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Mavy Wellness

Plant-based strength, fat loss and longevity for people over 50. From Maxime Sigouin, founder of Mavy Wellness and host of the Forever Fit Podcast.

By Maxime Sigouin

Order a copy of my new book Forever Fit (#1 Bestseller) here - https://mavywellness.com/foreverfitbo...

In this live Q&A, I answer the fitness and nutrition questions we get most from adults over 50 who eat whole food plant-based. Whether you've never lifted a weight or you're working around sore knees, this one is for you.

Questions answered:
• I've never lifted weights. Where do I start?
• My knees, shoulders or back hurt. Can I still strength train?
• Do I need a gym, or can I get strong at home with a few dumbbells?
• How do I keep my bones strong as I get older?
• Why do beans and lentils make me bloated?
• I walk every day. Isn't that enough?
• Should I eat before or after my workout?
• How do I lose belly fat?
• How do I stay on track when I travel or eat out?
• My spouse isn't plant-based. How do I cook for both of us?

I go live every week. Drop your question in the comments and I may answer it next time.

🤝 Want results like Arlyce’s? Book a call to work with our coaching team:

https://mavywellness.com/

Arlyce had been plant based since 2013, but she had never strength trained a day in her life.

About a year ago, with her daughter’s wedding on the horizon and her 70th birthday behind it, she heard a clock ticking. She did not want another crash diet. She had already considered a GLP 1 and set it aside, because it came with no strength training, no bone health, no balance, none of the things she knew would decide her quality of life in her 70s and 80s. She interviewed several plant based coaching programs and chose Mavy Wellness after one conversation with Ivy, because it was a whole person program, food, exercise, sleep, even the digital detox example.

Ten to eleven months later she has improved her body composition by 23 pounds, trains at home with dumbbells and a bench, travels with resistance bands and protein powder in her luggage, and celebrated her 70th birthday by hiking seven rocky miles to the highest point in Minnesota with her family. In this conversation she shares how a woman who only ever walked became, in her own words, a person who exercises now, and why she is never going back.

You will learn:
Why turning 70 was the moment Arlyce refused the crash diet path for good
How she travels without pressing pause: bands, protein powder, and reading any menu like a detective
What learning strength training from zero actually feels like, from awkward to automatic
The real life strength moments: pulling herself onto a lake platform, carrying the heavy boxes herself
How sleep hygiene and cutting her phone scrolling changed as much as the workouts
How she satisfies a serious sweet tooth inside her calories, including her tofu based Ninja Creami
Coach Alex’s reframe that carried her: it is not failure, it is data

Chapters:
00:00 Arlyce’s Story in Her Own Words
01:15 Your Invite to the Live Masterclass
02:15 Meet Arlyce: 70 Years Old, 23 Pounds of Body Composition Change
03:30 The Wedding, the 70th Birthday, and the Ticking Clock
06:00 Why She Said No to a GLP 1 and Interviewed Other Programs
08:45 Why This Time Was Different: Bone, Muscle, Balance, Longevity
11:30 “I Guess I Am a Person Who Exercises Now”
14:45 How She Trains and Eats While Traveling
18:15 A Walking Group Was Her Only Exercise, and Never Any Strength Training
20:15 From Awkward Movements to Automatic
22:45 Pulling Herself Onto the Swim Platform: Strength in Real Life
25:15 “Mom, You’re So Little”: When Everyone Started Noticing
27:00 Ten Months That Changed the Next Thirty Years
29:00 Sleep Hygiene and the Phone: The Whole Person Changes
31:30 Eating Plant Based Since 2013, and What Actually Changed: Protein
34:15 The Sweet Tooth Strategy: Cinnamon Apples and Ninja Creami Ice Cream
39:45 Her Husband Walks 10 Miles a Day in Minnesota Winters
42:30 The Best Retirement Investment Is Your Body
45:45 Her Advice: Do Not Wait Until 70, and Failure Is Just Data
48:15 The Self Talk Flip: “Good for You, Arlyce”
50:45 She Celebrated 70 With a Seven Mile Hike to Minnesota’s Highest Point
53:15 What’s Next: High Points, Challenges, and Feeling Alive
61:30 You Are Worth the Investment: Her Advice and the Value of a Coach
66:15 The Credit Is Hers: She Did Every Squat
68:15 Arlyce’s Last Word: You Can Do It

Resources:
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Forever Fit Life

Building a strong body, a clear mind, and a free life. Systems, fitness, plant-based nutrition, digital boundaries, and intentional living from a founder who practices what he preaches.

By Maxime Sigouin

📘 Get my book, Forever Fit:
https://mavywellness.com/foreverfitbookoffer

Forever Fit Podcast, Episode 462. We help people over 50, all the way up to 87, lose fat, build muscle and improve their body composition on a whole food plant based lifestyle, with over 1,200 transformations and counting.

Not a loud one. She describes it as a little clock in her head, ticking while her daughter’s wedding was approaching and her own 70th birthday sat just behind it. She had been plant based since 2013, so food was not new territory for her. But she had never, in her entire life, done strength training. Not once. And standing at the edge of a new decade, she started thinking less about how she would look in the wedding photos and more about the next 20 or 30 years of her life, and whether her body would be strong enough to actually live them.

She could have taken the fast road. She looked into a GLP1. She thought about a crash diet to get the pounds off by a deadline. Then she said the sentence that changed everything for her: “I don’t have time to be going back and forth.” At 69, the yo yo was not just frustrating, it was expensive, paid in the only currency that does not refill. So she chose the slow road on purpose. She wanted bone health, muscle health, flexibility, and balance. She wanted habits that would still be standing at 80, not a result that evaporated by summer.

That is the first thing I hope you take from her. The right time to do this properly is whatever age you are when you finally decide the quick fix is not a fix at all.

The second thing is what happened to her identity along the way, because it did not arrive through motivation. It arrived through repetition. One ordinary day, running errands, a thought crossed her mind out of nowhere: “Oh my gosh, I need to get home to do my workout.”

She laughed when she told me, because she had to ask herself, who is this person? That had never happened to her before. She had simply kept showing up, awkwardly at first, watching the exercise videos on her phone and thinking her body did not move that way, until one day her body did. The bridges she once had to talk herself through, engage your core, step by step, became movements she no longer has to think about. Identity does not come before the action. It is the receipt the action leaves behind.

From there, her whole life started reorganizing itself around the person she was becoming. She travels often, and travel used to be where good intentions went to be postponed.

Now she packs her plant protein, tucks resistance bands into her bag, and reads the restaurant menu before she ever sits down, hunting for the baked potato hiding in the steak dinner and the sauce that would work beautifully on her salad.

When she stays in someone else’s home and eats food she would never choose, she no longer declares the whole thing ruined and quits. She told me she has full confidence now that she can simply come home and get back on track, because a detour is not a dead end.

Her Mavy Wellness coach taught her that early, and she has carried it like a compass ever since: a missed workout or an off plan meal is not a failure.

It is just data. You ask what happened, you learn from it, and you keep going, without spending one minute beating yourself up.

And then there are the moments that tell you what strength is actually for. This summer she swam out to a floating platform on a lake, the one with no ladder, just handholds, and she almost did not try it because she did not want to be embarrassed in front of everyone if she could not get up.

She grabbed hold and pulled herself up easily, at 70 years old, and felt how great it was.

Last month she carried heavy boxes at her daughter’s event while younger people kept trying to take them out of her arms, and she kept telling them, no, I got it. Her daughter hugged her recently and said, “Mom, you’re so little.” Her husband, who walks eight to ten miles a day, rain or shine, tells her constantly how proud he is.

For her 70th birthday she did not choose a restaurant. She chose a trail, seven rocky miles to the highest point in Minnesota, hiked with her family.

On the way out she told them, “It’s my 70th birthday, and I feel so alive today.” She is already coming for the highest point in North Dakota, and she is dreaming about what 75 might look like. Eleven months. Twenty three pounds. That is all it took to go from a woman who had never lifted a weight to a woman planning which mountain comes next.

Her advice to anyone listening was simple, and I will give it to you the way she gave it to me. You are worth the investment, of time and of help. Get a coach, she said, the way you would get help with anything that matters, because trying to figure it all out alone is the longest road there is.

And get going. Do not wait for a birthday with a zero in it to give yourself permission.

If Arlyce’s story sounds like the chapter you are standing in, I want to invite you to come learn with us live. On Saturday, October 24 at 9 am Pacific, 12 pm Eastern, Ivy and I are teaching our next live masterclass, How to Structure a Full Day of Eating to Improve Your Body Composition and Get Stronger After 50.

We will be in our kitchen, building a full day of whole food plant based eating in real time, the calories, the protein, and the simple recipes we actually use. It is live only, there is no replay, and it is built for exactly where you are right now.

Reserve your seat here: https://mavywellness.com/live

Or if you can’t wait to get started on your transformation you can get more info here

https://mavywellness.com/

Arlyce heard a clock at 69 and decided it was not counting down. It was calling her up. Yours can too.

You can watch Arlyce’s Success Story podcast episode I did with her here:

I have some great news, I got my YouTube channel back, so for those of you who preferred watching the podcast on there, you now can ☺️ Along with the extra cooking and fitness videos I was posting on there with Ivy.

Ivy and I had a fantastic time teaching on our live masterclass this week that took place on Tuesday. We went in depth on setting a solid mental foundation along with the actual steps and strategies to lose your next 10 lbs if you are over the age of 50. Because, as you know, the body doesn’t respond the same way as when you were in your 20s.

As per usual, there is no replay, so you must attend live to get the information.

I’m excited to announce that our next live teaching session will be on Saturday, October 24th at 9 am PST/12 pm EST and it will be on “How to Structure a Full Day of Whole Food Plant-Based Eating for the purpose of Body Recomposition”.

Ivy and I will be bringing you into our kitchen, showing you live how we would build our meals and our days based on specific calories and protein ratios in order to improve our body composition. We will share a few of our favorite simple high protein recipes that we personally use and recipes that I’ve used for my last body recomposition transformation.

This is one that you won’t want to miss, and again, it’s only available live. You can reserve your seat here: https://mavywellness.com/live .

I look forward to seeing you there live 🌱 💪

Now let’s get into this weeks teaching:

This week I had a group call with members inside our Forever Fit course. A member brought up how she was traveling and at an event, and the food was out of her control. That caused her to go off track.

I paused her and said, I’d like to offer a reframing on that. We don’t want to give our power away. Because in saying the food was out of our control and that’s why we went off track, that’s giving the power away.

