presence. You're obviously very energetic.

How do you stay so motivated and upbeat, and maybe talk a little bit about the distinction between staying motivated and being consistent.

Melissa_Neill: [00:40:28] Yeah, that's a really good question again, Kevin, because I know some people say to me, or, well, how did you stay motivated? Cause you can't be motivated all the time. And one of the reasons I'm really upbeat, you know, and particularly across my social media is I'm actually really passionate about this topic because I felt before I started my YouTube channel.

So a few years ago, 2019, August, 2019. I started my YouTube channel because I wanted to educate other women over 40 about how to get in shape. And you're right. It's not necessarily scale weight loss is fat loss and there is a difference. You're absolutely right about that. And so I'm really upbeat and passionate about it because I want to tell people about it.

I want to spread the words and you know, there's nothing more than I love. If somebody kind of mentions on my Instagram tip top, I've changed my behavior. I've changed my routine and it's working and I get so many messages like that, Kevin, and it just keeps me pumped because I think. If one person says that to me, one day it's made my day.

They say, Oh, I've started strength training and I'm really seeing an improvement and I've changed my nutrition and it's great, you know, I, you know, and they have actually lost scale weight. Some people that are describing this as well. So I think the thing about motivation, I got asked a question today on Instagram about this and you know, I'm not always motivated.

Believe it or not. Even though I love training, I love it. But you can't always be motivated, but it's about forming really good daily habits. So, you know, like that book, atomic habits, but it's a great book to read if you're, you're struggling for motivation atomic habits.

But one of the things he talks about is forming daily habits. And that's what I've done.  So when I get up in the morning, there's always something that I do that something to get, you know, to do with exercise it's to do with getting movement moving, whether it's my planks, because I've got to do, you know, some planks in the morning, or it could be some cardio activity or it's my strength training.

That's my routine. There's no question. That is not something that isn't going to happen in my life. When I get up in the morning, I do some kind of activity. Even if it's yoga on a rest day, I do something. And if you can get into that mindset. So for me, it's never a question, Oh, am I going to do it today?

Or what will I do today? I know exactly what I'm going to be doing because I have a written plan. And, you know, I work with women. Who have either plans that they've just they've bought from me that are off the shelf plans or I write their plan. So it's always a good idea to have a written plan where you know what you're doing on each day.

And then, it's about having a reason as well. So for me, I wanted, I'm getting older. I want to get into old age. I want to get into my sixties being as healthy as possible. I want to be active around my kids and my family. I want to be able to be there for my family. So getting on stage is a reason you need to have a really strong why in terms of keeping you motivated, cause you're going to have crap days where you don't feel like it, and everybody has that.

And you know, it's not that I'm anything special. I don't have good genes. I don't have this sort of special thing about motivation. It's just forming those habits.

The fact that I meal prep, I prep a lot of my meals ahead. That's a habit. I don't really want to do that. It's a bit of a chore. Isn't it? Having to prep all your meals I've had. But what I know is I'm going to get a really good outcome.

When I come off this interview, my lunch is already there. It's there for me. I don't have to think about it. It's already cooked and ready for me to just take out an E and that's, that's another habit that's really, you know, an important part of your lifestyle. If you want to be in shape and  you can't be in good shape in your fifties and eat the wrong food.

You can't in your 20. Some people have just got those good genes. Haven't they, where they can be looking in quite good shape in their twenties. And you know, they eat the wrong food. In your fifties, that's not going to happen. You've got to work for it. And you, one of the things is planning your meals ahead.

So it's really, really important. And that means you're much more likely to eat the right things. If you've got all your meals prepared ahead, and you know exactly what you're going to be eating.

Kevin_English: [00:45:28] Yeah. that's very, very well said. I love that you talk about the daily habits and the having a plan, knowing your reason. Cause I think what happens is a lot of folks, when they go onto social media, they're seeing fitness professionals, highlight reels, frankly. Right? And most, I think most people are, are not aware that we're not, nobody's motivated a hundred percent of the time that a lot of it is more it's kind of that grind.

It's doing the things daily to your point that you don't have it. You're not making a decision. Whether you work out today or not, you already know the day before that's, what's going to happen. It's doing things like the meal prep, et cetera. So thank you for sharing that. That's all fantastic advice.

Well, Melissa, I did want to talk to you a little bit. I saw it. I can't remember. It was, it was probably on your Instagram.

You had said it's kind of related to the motivation thing. You had a quote that said your body hears everything that your mind says. So as we're wrapping up here, let's kind of talk a little bit about the role of positive self image and how that plays in a successful long-term transformation for health and fitness.

Melissa_Neill: [00:46:35] It's so important, isn't it? Kevin mindset is just everything, because it's going to be 90% about mindset when it comes to body transformation. And self-belief, I didn't really have a lot of self-belief before I went through this process. And then I realized sort of part of the way into it. It's about having a positive mindset and start building your confidence.

And obviously fitness and strength training in particular is very good for building confidence. I think it's really good activity and lots of fitness activity is actually really good for building confidence, but it's, self-belief believing that you can achieve it. Because if you say to yourself, Oh, I'm never going to be like that.

You look at somebody that you, you might admire and, and sort of think, Oh, I never going to be like that. Well then you're just setting yourself up for failure. Because if you say to yourself, You're never going to be like that. That's the narrative that's going on in your head. And so that's, what's going to happen.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So you have to change the narrative in your head. And what happens with me is I never gave up, even though when I went the first couple of years, as you saw on my tip top, I didn't have success with body transformation. I was doing all the wrong things, but I never gave up.