And I want to be clear, I’m sharing this example because so many people go down this path, especially when they’re newer to making different types of decisions when it comes to eating healthier, exercising, and trying to improve their body composition.

There’s nothing wrong with her, and she did nothing bad. It was a learning opportunity. It was an opportunity for her to reframe, and I want to use that opportunity, that blessing that she had, and share it with you.

The reality is, yes, the food that is available at an event or at the wedding, is sometimes out of our control. But what is in our control is what we put on our plate and what we put in our mouth.

We want to be careful with our wording and how we frame things, because in reality we are the ones responsible for the results we currently have in our life.

Yes, there was unhealthy food available at the wedding or at the event. But could you have made potentially healthier choices? And if there weren’t healthier choices, did you have to eat a full plate of the thing that was unhealthy? Or could you have had a little bit just to hold you off until after the event, where you can actually get some healthier food into your body?

So the teaching here is: realize that you are in control of how you deal with the environment that is around you. We cannot blame the environment for our lack of results.

I’m not saying that it’s easy. 100%, it’s hard, because we live in a society where fitness isn’t the norm, eating healthy isn’t the norm, specifically eating whole food plant based isn’t the norm. But it is your responsibility, and it is in your power to make the best choices possible.

That is why it helps to have accountability and people on your site to support you on your journey. And I hope that this newsletter, the podcast, and the Life teaching sessions that I do through our masterclasses and our one-on-one coaching program can be of service for you in that way.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend, and hopefully I get to see you on the upcoming live masterclass.

Sincerely,

Maxime
Co-Founder Mavy Wellness

This past September, something special happened in Las Vegas.

A group of us got together for three days. We trained, we ate incredible food, we laughed, and a lot of people left moving better than when they arrived. Phillip, who comes from a part of the country where plant based living is not widely accepted, told me it was the reinforcement he needed. Emi said she knew it would be a phenomenal investment in her health, but she did not expect how much fun she would have meeting our community in person.

We are doing it again.

February 17 to 19, 2027. Las Vegas. Three days of live coaching with me, Ivy, Coach Nick, and the amazing Chuck Carroll.

Here is what those three days look like. Morning movement sessions. Live strength labs where we assess how you move and coach you in real time. Deep dives into whole food plant based nutrition for defying aging. Contrast recovery sessions. And dinners together with a community of people who get it.

We have also added something new to the experience this year: an evening cooking class with me, Ivy, and Chuck Carroll at MAVY HQ. We cook together, eat together, and you will leave with real skills for your own kitchen.

This is an intimate in person experience by design, not a big anonymous fitness expo.

Your pass covers the full workshop experience plus group transportation from our designated host hotel each day. Your hotel stay is booked separately, so you choose the room that fits you.

Here is how the investment works. Active 1-on-1, Group Coaching, and Mavy Course members pay $2,000, and titanium level members and above can put their loyalty program credits toward it. For the public, it is $3,000, and that includes one free month of coaching after the workshop so the momentum keeps going when you get home.

If you have been waiting for the right moment to train with us in person, this is it.

Reserve your seat here: https://mavywellness.com/vegas-2027

See you in Vegas,

Maxime

The mental transformation is the hardest part.

I learned this the uncomfortable way. I’ve been following this lifestyle for over 21 years and I still have my moments where I am not perfect. I waver sometimes, I struggle sometimes.

There was a stretch where I got tired of always trying to be better. I just wanted to eat what I wanted, and I told myself I had earned it: I have been good for so long, I deserve this. So I ate the processed foods, I put on a bunch of fat, and I felt bad about it.

And feeling bad made it even harder to get back, because those foods pull you in and I was so far gone on the other side. The pattern was: I have been good, I deserve a break, I do the thing, I feel bad, and the loop starts again.

What pulled me out was a threshold. I got uncomfortable in my own body. The body fat, the size, the way my clothes fit. I got tired of feeling like shit.

The same thing happened with training. There were stretches with no specific goal where I stopped pushing hard. It was a nice mental break, and I still kept my habits, I just was not training with fire. But eventually my love for feeling fit kicked back in. I picked a fun goal and I started challenging myself again.

And there is one old habit I had to grieve. The self justifying, and the pity for myself during hard times. Telling myself I have been good so I can eat whatever I want. I had to accept that for the rest of my life, I will never be able to eat as much processed food as I want whenever I want. What I can do is enjoy treats here and there, make them fit, and enjoy travel and time with family without fussing about it, while staying on track. That is my balance.

The only reason I never slide all the way back is that I committed to a lifetime of prioritizing my health and my fitness, not perfectly, but consistently.

Maybe you are willing to do the workouts and change some habits, but there is a part of the change you have been avoiding. Most people have one. I did too.

Transforming your body composition, your fitness, or your health does require actions in the physical world.

But all of you have your own areas of struggle mentally when it comes to letting go of certain patterns and habits that are currently hindering your life and your progression towards your transformation.

Until you have a willingness to deal with these internal mental patterns, you will be stuck.

You might be able to override them with pure willpower and externally transform and lose 20, 30, 40 plus pounds.

But ultimately you will not be able to keep the results because you haven’t fully committed to turning the necessary actions into a permanent lifestyle.

And for many of you reading this, that is what is missing: that final leap into this new life, the commitment to let go of old habits and to not be stuck in your old ways.

Going back to your old ways is called a misstep, but continuing to live there is a choice.

I want every single one of you to live a life of health, a life where you experience higher levels of fitness that allow you to live life to the fullest, a life that will be extended by many years so that you can spend more quality time with the people you love.

All of this is possible for you as well. All that is needed is for you to let go of your old ways that have not been serving you and commit to adopt a new way of living that will serve the goals that you say you want.

And to be clear, this isn’t about living a life that is deprived of pleasure. On the contrary, the life you will get to experience will be far greater than what you currently have.

A sustained, fit and healthy life is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever done for myself, my family and the people I love around me.

You are removing the limitations that an unhealthy body and poor health place on your life, allowing you to live to the fullest and enjoy the years ahead.

I believe in you, just make the decision and commit.

And remember it’s not about being perfect, it’s about being consistent and committing to a new way of living and experiencing life.

Sincerely,

Maxime
Co-Founder Mavy Wellness

Let me ask you something.

Has the scale been stuck in the same place for weeks? You are eating clean, you are trying, and nothing is moving.

I have good news. You are not broken, and your metabolism is not out to get you. In my years coaching over 1,200 people, a stalled fat loss almost always comes down to one of five things. And they matter in order.

Run through this checklist honestly, and fix the first one that is off before you touch anything else.

1. Your calorie deficit

You cannot redefine the laws of thermodynamics. If more energy comes in than goes out, your body stores the extra as fat. That is literally all fat is: stored energy for the future. Your body is excellent at its job.

Here is where most people get tripped up. A deficit works on a weekly average, not a daily report card. Say your target is 1,700 calories. Five great days at 1,700 plus a weekend at 2,300 puts your average well above target. You did not have a bad weekend. You simply were not in a deficit.

And one more truth. Online calculators give you a theoretical number based on people your age, height, and activity level. The world is not fair. Some people get to eat 1.5 times what I eat and get leaner. Others have to eat less than me. If you are doing everything right and the scale still will not move, you are not in a deficit yet, whatever the calculator said. That is just where your body is today.

2. Your daily movement

This is the one almost everyone underestimates. Let me show you where your body actually burns its calories each day.

About 60 to 70 percent goes to your BMR, your basal metabolic rate. That is the energy your body uses just to keep you alive, before you move a muscle. About 10 percent goes to digesting your food. Exercise? For most people, 5 to 10 percent, and most of us are closer to 5. That is half of what your body spends digesting lunch.

The real lever is NEAT, your non exercise activity thermogenesis. Your daily movement. Walking, fidgeting, taking the stairs, living your life on your feet. That is 10 to 15 percent of your daily burn, and it is the biggest piece you can actually change day to day, though the exact share varies a lot from person to person.

That is why I tell our clients to aim for 10,000 steps a day. There is nothing magical about the number. Research shows most of the health benefit lands around 7,000 steps, so if 10,000 feels out of reach, 7,000 is a strong target. It just forces you out of the chair and off the couch. And here is the beautiful part. For many people, an hour long walk barely moves hunger, while an hour of hard training leaves them starving. More movement, less hunger, more fat loss.

3. Your strength training

Notice I did not put cardio here. Strength training comes first, and not for the reason most people think.

You do not lift weights to burn calories. You lift to build muscle, and muscle raises your BMR, which means you burn more at rest and you get to eat more food while staying in a deficit.

After 50, this becomes non negotiable. Muscle naturally declines with age, and so does bone density. Strength training fights sarcopenia, the loss of muscle, and osteopenia, the loss of bone. You need that pressure on the bones to keep them strong. It works best alongside weight bearing movement and enough calcium and vitamin D. If you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, keep your doctor in the loop instead of relying on exercise alone.

Three to four sessions a week is the target. Not to torch calories. To build a body that burns more of them on its own.

4. Your protein

Protein will not move the scale much by itself, but it decides what the scale is measuring when it does move.

When you train, you are asking your muscles to get stronger. Protein, or more precisely the amino acids inside it, is what rebuilds them. Eat enough and the weight you lose comes from fat. Eat too little and you lose muscle along with it, which is the exact opposite of what we want after 50.

Aim for about 1.6 grams per kilogram of your ideal body weight. Ideal, because we do not need to feed the extra fat, only the body you are building. That 1.6 figure comes from research using total body weight, and in a calorie deficit the evidence points higher, often 2.0 grams per kilogram and up, to protect muscle. If you have kidney issues or a chronic condition, check with your clinician before pushing protein higher.

5. Your cardio

Cardio burns a bit more than strength training, and it is a fine tool for creating a bigger deficit. But I want to be clear on this one.

I want you to lose 10 pounds of fat, not just be 10 pounds lighter. There is a difference. And beyond fat loss, cardio makes your heart stronger. You can have a flat stomach and big biceps, but if your heart gives out, none of it matters.

So yes, keep cardio in the plan. Just know its real job.

How to use this

Go in order. If your deficit is off, fix that first and change nothing else. If your steps are at 3,000, get them to 10,000 before you touch your food. One lever at a time, so you actually know what worked.

And if all five are dialed in and the scale still will not budge? Create a slightly bigger deficit. Drop about 100 calories, or add 20 to 30 minutes of easy zone 2 cardio for the week. Keep your intake at a sensible floor, and if you take medication or manage a health condition, check with your clinician before cutting further. Small moves, honestly tracked, beat dramatic overhauls every time.

One more thing. Eating whole food plant based makes every item on this list easier. The food is high in volume and low in calories, rich in fiber, and it keeps you full. Staying in a deficit stops feeling like a fight.

Want the full framework?

On October 13th, Ivy and I are teaching a free live masterclass on exactly this: how to lose your next 10 lbs after 50. We are going deep on all five of these, plus the mindset foundation, plus how to adjust your plan the moment your body adapts and stalls.

There is no replay. It is live, you can ask us questions, and we would love to see you there.

Save your seat here: https://mavywellness.com/live

See you there,

Maxime
Co-Founder Mavy Wellness

I missed out on so many life changing opportunities because I thought that I “wasn’t ready” because I was missing something.

Today I want to share with you the story of little Timmy and his brother John.

Little Timmy and John were doing a sailing boat race in the ocean and a storm came in halfway through the race and crashed both of their sailboats on deserted islands that were 100s of miles apart from each other.

They were stranded out there and it would be days before anyone would come to look for them.

On the island little Timmy had broken and leftover parts from his boat and he had a hammer with him and some nails.

On the other island John was in the exact same position, a broken boat, leftover broken pieces of wood and a hammer and some nails.

Both were in the exact same situation with the same level of resources.

The difference between little Timmy and John was their mindset.

John was complaining about his situation, about the fact that he was stuck on the island, that his situation was terrible and that he felt anxious and scared about being in that position and that he didn’t know if he would get out of there.

He complained because he wished he had access to more wood, maybe a nail gun to build a boat strong enough to get back on the mainland. Days and days of complaining went by and he was in the exact same position. Because he wanted to build the perfect and most solid boat to get back to shore.

On the other hand, little Timmy realized that if he wanted to survive he would have to do the best he could with what he had in front of him. He had a hammer, nails, some extra wood and a broken boat.

So for the following days he started repairing his boat, using what he had. It wasn’t pretty, it might not have been the most functional but it was sturdy enough to get the job done to get him back to the mainland to save his life.

Within three days he had “fixed” his boat enough and managed to get back to the mainland safe and sound.

Meanwhile John was still on the island complaining that he didn’t have the right tools and the right knowledge to fix his boat in order to get back to shore.

Now I know this sounds like a silly story and it is because I made it up but I’m using it to illustrate a point.

I see so many people being stuck in their health, fitness and fat loss journey because they just aren’t willing to face and deal with the cards they’ve been dealt.

Who cares that your metabolism is slower than most, who cares if you are going through X hormone thing or X health condition.

I know it sucks but you know who gets better? Who gets on the other side of it? People that think like little Timmy not people who think like John.

What do you currently have available to you? What is the TRUE best you can do with what is in front of you. What action can you take with the information that is currently available to you.

The secret to little Timmy living and getting to the mainland is that he took imperfect action and didn’t wait to have the right tools or to have all the knowledge on how to build a perfect boat.

Sometimes … a lot of times in life you just need to build something that floats to get you to shore so that you can then build something that will get you to the next level.

Waiting, pondering, accumulating more knowledge only delays you from moving toward the thing that you want.

Take imperfect action, get into the habit of strength training even if it’s clunky, even if it feels weird, even if you don’t like it because there are thousands of studies demonstrating its benefits.

Take that first step, use the hammer and nails you have. Don’t complain about just having a hammer and nails because you wish you had a nail gun.

And once you get started for the love of God don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Unlike little Timmy you aren’t alone on a deserted island. You have access to the internet which has billions of resources available for you. I personally don’t have billions for you but I have a few thousand if you head to my YouTube channel.

You have people around you who love you and who want to support you, you have access to world class programs like ours, you have access to experts more than you ever have with the internet.

Ask for help and be willing to get started and do the best you can with the information you have. Especially when it comes to your health and fitness.

It’s literally the most important thing of your ENTIRE existence because without your body, your vehicle, being healthy, life ends and/or is drastically shortened and I don’t want that for you.

So get started.

And I want to help you get started. On October 13th I’m leading a free live masterclass to teach you for FREE how to lose your next 10 lbs in body recomposition by using the power of plant-based whole foods and strength training.

There is no replay and it’s live so make sure to block off that time so you can learn how to build your own “boat” with the tools available to you. You can register here → https://mavywellness.com/live

In the meantime I invite you to start taking imperfect action, you might not have a full plan but start by moving your body more. Commit to taking 10,000 steps every day until the masterclass.

Don’t be like John and not do anything because you don’t have the perfect plan yet. Be like little Timmy and do the best with what you have, and if you have two legs use them to walk 10K steps a day until we meet on the masterclass.

See you then

Maxime

Quick note before we dive in: Ivy and I are starting something new. Live workshops every two weeks, starting Tuesday, October 13. Details at the end :)

Additionally before we get into it today, I want to share something personal.

Every month, I pick one cancer patient on GoFundMe and donate. I have been doing this for years. This month was my 77th donation.

This month, God put it on my heart to give $500 to a woman named Nina. She is a single mom of three girls who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She is spending about $500 every treatment trying to keep her hair, and trying to give her girls a Christmas through all of it.

Honestly, it was a stretch this month. But some things you do not do because they are comfortable. You do them because they are right.

Thank you for being part of this community. It is because of you that I get to do things like this.

If you feel moved to stand with Nina too, here is her fundraiser:

Now let’s get into today’s newsletter:

Whenever someone reaches out to our team because their weight loss or strength gains have stalled, they usually ask the exact same question: “Maxime, why has my body stopped changing?”

Most people assume a plateau means their body is broken or that they need to jump on a drastic crash diet. But in reality, a plateau usually comes down to one simple truth: your body is an absolute adaptation machine.

If you give your body the exact same workout stimulus three times a week for more than four to six weeks, it becomes exceptionally efficient at executing those movements. In endurance sports like triathlons or marathons, efficiency is the ultimate goal. You want your body to run like a hybrid car, burning as little fuel as possible so you don’t bonk before the finish line. But when your goal is body recomposition, building lean muscle, and losing fat, efficiency is actually the enemy. To keep making progress, you must systematically create inefficiency.

To keep your body adapting, building muscle, and burning fat without destroying your joints or leaving you too sore to live your life, you need to introduce progressive overload every four weeks. I always tell our Mavy Wellness members that when you start a brand-new 4-week workout phase, week one you swear at your coach under your breath because the new exercises feel surprisingly challenging. Week two it is still tough, but you swear a little bit less as your nervous system learns the movements. Week three you start getting the hang of the routine, your form feels solid, and your strength increases. And by week four, you feel confident, capable, and totally in control of the workout.

Right on cue for week five, we change the stimulus again! You go right back to week one, making your body just 5% fitter to handle the new demand. You don’t need to completely reinvent your workouts to create progressive overload. Every four weeks, you can simply tweak one single variable: add one extra set to your existing exercises, drop your repetition range slightly (for example, moving from 15 reps down to 10-12 reps) so you can safely lift a heavier weight, shorten your rest periods between sets by 15 seconds, or swap the exercise angle (for example, switching from a flat dumbbell press to an incline press).

On the fat loss side of the equation, people often rush to cut 500 calories out of their diet or add hours of extra cardio the second the scale stops moving. Before you remove food or add more stress to your body, you must run through what I call the compliance checklist. Are you completing 100% of your assigned strength sessions each week? Are you executing all of your scheduled cardiovascular sessions? Are you respecting your target calorie intake 7 days a week, rather than just 4 days a week? Are you hitting your daily protein target consistently? And are you getting your baseline 7,000 to 10,000 steps every single day?

In over six and a half years of coaching, I have found that 90% of the time, a “plateau” isn’t a flaw in the plan. It is simply a temporary drop in compliance across one or two of these basics. There is zero reason to cut your food or force yourself to do extra cardio if you aren’t currently following the foundational plan. Focus on mastering the basics first.

At the end of the day, no one is entitled to be fit, healthy, or lean. We don’t deserve a vibrant body over 50 just because we had good intentions, or because we ate one healthy meal earlier in the week. We only earn the results we are willing to put consistent effort towards. If you are willing to show up on the days you don’t feel like it, make minor adjustments every four weeks, and stay consistent with your whole-food plant-based nutrition, your body will transform. It isn’t about perfection; it is simply about showing up far more often than you make mistakes.

I hope this helps and …

One more thing. Ivy and I are kicking off a brand new live workshop series, and the first one is Tuesday, October 13 at 4pm Pacific: How to Lose Your Next 10 lbs. After 50 with plant based foods.

It’s live and there is no replay. Every two weeks we will cover a new topic, so bring your questions and get them answered in real time.

Save your seat here:

👉 Save your free seat here: https://mavywellness.com/live

There is no replay, so make sure you show up live.

Have a fantastic weekend,

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin
Co-Founder of Mavy Wellness

Ps. I just released a new podcast episode on that exact topic, you can listen to it down below 👇

I looked at my midsection in the mirror. Soft. A bit of fluff across the chest, and love handles I hadn’t seen in over a decade. I stood there completely relaxed, not flexing or sucking in my stomach, and admitted the exact truth that would have destroyed my self-worth ten years ago: this is the highest body fat I have had in over ten years, and I feel completely fine about it.

That was day one, back in early May. Ivy and I had just returned home from three incredible months in Southeast Asia. Going into that trip, I made a conscious choice to enjoy the experience, eat in local restaurants, and intentionally take a complete break from tracking my food. I kept strength training three to four times a week the entire time, but I knew what the outcome would be. I came home at 190 pounds with a softer body composition, and I realized it created the perfect opportunity.

In fifteen years of coaching thousands of people, I had always maintained some what of a lean physique, but I had never documented a full, structured transformation on myself from start to finish. I decided to use this moment to document every step of the journey in real time, showing people what it actually looks like to execute a body recomposition while navigating real life. Moving houses, cross-country travel, launching a course, dealing with a lower back injury, managing hunger, and even eating chips on photo day.

Nineteen weeks later, I stepped back on that exact same scale at 180 pounds and 10% body fat. About ten pounds down on the scale, but a completely transformed physique. This is the full story of those 19 weeks, with everything that almost derailed me and the exact principles that made it work.

I have been fortunate to stay in shape for virtually my entire adult life. Because I maintained my physique, I never had a dramatic starting point worth documenting for our community. Coming back from Asia gave me that exact starting point. Shifting from 12% to 19% body fat at the same body weight showed what happens when nutrition isn’t dialed in, and catching it early allowed me to show our members how to reverse that trend safely and sustainably.