I always had this kind of belief in the back of my head because I seen as an older woman. So as the older women, you know, in the public eye that seemed to kind of be doing it. So I just thought, well, They're doing, it must be something that I'm doing wrong. So I always had that sort of niggling thought in the back of my head.

If I started sort of learning and understanding how it was possible, then I could do it. But I, you know, mindset is everything it's going to be. If you really believe you can do it, you can do it. You can achieve anything. And it works in a business context and it works with your health. So, you know, I come across a lot of women

who don't believe they can stick to a diet plan because they just don't think they've got it in them to avoid eating the high sugar foods, the processed foods, all that stuff. And of course those foods are very appealing. They give us instant gratification. And so you're going to have certain type of mindset It's going to say to you an inner narrative saying, well, I don't want to eat that and I'm not going to eat that. And there's foods give you instant gratification, but in the long term that actually doing you real harm. But the thing about going on a body transformation is you have to have patience. It's going to take time.

You're not going to see instant results. So I have people say to me, Oh, well, I've been doing this for two weeks. What, how come I'm not seeing any results? It's taken me four years. It's not going to happen overnight.

We always say, this has fitness people, but it's so true. You focus on the process. And once you're doing that, the results will come and you can set yourself some smaller milestones. You know, perhaps in three months, I want to have got gone down one dress size, or I want to have lost two or three inches off my waist, something like that.

But a long, a proper transformation will probably take you about a year. And you've got to have that mindset of you're going to have to have the patients. And, you know, just the, I suppose I think it's digging in and patience and just waiting and enjoying the process, really falling in love with the process, trusting the process.

Cause that's really important. And part of mindset is, you know, you can sort of think it's yourself. Well, this isn't working. I'm not seeing any results because it's a couple of weeks, but you need to trust the process and in the long-term it is going to work and it will take time, particularly over 50, because it takes time to build muscle.

Muscle doesn't happen overnight. You're not going to go in the gym one week, two weeks time, you're going to see muscle development. Muscle development takes time. Fat loss if you do it properly, takes time. If you do it stupidly and go on a quick fix diet, yes, you can do it quickly. But a lot of that waterway fat loss, proper fat loss and body recomposition, it takes time.

And you just have to have the mindset that you fall in love with the process and, you know, start enjoying things like I can do a pushup and I couldn't do a pushup before those kinds of things that I encourage women to sort of think about doing lots of women think I can't do a full push-up. Yes, you can.

You've just got to work towards it and focus on those kinds of milestones to do with the things that you can achieve. Getting heavier on your weight, progressing with that. Going deeper into the squat, those kinds of things, focus on how you can improve on your sort of process and the results will come.

Kevin_English: [00:52:05] yeah, that's beautifully said thank you for sharing that. I agree wholeheartedly. I love that you talk about focusing and trusting the process. And I think you would even say fall in love with the process and then those, results will come. And to your point there at the end where you said, maybe the only measurement isn't the scale and nor should it be, right.

It should be things like performance. If, you haven't been able to do a pushup, to be able to do a pushup, if you've never done a pull up new England, do a pull up, these are certainly big milestones that we can work towards and have as goals. All right. Well, Melissa, what's what's next for you? What's on the horizon

Melissa_Neill: [00:52:38] well, I got my show coming up in six weeks or just over six weeks time, my next bikini show. So I haven't, I didn't compete in 2020, so it's not since 2019, I've competed. So it's been a long, long time out. I'm really looking forward to that. Getting up on stage because my body's changed quite a bit and I feel I've made some real improvements to how, my body composition, my muscle mass.

So I'm looking forward to that. Although there's a lot of pressure, it is quite stressful. I enjoyed the sort of process of doing that. And then, you know, I'm just working, working with women over 40, you know, working, I CA coaching women. So that's why I'll be doing a lot of this year, but I also run programs more of those off the shelf program.

So I'll be bringing out more of those that, you know, I'm working on some new stuff and then My YouTube channel, which I absolutely love, which seems to be going from strength to strength. there's been a lot of take-up now with women watching my videos and enjoying my videos.

And that's where I really love to get the message out because although Tik TOK, Instagram are great. Sometimes things need explaining as you do on your podcast, Kevin. And so YouTube gives me an opportunity to describe in much more detail and do work out. So I have worked, you know, workouts that people can follow on on YouTube.

And I do lots of stuff around nutrition and diet and showing people how to cook certain types of foods. So for me, that's a very exciting channel for me to teach women kind of what they should be doing. And I know I get a really good response from that.

Kevin_English: [00:54:33] yeah. Fantastic. And to your point, you have a lot of ways for people to interact with you and to, learn about you and your message. Where would you like folks to connect with you?

Melissa_Neill: [00:54:45] Question

Kevin_English: [00:54:45] Yes, it is. Yeah. You've got a lot of channels. I mean, you've got the YouTube, the Instagram, the TechTalk the website, I'm sure you're on Facebook as well.

What's the best way for folks to,

Melissa_Neill: [00:54:55] my YouTube channel would be the best way for mace women to get to, to really kind of connect with me and understand what they can put in place for themselves and actually start to see results.

Kevin_English: [00:55:11] and I'll make sure I drop all of your social and your website and your YouTube, et cetera, into the show notes. So folks can, can find you there. Well, Melissa, I want to thank you for coming on the show today and sharing your energy and all your knowledge with us. All your wisdom. You are a fantastic ambassador for healthy aging, and I encourage you to keep it up and wish you all the best in all your future endeavors.

Melissa_Neill: [00:55:38] Thank you, Kevin. Well, thank you so much for inviting me.