There was also a deeper personal reason for sharing this. In my younger years, I struggled with a deeply unhealthy relationship with food and exercise. There was a time in my life when my entire self-worth was tied to whether my abs were visible. That version of me would have been terrified to come home from a vacation soft, let alone document it publicly. I wanted to prove to myself how much I had grown, making a firm commitment to appreciate my body at 19% body fat before changing a single variable.

If you ever catch yourself disliking what you see in the mirror, please understand that you do not need to hate your body to earn the right to change it. I didn’t start this process out of self-criticism. I did it to demonstrate that a structured framework works even when life gets chaotic and unpredictable.

The strategy itself was built directly on the framework I teach inside our Mavy Wellness program. I set up three full-body strength sessions per week, calculated my daily baseline using the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, and established a conservative deficit of about 250 calories per day. My starting targets were 2,661 calories and 133 grams of protein daily, centered around whole-food, plant-based nutrition with built-in flexibility for real life.

During the first month, the focus was establishing a clean baseline without rushing to make adjustments too quickly. Most people make the mistake of tweaking their calories or workouts every few days when the scale fluctuates, but patience is what allows real data to emerge. By week two, my waist was tightening and my photos were shifting, even though the scale moved slowly. A lot of it was just getting rid of inflammation and puffiness.

By week three and four, life began throwing its usual curveballs. Ivy and I traveled to Las Vegas to house-hunt while an evacuation alert from a nearby wildfire threatened our home back in California. Between the travel heat, busy schedules, and restaurant meals, some days my calories dropped lower than intended. Shortly after returning, I sustained a hard impact to my head during a basketball game, right where I had suffered a concussion the previous year.

Despite the stress, I kept my nutrition on track, adjusted my workout schedule around my recovery, and focused on consistency over perfection. During a date night at our favorite vegan sushi restaurant in Agoura Hills, Ivy and I enjoyed 1,300 calories of vegan sushi, fitting it directly into my daily budget. That wasn’t a setback or a cheat meal; it was simply part of the design.

Overcoming Disordered Patterns and Navigating Change

Revisiting that date night reminded me of how far my relationship with food has evolved over the years. Long before I became a coach, my eating habits were deeply disordered. I can remember buying a box of donuts, eating most of them in a fit of guilt, throwing the rest in the trash, and eventually pulling one back out until I literally poured orange juice over the box to stop myself.

Learning to portion out a bowl of chips and salsa during week two of this transformation without anxiety or guilt was a massive personal milestone. If you have ever felt trapped by those types of food struggles, know that it isn’t a lack of willpower. It is a relationship with food that can be healed over time through structure, honesty, and dropping the concept of forbidden foods.

In June, we officially relocated to Henderson, Nevada, moving our entire home in 110-degree summer heat. Because my daily movement dropped and my new gym lacked a basketball court, I made my first structured adjustment: lowering my daily intake by 150 calories and replacing basketball with indoor cycling.

A week later, while performing lateral kettlebell squats, I strained my lower back. Rather than stopping completely, I asked myself what variables I could still manage. I adapted my strength work to chest-supported machines, reduced the weights, focused on tempo, and kept my nutrition locked in. By week seven, even with the back strain, my progress photos showed clear muscle definition and a tighter waist, proving that consistency with the basics matters far more than having a flawless week.

Navigating the Middle Phase and Managing Hunger

As we moved into July, business demands picked up significantly while I recorded over 100 hours of curriculum for our new Forever Fit program. Over those weeks, I traveled to Cleveland for a health conference where Ivy and I led workouts, and I managed to stay on track throughout the trip. Leaning on a clear framework while traveling allowed me to come home leaner than when I left.

When progress naturally slowed mid-July, I made another subtle adjustment, bringing my intake down to 2,300 calories and increasing cardio slightly. That was the point where genuine hunger set in. The internal voice that rationalizes taking off-plan days started creeping up, but I relied on high-volume plant foods, thin-sliced cucumbers, sparkling water, and making a daily protein ice cream in my Ninja Creami to stay full and satisfied.

On one occasion in the grocery store, I found myself putting a bag of jalapeño chips in my cart, only to put it back on the shelf before checking out. Every time you make that choice, you build the discipline muscle for the next time.

By August, I reached 183.3 pounds and 11% body fat. My clothes were sitting noticeably looser, and despite business launches, travel, and recovery, I hadn’t missed a single planned workout in fifteen consecutive weeks. As I neared the final month, I brought my calories down to 2,100 per day for the home stretch. I could have pushed further to get artificially shredded, but that wasn’t the goal. I was thrilled with how I looked and felt, and pushing deeper for the sake of a lower number would have defeated the purpose of building a sustainable lifestyle.

By week nineteen, following a successful client workshop in Las Vegas, I stepped back on the scale at 180 pounds and 10% body fat. I had reached my goal cleanly, safely, and with my lean muscle mass completely intact.

Immediately after hitting that target, I transitioned straight into Phase 2: Reverse Dieting. Instead of jumping right back to a higher calorie intake, I began systematically increasing my food by 50 to 100 calories at a time. This is the crucial step that so many people skip. Reverse dieting allows your body to adapt to higher food volume slowly, restoring your metabolic rate while maintaining your new physique. Fast on the way down, slow on the way up.

Looking back across these 19 weeks, the physical changes were rewarding, but the real power was in the daily execution. You set your sight on the peak so you know where you are headed, but then you take your eyes off the summit and focus on your feet. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.

If you take anything from this story, let it be these core truths:

• The scale is just one single data point among many, so look at the overall trend rather than daily fluctuations.

• Never make impulsive adjustments based on one week of scale data; give your body two to three weeks to establish a baseline before making subtle changes.

• Include foods you genuinely love within your daily budget, because a plan that lacks joy will never last long-term.

• When you have an off meal or an off day, don’t waste energy feeling guilty or waiting for Monday. Win the very next meal and keep moving forward.

• Separate your self-worth from what you see in the mirror, because your value as a person never changes based on a body fat percentage.

I documented these 19 weeks to demonstrate that these exact principles work in the real world, through busy schedules, travel, moves, injuries, and real life. This is the same foundation we use with our Mavy Wellness members every day.

I will have a short documentary of all the clips I filmed during this 19-week transformation coming at some point, so be sure to stay tuned for it on my YouTube channel.

Now, everything that I have accomplished is the exact same framework and work that our team of coaches brings our members through to be able to get incredible results at an age when most people think that they can’t transform anymore.

So if you are over 50 and ready to build a strong, vibrant physique that you can maintain for decades, Ivy and I would love to help you map out that journey.

You can book a free strategy call with Ivy directly at https://mavywellness.com/

Left foot, right foot. I will see you on the mountain.

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin

Author of Forever Fit - Your Body Recomposition System on Plants

Ps. My wife Ivy and I are kicking off a brand new live workshop series, and the first one is Tuesday, October 13 at 4pm Pacific: How to Lose Your Next 10 lbs. After 50 with plant based foods.

It’s live and there is no replay. Every two weeks we will cover a new topic, so bring your questions and get them answered in real time.

Save your seat here:

👉 Save your free seat here: https://mavywellness.com/live

There is no replay, so make sure you show up live.

Recently, I sat down for a podcast conversation with one of our long-time Mavy Wellness members, James.

When James first found our community two years ago, he was 60 years old. He looked back on a lifetime of cycling through every diet imaginable: Weight Watchers at 8 years old, liquid protein programs, P90X, bodybuilder splits, and relentless weight fluctuations.

He told me that whenever he used to listen to success stories on podcasts, he would think to himself, “That is so far-reaching. That will never be me. I’m just not worthy of that.”

Fast-forward to today at 62 years young. James has dropped 20 lbs and maintained his weight in the 140s effortlessly for two full years. He completed his very first triathlon at 61, finished a half marathon, and regularly swims, runs, and strength trains every week. He was recently elected to the board of his local running club alongside athletes half his age, and he routinely runs up four flights of stairs at the school where he teaches.

When I asked him what was different this time after decades of failed attempts, he didn’t talk about a secret food or a magic exercise routine.

He looked at me and said, “You looked through the screen on one of our calls and told me, ‘You are an athlete.’ Those three words shifted everything for me.”

Diets ask you to become smaller for a while. Identities ask you to become someone new for good. A diet has an end date, and when the date comes, the old you comes back. An identity has no finish line. James did not get lean by being stricter. He got lean by becoming a person who trains.

For decades, James viewed himself through the lens of the overweight kid who was picked last in gym class. Because his underlying belief was “I always regain the weight,” his actions naturally pulled him back to that old baseline. But the moment he embraced the identity of an athlete, his daily choices shifted naturally. He stopped asking how to lose five pounds fast and started asking how an athlete fuels, recovers, and trains for a lifetime of vitality.

During his two years with us, life didn’t stop for James. He traveled across Italy and Spain, suffered a cycling accident that fractured his pelvis, and navigated a genetic cholesterol diagnosis.

In the past, any single one of those obstacles would have caused him to quit completely and fall back into old habits. But instead of abandoning his health, James relied on his baseline. He kept eating whole, dark leafy greens, stayed active within his limits, and focused on what he could control. Consistency was never about having a perfect journey; it was about building a baseline so strong that life’s curveballs could never reset his progress.

The most inspiring part of James’s story isn’t his scale weight or his race medals; it is his genuine excitement for life. He built a vibrant community of training partners, made lifelong friends, and stepped into a level of energy he didn’t even have in his twenties. Physical health is simply the vehicle that allows you to show up fully for your family, your community, and your future.

James told me at the end of our interview, “I used to think success stories were for other people. Now I know that if I can do this at 62, anyone can.”

If you are over the age of 50 and ready to stop guessing, stop cycling through fad diets, and build a lasting transformation rooted in strength, bone density, and whole-food plant-based living, we are here to walk that path with you.

Your journey starts with a single step.

I invite you to book a 1-on-1 strategy call with my wife, Ivy, over at https://mavywellness.com/

On this call, Ivy will look at your current routine, help you identify what has been holding you back, and map out a clear, step-by-step game plan tailored to your lifestyle. The call is completely free, educational, and designed to set you up for the next two to three decades of vibrant health.

👉 Book your strategy call with Ivy here: https://mavywellness.com/

Have a fantastic weekend,

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin

A favor for a friend 🌱

My friend Carleigh Bodrug just launched her brand new cookbook, Quickies, and I would love your support for her. Carleigh has been helping promote my book to her audience, so I am happily returning the favor.

Carleigh is a two time New York Times bestselling author and the creator of PlantYou. Quickies is packed with more than 140 easy plant based recipes you can get on the table in 20 minutes or less. Every recipe includes a Plant Point counter with a big focus on fiber, so you know you are feeding your gut what it needs without overthinking it.

If you grab your copy during launch week, you also get six months of her weekly meal plans and shopping lists free, plus a few bonus ebooks. Order your copy here, then claim the bonuses with your receipt at quickiescookbook.com.

Thanks for showing her the same love she showed me.

P.S. You can listen to James full success story episode below 👇

But in her head, the weekend was over. So she did what most people do. She threw in the towel for the rest of the weekend and told herself she would start over on Monday.

I grabbed my whiteboard and drew her one line.

The line sloped downward, bumped up a little where Saturday was, then kept dropping. I told her, this is what a real transformation looks like over six months or a year. That Saturday bump is barely visible. It is one messy sentence in an entire chapter.

Then I drew what happens when you quit at the bump. The line flatlines. It never recovers.

Here is what I need you to understand. I have coached people for six and a half years. Every single person has messy chapters. I have messy chapters. Nobody gets a clean run. The people who transform are not the ones who never mess up. They are the ones who refuse to stop writing the book.

Think about it this way. If you shoot yourself in the right foot, you do not shoot yourself in the left foot to even things out. But that is exactly what we do with food. I overate Saturday, so I might as well blow off Sunday too, and Monday I will be perfect again.

It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud. But that is the logic most of us run on.

Monday is not magical. January 1st is not magical. The only thing that changes your trajectory is winning the very next meal and executing the very next workout.

I played basketball growing up and my coach taught me something I never forgot. You are always one shot away from being on a streak. I once made 40 shots in a row, missed one, and felt like I broke something precious. He just said, take the next shot. You cannot get on a streak without taking another shot.

Compliance does not mean perfection. Compliance means you shorten the gap between the mistake and the comeback. A mistake on Saturday followed by a great Sunday is a speck on the graph. A mistake on Saturday followed by quitting until Monday is a crater.

And here is the part nobody talks about. The longer you wait to get back on track, the harder it feels to start again. It becomes a bigger mountain in your mind. Win the next meal and the mountain never forms.

Now let me take this deeper, because this is about more than one weekend.

On that same call, I talked about juggling. When you first learn to juggle, your brain does not understand the pattern. Your hands do not know what to do. You drop everything. But if you keep practicing, one day it clicks. And once it clicks, you cannot unsee the pattern. You can close your eyes and still juggle. You cannot unlearn it.

Fitness and nutrition work the same way. Right now it takes effort to plan your meals, hit your protein, get your steps in, show up for your workouts. It feels clunky, like learning piano with stiff fingers. But if you put in the repetitions, one day it clicks. Eating this way becomes who you are. Training becomes part of your day, like drinking your morning coffee. You cannot unlearn it.

But it does not click in 21 days. That number was made up to make people feel good. The real research says it takes closer to 18 months for something to become part of who you are. So stop rushing. Stop looking for the trick. There is no trick beyond the basics done repeatedly.

And the basics are simple. Respect your calories. Do the workout you can actually stick to. Challenge yourself. Then go enjoy your life. Meal prep, read books, sleep, manage your stress, spend time with your family.

The hardest skill in all of this is learning to sit with a craving and do nothing about it. One of our members shared on the call that she wanted something sweet, sat with the craving, and survived to tell the story. That is the whole game. Just because you want something does not mean you have to give it to yourself. The people who reach their goals are the ones who learn to say no to themselves, over and over, until it becomes who they are.

And when you do that, momentum starts to build. You are down a pound, then three, then your jeans fit differently, then you catch a glimpse of muscle in your shoulder that was not there before. Progress feels good. And feeling good makes the next good decision easier.

One more thing I told the group. There is a bigger goal above the fat loss, and you are progressing toward it even on the slow weeks. Every workout builds muscle and strengthens your bones. Every walk makes your heart stronger. Every whole food plant based meal statistically lowers your risk of chronic illness. None of that effort is wasted because the scale moved slower than you wanted. The only thing that controls the speed of fat loss is the calorie deficit. Everything else is pure win.

So here is my challenge for you. The next time you mess up, and you will, do not wait for Monday. Turn the page that same day. Write the next sentence with your next meal. Take the next shot.

If you are over 50 and you are done starting over every Monday,

I am hosting a free live workshop this Saturday, September 26 at 9am Pacific on How to Master Body Composition and Vitality Over 50. I will show you exactly how our members break through fat loss plateaus with whole food plant based nutrition and progressive strength training.

It is live and there is no replay, so show up ready to take notes.

Save your seat here: https://mavywellness.com/masterclass-registration

P.S. Enjoy this AI recreation of my explanation on the group call 😅 I couldn’t share an actual photo out of privacy for our members that were on the call.

Quick note before today’s lesson.

On Saturday, September 26 at 9:00 AM PDT (12:00 PM EDT), I’m hosting a live masterclass:

How to Master Body Composition & Vitality Over 50 (Using the Power of Whole Food, Plant Based Living)

In this live workshop, I’ll be breaking down:

The exact workout splits, sets, and reps designed for long term joint health and vitality

How to properly manipulate your food intake to trigger consistent, natural fat loss

How to speed up your metabolism post fat loss with reverse dieting so you keep your results for life

(Live Q&A, so seating is limited.)

👉 Reserve Your Spot: https://mavywellness.com/masterclass-registration

Consider today’s lesson a little taste of what’s coming.

Today, I want to talk about one of the most common questions I get from people who are ready to build strength, drop body fat, and transform their physique:

“Maxime, which workout split should I actually be doing?”

Full body? Upper/lower? Push/pull/legs? Or one of those bodybuilder bro splits where you train one muscle group per day?

Here’s the core principle I teach inside our Forever Fit program:

The absolute best training split is the one you can actually execute and stay consistent with.

All splits work. All of them can deliver great results. But if you commit to a 4 day split and your schedule only allows 3 days, you end up leaving muscle groups untrained, creating structural imbalances over time.

Here is how to choose the right one for your stage of life.

1. The Full Body Split (The Foundation)

This is my personal favorite, and the exact split I rely on for my own training.

Structure: You train all major muscle groups in every session, 2 to 4 times per week (3 days per week is the sweet spot for most people).

Time Commitment: 30 to 45 minutes per session.

Sample Week: Monday (Full Body), Tuesday (Rest/Cardio), Wednesday (Full Body), Thursday (Rest), Friday (Full Body), Weekend Off.

Who It’s For: Beginners, anyone returning after a long break, or anyone in Phase 1 (Body Recomposition) and Phase 2 (Reverse Dieting).

Why it works: If life happens on Wednesday and you miss a session, you simply shift it to Thursday without ruining your entire week.

2. The Upper/Lower Split (Level 2)

Once you’ve built a strong foundation with full body workouts and are ready for more training volume, the upper/lower split is the natural next step.

Structure: 4 sessions per week. You alternate between upper body days (chest, back, shoulders, arms, core) and lower body days (quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves).

Sample Week: Monday (Upper), Tuesday (Lower), Wednesday (Rest), Thursday (Upper), Friday (Lower), Weekend Off.

Who It’s For: Intermediate lifters, or anyone moving into Phase 2 (Reverse Dieting) and Phase 3 (Lean Muscle Building) where higher food intake supports more training volume.

The Science: Research published in BMC Sports Science found no meaningful difference in muscle or strength gains between a full body and an upper/lower split when weekly volume is matched. Upper/lower simply lets you perform more exercises per muscle region in a single workout.

3. Push/Pull/Legs (Level 3)

Push Day: Chest, shoulders, triceps. Pull Day: Back, rear delts, biceps. Legs Day: Quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves.

This can run as a 3 day or a high volume 6 day split, but it demands serious recovery capacity. Unless you’re an advanced lifter optimizing for maximum muscle isolation, this level of specificity is usually unnecessary for sustainable health and longevity.

A quick word on the classic bro split (one muscle group per day, 5 days a week): it’s the least efficient option for busy adults over 50. It leaves you extremely sore and forces you to wait a full week before training that muscle again. Skip it.

How to Pick Your Split Right Now (3 Quick Questions)

1. How many days per week can you 100% guarantee you can strength train for the next 6 to 12 months? (If you aren’t sure about 4 days, pick 3!)

2. Are you brand new to structured strength training or returning after a break? (If yes, start with Full Body.)

3. What is your primary focus right now? (Training builds the muscle, but nutrition reveals it. If you have a 4th day available, use it to meal prep instead of adding a 4th workout!)

Remember: More is not better. Smarter is better.

You don’t need to live in the gym to get into the best shape of your life. You just need a sustainable framework that fits your actual schedule.

If today’s lesson was useful, come get the full blueprint live.

On Saturday, September 26, I’m teaching the complete system: the exact splits, sets, and reps, how to pair them with whole food, plant based nutrition for lasting results, plus live Q&A so bring your questions.

👉 Reserve Your Spot: https://mavywellness.com/masterclass-registration

Have a fantastic weekend,

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin

P.S. This week’s podcast episode is a powerful one. Russell Smithe lost 300 pounds and has kept it off for years. He shares what he wishes he’d known at the very start. Watch it here:

Since I was younger, I’ve had this massive, burning desire in my heart to help and serve people.

That feeling has only grown stronger the older I get and the more obstacles I go through in my own life.

It’s a fire in my belly that I can’t tame. It’s so strong that my brain is always thinking of how I can serve. When I read something, my first thought isn’t, “Wow, let me do this,” but rather, “Wow, how can I understand this deeper so that I can teach it and help others with it?”

That is how my brain is wired and why I love to use analogies to explain concepts, because I think it simplifies them and compares them to other areas of life that make it easier to understand the point that I am trying to make.

Because most of life is just about learning to make better decisions with the situation that is presented in front of us. All situations come to us as neutral.

We are the ones that give them meaning; we decide if it’s good or bad. We react or respond to it in a way that is good or bad according to us.

All that to say that my brain is always thinking of how I can conceptualize the actions that I have taken that have been successful and that have allowed me to progress in life and become a better version of myself, all while along the way hitting cool goals that I’ve set for myself.

And recently, I was talking to a close friend about this, and he told me that it was impressive how I could just set a goal and do it. For example, my latest goal was my own personal body recomposition journey, where I managed to hit my goal of dropping from 14% body fat to 10% in 19 weeks.

He got me thinking about how I approach setting a goal and how I work towards it, and so I wanted to share that framework with you:

First, you need to understand that I don’t set goals that I don’t care about or that come from other people (friends, family, society, etc.), because if I don’t really want it, I will 100% not do the necessary actions to get the thing.

All goals, whether fat loss, muscle building, health improvement, business, a better marriage, etc., require a certain level of action-taking and “sacrifice” (for example, not eating a full bag of chips at night that would put you over your calorie goals for the day).

And if one is not ready to do the required level of action, time commitment, and sacrifice, then one shall not get the goal. It’s that simple.

If I want to be fit and lean, but I don’t want to work out, eat healthier, or track my food, I will not be able to get the goal that I want.

If I want a better marriage, but I’m not ready to prioritize time with my partner, work on myself, and ensure that we have open communication, then I will not have a better marriage.

For example, three years ago I told myself that I wanted to get back into Ironman 70.3 racing, because the last time I raced I was in the top 10% in the world for my age group and I wanted to get back into that position, or so I thought.

When I started training for triathlon many years ago, it was when I was going through the hardest time of my life with my late partner and her breast cancer battle.

Triathlon racing saved me; that was my drug. I didn’t drink or do drugs, but I sure as heck numbed myself on the bike for 4-hour rides, 2-hour long runs, and laps and laps in the pool. That was my escape.

But three years ago, my life was good; I had grieved, and I was doing it for fun.

I bought the road bike, bike trainer, signed up for Zwift, got new running shoes, swimming goggles, etc.

I lasted about 5 weeks of training twice a day... because the more I trained, the more it reminded me of what was needed to get to race day and perform.

And honestly, I was not ready to do what was required to reach that goal.

I wasn’t traumatized enough to train that much; that was the reality of it.

And I’m not saying every triathlete is like that; this was just my own personal experience, haha, of how I got into the sport and why I did it.

I couldn’t get it out of my mind to train that much for “no reason,” and it was for no reason because I didn’t care enough for the goal to do the actions necessary to reach my goal.

So I quit the goal. I decided to stop training for triathlon and went back to regular strength training. I went from 15 hours of training a week down to 5 hours, and I was happier.

Maybe one day I’ll race again, but not at this moment in time.

Now fast-forward to many goals later. I set this last goal of improving my body composition, and before I committed to it, I checked in with myself as to whether or not I was willing to do all the actions necessary to get there:

• Strength training consistently, which I was already doing

• Adding more cardio as the weeks progressed in order to continue losing body fat

• Tracking my calories and protein every day to ensure I stayed in a calorie deficit

• Understanding that there would be a point where I would be hungry and tired from being in a deficit for a long time

• Being okay that when I lost the fat I wanted and reached my goal, it wasn’t going to be over and that I would have an extra 3-4 months of reverse dieting I would need to do after (I’m in week 1 as of the writing of this article)

• I understood I wouldn’t be able to eat out as much as I normally did with Ivy, especially coming back from our three-month Asia trip

• I knew I would have to deal with cravings and that I would have to say no or make it fit within my calorie budget for the day

• I knew there would be MANY days where I wouldn’t want to work out, do my cardio, or track my food, and that I would need to do it anyway

I checked in with myself before starting, because those are all the hard realities of achieving a fantastic shift in body composition.

If I wasn’t ready to do any of these, then I understood that I wouldn’t reach my goal and that it would be my fault and no one else’s.

So going back to that conversation with a friend, I set goals where I am ready to do what it takes to reach them.

I don’t set goals willy-nilly and half commit.

Life is full of goals that you can go for and set. You are the creator of your own reality. It is a powerful place to be.

You want a better body? You can.

You want better health? You can.

You want to be fitter at 80? You can.

You want to have more energy at 70? You can.

You want to be happier? You can.

BUT only if you are willing to do what it takes to get it.

There are no shortcuts, and there are no magic solutions. Anything fast has a great cost.

The goal is not to be fit and healthy for 3-6 months; it’s to be in the best shape of your life until the day you die. That’s 2, 3, 4, 5+ decades away.

You can have what you want if you are willing to work for it.

I know I can have what I want in this world if I’m willing to work for it, and I am.

I also know and understand that I am entitled to NOTHING.

I understand that I will sometimes have to work harder than others to get similar results, and sometimes less than others to get similar results.

That’s life; it’s not fair.

The only ones that get rewarded are the ones who take action, not the ones that sit around and ponder.

And if that’s you, if you’ve checked in with yourself, you’re done pondering, and you’re ready to take action on your health and body composition. I have some exciting news.

This upcoming Saturday, September 26th at 9:00 AM PST, I’m hosting a brand new live masterclass:

How to Master Body Composition and Vitality Over 50 Using Whole Food Plant-Based Living.

I’ll be breaking down the exact step-by-step framework, training splits, and metabolic strategies we’ve used to help over 1,200+ clients rebuild lean muscle, lose stubborn body fat, and regain vibrant health.

👉 Click here to reserve your FREE spot for the live Masterclass

Thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far. I’d love to know if this resonated with you below in the comments!

Have a fantastic rest of your week.

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin

Wow, what an incredible week! We just wrapped up our Mavy Wellness Workshop in Las Vegas this week, and what a blast it was.

It was so great to connect with some members and some non-members who have now become friends 🌱 💪

The most inspiring part to me was the age range of our members during this workshop, from 53 to 74 years young, and everyone crushed it. Most people think that aging means limitation, less strength, less mobility, and less enjoyment. But everyone in this photo moved like someone decades younger than their age because they took on the challenge of strength training and plant-based living 🌱

It was fantastic to see them push themselves, squatting their body weight and deadlifting weights they never thought they could do.

Ivy and I plan on doing another one in January/February of 2027, which we will limit to 6 spots because it was fun to get to spend 1:1 time with each member throughout the three days. We hosted everyone at our house for lunch every day, and that is our maximum capacity.

And for our members who attended, they know how delicious my homemade soy lattes are... and yes, they will be a part of the next workshop 😉

So just be ready to reserve your spot whenever we announce it in the upcoming weeks (it will take place in Las Vegas). Also, as you can see in the photo below, you may or may not see similar results... AI may have been used to enhance results 😜

Now let’s get into today’s message:

As some of you know, I’ve been going through my own body recomposition transformation for the past 19 weeks, and this week marked the last week before I start Phase 2 of our Mavy Wellness blueprint, which is “Reverse Dieting.” This is where I will slowly re-increase my metabolism in order to stay lean, build muscle, and eat more food to keep the great results I’ve gotten over the past 19 weeks.

Here is the whole journey 👇

As you can see, it came with its ups and downs when it came to weight fluctuation, and by all means was it not a perfect journey.

And so today, I wanted to share one big lesson I learned from this body recomposition phase, which started when I came back from my three-month Asia trip with Ivy. Ivy and I traveled a few times during this body recomposition (NHA Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, and the ICNM conference in Washington, DC, since we were sponsors at both events and leading group workouts).

I detached myself from the timeline. When I started this journey, I only knew the end destination I wanted to get to and not how long it would take me to get there, because I didn’t care. The goal is the goal; the timeline wasn’t my goal.

Let’s use an analogy to illustrate this better. I am going hiking in the Rockies in beautiful Alberta, Canada. I picked the mountain that I wanted to climb to the top of (setting the goal). From there, I mentally prepared myself that it would take me five times longer than I was mentally ready to go for, just so that I could mentally trick myself into managing my expectations and be ready for more, for the unexpected, and for things that were out of my “control.”

Then I started the “walk/hike.” I looked at my feet at first: left foot, then right foot, then left foot, then right foot, etc. Then I looked around at the trees, birds, etc., because I wanted to enjoy the journey.

The biggest mistake people make is that they set their goal/mountain peak and stare at it the whole way through. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to hike a mountain while staring at the peak the whole time, but it feels like you are barely making any progress even though you’ve been walking for hours.

My whole strategy was: look down at my feet. Left, right, left, right. Do that for hours, days, weeks, which is the equivalent of focusing on my nutrition every meal, every day, ensuring I stay in a calorie deficit, ensuring I hit my protein daily, ensuring I eat quality food, ensuring I got my strength sessions in, and my cardio workouts in for days and weeks. Then, look up and be surprised at how close that mountain peak was and surprised at how much my body was starting to show signs of body recomposition.

Then I’d put my head back down and continue on: left, right, left, right. Boom, look up... oh great, I see more change. I’d celebrate by patting myself on the back (not justifying that I could celebrate with food), and then I’d put my head back down.

A big mistake I see people make in their transformation is that they try to have the whole journey planned ahead of time, and that is unrealistic. Like I said, Ivy and I traveled during this transformation, and we had good travel days and bad ones, with things that were out of our control.

The best thing I could do was stay adaptable, because sometimes the best thing you can do is the best thing you can do in that moment, and not the “perfect action” you had pre-planned in your head, which realistically might not be possible in that scenario. That is when most people lose their minds, because their reality isn’t matching what they had planned.

Plans fail all the time. That is why I like guidelines, structures, and systems, because they act more as guardrails to keep you on track versus hoping you can stay on the “perfect” track all the time, which you won’t.

Now to bring it all together: this transformation could have taken me 12 weeks or 25 weeks, and I wouldn’t have cared. It was all dependent on my ability to stay compliant, consistent, and adaptable. Life could have thrown me more curveballs, and it would have taken me longer.

I would have been okay with that because, again, the goal is the goal. All I would have done is put my head up, handle the “speed up or detour,” put my head back down, and gone left, right, left, right...

I just so happened to look up this morning and boom, I reached both of those goals. I want you all to look at the pace of fat loss during these 19 weeks as well.

I lost an average of 0.52 lbs a week on the scale and 0.21% body fat per week.

That is 2.1 lbs a month.

Remember: “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

So my advice to you is to stay focused (left, right, left, right), enjoy the journey (detach from the timeline), and stay adaptable because it will never go perfectly.

That’s how all fit people became fit. NONE of them ever had a perfect journey; they just learned to deal with the “speed bumps of life” better than others who aren’t in their position. That is all.

And that isn’t a talent; it’s a skill that you have the ability to acquire as well.

I hope this lesson from my journey is helpful on yours.

I’ll be sharing more in the weeks to come.

If you are wanting some guidance, support, coaching, and accountability on your own transformation journey, we’d love to serve you.

Your first step to your new level of health, fitness, and vitality starts with one step: simply book your introductory call with Ivy over at mavywellness.com.

She will help you establish a game plan to determine what has been missing for you to reach your goal and how we can help you get there once and for all and set you up for life, whether you are looking at our 1:1 coaching program or our Forever Fit Course/Coaching.

Because we understand that we are only part of a glimpse of your entire journey, but our goal is to set you on a different trajectory so that in the next 2-3 decades your life looks completely different than your peers.

Book your call; we look forward to serving you, and thank you for reading this week’s newsletter 🌱

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin

I am doing this transformation simply so that I can make a short documentary of it and post it on my YouTube channel.

So far I’ve documented the ups and downs of the journey: the days where I missed workouts, the days where I went over my calories, or ate food that wasn’t the “best” for me.

I’m doing this to show people that you don’t need to be perfect to transform your health and body.

Now I know that some of you may say, “It’s easy for you, Coach Maxime, you are 33 years old.” Well, if you don’t believe the principles work, I’ve done over 63 one-hour long interviews with our members that we’ve helped transform who are between the ages of 45 and 87 years young (check them out here).

Even with that being said, there are plenty of overweight and obese individuals in their 20s, 30s, and 40s to show that it’s not that “easy,” regardless of your age.

So today I want to share one principle that has really helped me throughout ALL my transformations that I’ve done in the past 21 years of working out, and you read that right, I’ve been working out for over two-thirds of my life so far.

Before any hate comment kicks in as to why I’ve had to transform so many times, it’s not because I couldn’t keep the weight off. It’s because I compete in different sports (martial arts, basketball, bodybuilding, powerlifting, high-fashion modeling, Ironman 70.3 races, basketball again, and that last round I let myself get a little more out of shape because I knew I wanted to do this project).

But here is what I’ve been able to produce so far as results, and I’m a few weeks away from being done with the body recomposition phase and then will be transitioning into a reverse dieting phase for four months.

Here is one of the top principles that I think matters the most, that if people could learn to gain mastery over, it would make their whole life, health, fitness, and overall life journey more conducive to reaching their goals, and it’s something that I’ve had to work hard at getting better at.

And to be honest, it’s still and always will be a work in progress.

And that is the ability to sit in the uncomfortability of truly wanting something and not giving it to myself.

And this applies to all areas of life.

You really want to buy something that you know you don’t really need, but you just WANT IT and can’t resist your own desires, and end up buying it, putting you further into debt.

You are in a calorie deficit and you really want to eat a certain food or meal that would put you over your calorie goals for the day, and you just CAN’T RESIST IT, which means you can’t sit with the feeling of wanting it and not giving it to yourself.

The skill of learning to sit with uncomfortability is the most important muscle I believe you can develop in life.

You can call that discipline, but I think it’s deeper than that.

It’s the same muscle that most people have weakened by not being able to sit still and do nothing. Most people have to pull out their phone and distract themselves.

That is one of the many reasons why I like doing these monthly seven-day digital detoxes, because I get to strengthen that muscle. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard, but the more I do it, the easier it becomes. Just like training a muscle.

Some may consider it deprivation, but it’s not, because it’s for the goal that YOU said you cared about. No one is forcing you to eat healthy, to want to lose fat, or to want to build muscle so that you can live a long, healthy life, free of chronic disease, and so that you can spend more time with the people you love.

No one is telling you to do any of that, so you can eat all the crap you want and not exercise, and deal with the results of those actions.

But my guess, if you are reading my content, is that you want more for your life, for your health, for your fitness, and for your future self.

That, my friends, is a goal that you have set for yourself. SO, if the actions necessary for you to reach the goal that you said you wanted require you to not “give” yourself something when you “really” want it, then that is a choice and is not deprivation.

My view of life is that I am not entitled to anything besides love from my family and my wife. Besides that, if I set a goal for myself, I don’t deserve it unless I am willing to do the actions necessary to get that goal, and if I’m not, then I don’t get the goal. It’s as clear as that.

I find too many people feel entitled to being at a certain weight or body fat because they worked hard for a short period of time, and I consider 6 to 12 months short.

Yes, you can get phenomenal results, as we’ve proven over and over again in our coaching program, but the goal isn’t to be fit for 6 to 12 months, it’s to be fit and healthy for a lifetime, and that requires a long-term commitment on your end. It’s a positive life sentence you are giving yourself.

You get what you work for, you get what you sacrifice for, you get what you commit to in life. My recommendation to you is that if you don’t have the “thing/goal” that you want, it’s probably because you have some behaviors that aren’t conducive to having that goal, and that it will most likely require you to sit with very uncomfortable feelings of “I want” and “I don’t give it to myself.”

Like I said at the start, it’s a work in progress. It isn’t always perfect, but it’s consistent. The only reason I was able to transform, and that our clients are able to transform, is because they showed up far more often than the amount of “mistakes/learning opportunities” they’ve had.

I hope this resonated, because it is the most underworked muscle I see in people that I know would make the world of a difference.

To make this practical, here is how I deal with the sensation of want and not giving into it 98% of the time:

1. I become aware that it’s there, and I ask myself if it’s a logical desire or an emotional one.

2. In the context of exercise and fitness, it will 95% of the time be emotional. I then take some big breaths and just sit with it. I observe it. I understand that I won’t die from having cravings for a cookie and not eating it (sounds funny, right? But sometimes it feels like that).

3. I tell myself, if I really want it, I can have it tomorrow. There’s no emergency to have it now. The next day, if I still want it, then I have it and I simply make it fit within my calories.

It’s important to catch the distinction here: I could have done that on that first day, but then the muscle that would have been strengthened is the one of giving into the emotion of “I want, I have.” By delaying it to the next day, it shifts to “I wanted, and now I consciously choose to have it.”

It shifts from reactive to responsive.

I hope that makes sense.

I hope it helped someone, because I went deep on that one and I didn’t expect it, but I let my heart write it out.

I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week ahead, and I invite you to start working that muscle of “I want, I wait” versus “I want, I take.”

Sincerely,

Maxime
Co-Founder of Mavy Wellness

Ps. Ready to level up like my mom below, book your introductory meeting with our team → https://mavywellness.com/

I’m writing this newsletter right before I head out on my monthly seven-day digital detox, so if you’ve submitted some questions to be answered for the newsletter, I will be sure to answer them and include them in next week’s newsletter.

Let’s jump into this week’s newsletter:

In case you don’t know how my brain works, I’m ALWAYS thinking about how I can help others. When I learn something new that I find helpful, I always think to myself: “How can I share this with our community to help them?”

I always make sure that I implement it for myself before I share it so that I can know its real value and if it’s tangible and realistic.

When I think of sharing something in my newsletter, I always break it down into two types of people that would be reading it:

1. The people who aren’t doing much in terms of fitness and monitoring their food for the purpose of their goal and/or who aren’t eating plant-based whole foods. Those people need to get started; they need to DECIDE to commit to moving forward and start the process.

2. Then there are the people who are “exercising,” moving their bodies, eating plant-based whole food, and making good decisions, but they are simply not seeing the results they want because they are missing the proper structure and blueprint to get the goal they want.

They think that the method that got them to lose 20, 30, or even 40+ lbs in the first place is the same method that will get them to lose those last 5-15 lbs of fat... it’s not.

So today I thought I’d share a lesson for each of these two scenarios, because I’m sure at this point you’ve identified with one of those two.

1. The people who need to get started and commit.

The other day I saw online this great quote that someone had written that made me laugh. And here I’ll compare fat loss, muscle building, and eating healthier to starting a business, because they evoke very similar emotions.

It’s scary, you don’t know where to start, you’re afraid to fail, afraid to look stupid, and it will require a ton of work and resilience. If you know, you know.

I have one of my best childhood friends in the world that wants to start his construction business (which I had a small one in Alberta, Canada many years ago... fun fact).

I keep telling him if I can do it, you can do it too. We come from the same neighborhood and grew up together. I told him he’s way smarter than me; the only difference is that I was dumb enough to start.

Again, I’m saying this in a joking way, but there is truth to it. Read the following quote I saw (disregard the word idiot, as he likes to swear a lot when he writes, so I modified it a bit to remove those words).

Here’s the quote I read:

”An idiot in motion moves faster than a genius at rest. The genius at rest has the idea, the knowledge, the skill, and the plan.

They also have seventeen reasons why the timing isn’t quite right yet. So they wait, prepare, and optimize.

And guess what? Nothing moves.

The idiot in motion has half the idea and none of the plan. But they start anyway.

They ship the ugly version, send the awkward email, and post the imperfect thing. And every day they move, they get less like an idiot.”

The same goes for your health journey, fat loss journey, or whatever it is you want to improve in that area of your life.

In this context, I’ve been an “idiot” over and over again 😅 Because I know that I can’t start something from scratch and immediately be good at it. I’ve also learned that I learn way more of the right things by just starting.

Versus trying to figure out the millions of different combinations that my path could go on ahead of time, I just start so that I can figure out the path ahead of me, if that makes sense.

So some of you need to be that “person” that just starts the motion, because it gets you ahead of all the overthinkers EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I hope that makes sense.

2. Now onto my action-takers reading this.

For you, you are already in motion; you’ve learned through getting started, through moving, through education, etc.

Now for you comes the second level that goes beyond action... we graduate into the optimization phase.

Because if you are in step 1, you can’t optimize something you aren’t consistent with.

So for you, if your goal is to optimize your body composition, you need to look at the people who are the best in the world at body composition and learn from their strategies.

Let’s look at bodybuilders.

I’m not saying you want to be a bodybuilder, but they are the best in the world when it comes to being able to manipulate their bodies like that.

So here are the core things they do:

1. Calorie deficit is mandatory; there is no overruling this. If you eat 1,000 calories more than you burn and it comes from grains, dark leafy greens, and fruits, you will still put on fat. Eating healthy doesn’t guarantee you a shift in body composition.

If you are in a deficit and aren’t losing weight, you aren’t in a deficit anymore; your body got used to it, and you have to go lower. Your body is doing its job at adapting to what you’ve been giving it.

If you are unsustainably low, consider doing our reverse dieting phase first. You can learn more about it in my book.

2. Protein matters up to a certain point. We like to aim for 1.6g per kg of IDEAL body weight, especially if you are over 50 and are going into a calorie deficit to improve your body composition.

3. Strength training combined with progressive overload is an ABSOLUTE must. If not, you will just be asking of your body to do what it’s able to do, and you will stay stuck in a plateau for months and maybe even years.

4. Cardiovascular exercise is a must and DOES NOT replace strength training. They don’t serve the same goal. Use cardiovascular exercise as a tool to induce more calorie deficit so you don’t always have to lower your food intake.

Those are going to be your basic fundamentals to implement so that you can see progression. There are obviously other factors you can optimize like rest, NEAT, pace, etc. But if you do those 4 things properly, your body will start to change again.

I hope this helps, and for those of you who want to move faster, eliminate the mistakes made, and shorten your timeline to reaching your goal by having a proven system created for you, I invite you to book your introductory call with our team to learn more.

Whether you want to join our Mavy Wellness University, take our Forever Fit Over 50 course, or work with our 1:1 coaching team, it all starts with a call.

Book it here → https://mavywellness.com/

*The call is free; it’s there to coach you and educate you so that you can make the best decision for your future.

That is all I have for you today.

By the time you are reading this, I will have two days left of my digital detox, and I’ll be back online leading incredible trainings for our community and hosting our Las Vegas Workshop for all our clients flying into town.

I look forward to connecting with everyone.

Have a fantastic weekend,

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin

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As much as we say that it doesn’t affect us... it still does a little bit.

What I’ve found over time is that “the critics” don’t sound as loud the longer I work on myself and the more I progress in life.

But there is still that faint little voice that you hear from time to time.

And the more you put yourself out there, the more likely you are to hear those voices.

When I launched my podcast nearly 5 years ago, I didn’t think it would turn into what it is today. Having 455 episodes so far and hundreds of thousands of downloads means many ears to listen and a few mouths (or fingers to criticize, referring to keyboard warriors).

I’ve received many mean emails and comments throughout the years because of the show.

When I launched my coaching business over six and a half years ago, it was the same thing. We’ve had great success and the vast majority of people liked us (over 1,200 of them) , but there is always a small percentage of people who won’t like what you do.

Unfortunately, what I’ve found in that case is that they were looking for a savior and we couldn’t be that for them. In order to be saved, you have to be willing to put in the work, and most of the time, when people are looking for a savior, they aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with that because I’ve done that myself in the early chapters of my life, but my life didn’t change until I started taking ownership and asking for help.

The same happened when I launched my first book ever, Forever Fit, which went live this January 2026. I have over 85% five-star reviews, and the rest of the percentage is a mixture of 4, 3, 2, and 1 stars.

Which hurt at first, until I started reading the reviews. Some people didn’t like it because there were too many stories from members and their transformational journeys (which were there to show them that people with different backgrounds and struggles could do it, and so could they).

Yet many of the five-star reviews mentioned that they enjoyed the book and especially the stories because they were so inspiring.

So the book was loved and hated for the exact same reason.

Which brings me to my point for this article.

You will be criticized for doing nothing, and you will be criticized for doing something. Criticism is a fixed cost, so you and I might as well change lives and do our best.

Understanding that criticism and judgment are a fixed cost, and that they will be there no matter what, really makes you reflect on how you should be approaching your life.

Get in shape, learn to say no to people, and learn to prioritize your nutrition regardless of what your partner will say or what your “circle” of friends will think. Get uncomfortable, and learn to prioritize yourself so that you can live your best life and serve as the best version of you.

Start the program, start that business, book the trip, and do the thing that you are afraid of doing because you might be judged.

Who cares.

Yes, you will be criticized. Yes, you will be judged. But like I said, the voice just gets dimmer and dimmer the more you progress, until eventually you learn to live with it.

I feel like that is where I am at right now. I’ve gotten somewhat comfortable, and I have so much more in me that I want to give, offer, and serve to the world.

And to be honest, I’ve been scared of stepping into that because it means a new and bigger level of exposure to criticism, just as I got used to dealing with the level I am at now.

It’s scary, I get it.

But at the end of the day, the only reason I keep working on myself, and the only reason I keep dealing with that sucky, uncomfortable feeling, is because I have this fire inside of me to serve. I can’t turn it off, so I have to try. Who knows how many more lives I could impact by making it not about me?

How many more people could I help start exercising? How many people could I help reduce their risk of dealing with chronic illnesses by helping them eat more plant-based whole foods? How many more people could I potentially add years to their lives because I’ve helped them lose 20, 30, 40+ lbs?

Think of it: how many more birthdays will that add to celebrate with your life partner, with your kids, and with your grandkids? How many beautiful memories will be created if just one person adds 5 to 10 years to their life?

To me, that seems worth getting “criticized” for the work that I do, for my podcast, for my coaching, for my approach, for my transformation philosophy, for my book, and so on.

So if you see me playing it bigger in the upcoming year, that’s why. If you see me starting to play it small from time to time, that’s because fear has taken over... and that’s okay because I always get the upper hand on it. Sometimes it takes me time, but I always get back on top of things and continue to dream big.

It’s not supposed to be a perfect path straight up, and it never has been from the start.

I’m just out here trying my best, taking the punches of life, doing my best to smile through it, thriving, living my best life with my wife, and serving to my highest capacity.

That’s all I got for you today. I had it on my heart to write about this, so I hope it resonated with someone else because I know I can’t be the only one feeling this way.

I appreciate you reading, and thank you for your support.

I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week.

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin

I first want to start off with one of my favorite parts of the month that feeds my soul.

As some of you may know, every month I go on GoFundMe and I select a random breast cancer patient’s fundraiser to support on behalf of our community, Ivy, and myself.

Today when I was on there, I stumbled upon Kelly’s fundraiser, who is battling stage 3 triple-positive breast cancer. The fundraiser was started by her four kids, and as I was reading her story, there is one line that absolutely made me cry: “We Need More Time With Our Mom”... Fudge that hit me hard.

That hit me hard, so I’ve made her our recipient for the month. This is the 76th cancer patient we’ve been able to support since I started my coaching business, and it fills my heart EVERY SINGLE MONTH ❤️

This is why I do what I do: not only to support those who are already going through cancer, but to help YOU reading this reduce your chances of being in that position.

Because I know that if I can help someone eat plant-based whole foods, exercise, move their body, build muscle, and lose fat/visceral fat, I am greatly reducing the risk of ever seeing any of you on GoFundMe.

So thank you to those of you who have ever joined our 1:1 program, bought my book, or joined our new course. This is possible because of you, so thank you.

Now let’s get into today’s message, since I didn’t receive any questions from last week’s newsletter (I guess I’ve taught you everything already 😉; in all seriousness, if you have any questions you’d like me to answer, just reply to this email and I’ll include them in the following newsletter issue).

This past Sunday, I was at our new church that Ivy and I just found because we moved near Las Vegas. And the pastor said something that I had to write down because I knew I would want to share it with you all.

I’ll make it my own version since I can relate to it on a personal level.

He said, “Some of you are in an abusive relationship... with yourself.” If a stranger were to talk to you the way that you talk to yourself, you would hit them. If I asked you to raise your hand right now if you resonate with that, I’m sure I’d see a lot of hands up.

Some people like to tone it down by saying we are our own worst critic, but the honest truth is that some of you are in a straight-up abusive relationship with yourself.

I’ve been coaching for over six and a half years, and I can tell you that the number one thing that prevents people from succeeding in their transformation is that little voice in the back of your head. The one that beats you up when you make a mistake, the one that tears you down when you eat a meal you’re not supposed to, the one that yells at you when you miss a workout.

It’s not the workout; it’s not the meal plan. Those are straightforward; they are simple, and it’s just math for the most part. The complexity comes in when you add that voice inside of your head. That’s why I believe in coaching. Because yes, your coach will give you the plan, but their main goal is to help you stick to it. And sometimes that looks like walking you off the mental ledge; sometimes that looks like helping you to navigate the voice in your head. Because that will determine what type of action you will take moving forward.

The pastor then said one more thing that I think will bring it all together.

”If you want to change your choices, you have to change your voices.”

Boom - Mic drop Read that one more time: if you want to change your choices, you have to change your voices.

I’ve found that to be true with ANY area of life: relationships, business, fitness, fat loss, marriage, etc...

If you see yourself as “shit,” then guess how you will show up.

If you see yourself as someone “who can’t stick with it,” guess what? You won’t be able to stick to it.

How you talk to yourself matters, so if this newsletter does nothing else but get you to look at your internal dialogue, then I will consider that a win. Everyone deserves to lose that unwanted fat; everyone deserves to be as fit as they want to be. Everyone deserves to be happy and live their best life. And every single one of you must make it a MUST, because like I said earlier in the newsletter, I don’t want to see your name on GoFundMe.

And if you have kids, please remember that line from above: “We Need More Time With Our Mom” or Dad. You have a responsibility to those you brought into the world to take care of yourself ❤️

I hope this gets you to take some type of action today to change the trajectory of your life, whether that is committing to something new or recommitting if you were on the journey and fell off track.

Now I have one little announcement for you.

As you know, I launched our Forever Fit course over 1 month ago, and we sold out of the initial founding spots in 8 days. I’ve now decided to make some adjustments to it because of the feedback from our members inside the course and from our readers.

In fact, our custom Mavy Wellness Coaching platform is infinitely better today than what we were using when we first went live.

Our members are loving the weekly group calls and having direct access to Coach Ivy and me. On a recent call, we ran a deep-dive workshop on building workout plans from scratch. One of our members brought her custom workout to the call, we refined it live together, and the entire group got to learn the exact nuance behind the programming.

If you are someone who wants to master the intricacies of coaching yourself, access custom software that generates your workout and meal plans, and join an uplifting, high-vibe community... I invite you to book a call with our team today.

We recently made the decision to remove the direct checkout link from our website. After careful consideration, we decided that every new member must go through a brief application call first. We care deeply about the culture inside our community, and we want to ensure every single person who enters is a great fit, keeps the positive vibes high, and is truly ready to do the work.

(And as always, our world-class 1-on-1 coaching program isn’t going anywhere. It remains the premier plant-based body recomposition program in the world, and access to that flagship program is also handled through our application calls.)

Whether you are curious about our group community or our high-touch 1-on-1 coaching, click the link below, book a quick call with our team, and Ivy will guide you to the exact path that fits your goals best:

Book your call here: → https://mavywellness.com/

That is all I have for you today ❤️

I hope you have a fantastic weekend, and thank you for reading. Sincerely,

P.S. I have an incredible soul post (self-reflecting article) coming out this upcoming Saturday on the fixed cost of criticism, which I think you will really enjoy. Stay tuned for that.

Maxime Sigouin

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