Good morning Tribe ❤️ Happy Saturday, I have a good one for you this weekend for our newsletter.
I have a big announcement to make ❤️
I’m making our course free for anyone going through cancer
As you know when I built Mavy Wellness (formerly Fit Vegan Coaching) , I set the mission to help 10,000 people get lean, thrive and reduce their risk of dealing with chronic illness on plants by 2033, and one million by 2050. This mission is deeply personal. I started it in honor of my late partner, who passed away from breast cancer in 2020.
So far, we’ve pursued that mission through our 1:1 coaching, the Forever Fit book and our online course and we’ve served over 4,500 people because of it.
Today, Ivy and I are expanding it.
Starting now, our Forever Fit course is free for anyone currently going through their cancer journey.
I remember how lonely it felt for my late partner. She just wanted to do things that were good for her health, and to not feel alone while doing them. God put it on our hearts to make this available, and this is Ivy’s and my way of walking alongside you.
You’ll get practical guidance on eating more whole plant foods and moving your body in a way that feels good, plus a supportive community of people working to take care of themselves, and live group calls with Ivy and me + access to our fitness software.
If that’s you, or someone you love, email ivy@mavywellness.com. Ivy will set up a short call to get you started, ask for a simple confirmation of your current diagnosis, and welcome you into the community.
This course is meant to support you alongside the care of your medical team, never to replace it.
Ivy and I can’t wait to serve you on the group calls. ❤️
Now let’s get into this week’s newsletter 👇
It’s 9 PM. There are boxes in the hallway, a suitcase open on the bed, and a list on the counter that keeps getting longer. Your workout plan is still on the fridge. You glance at it, and you feel that little tightness in your chest. You tell yourself what most of us tell ourselves at that moment: “I’ll get back to it when things calm down.”
I get it. I’ve said that sentence too. And it makes sense. When life gets busy, your health feels like one more thing to manage, and the plan you were following was built for a calmer life.
But here’s what I told our members on a group call this week, when a few of them were heading into moves, trips and busy weeks at work: you don’t have to drop your plan when life gets busy. You shrink it. When life gets busy, focus on three basics: stay inside your daily food budget, do some kind of workout every morning even if it’s only 10 minutes, and keep your steps at 7,000 or more. Change the goal from fat loss to maintenance, and get back on track at the next meal, not next Monday.
That’s the whole idea. Let me show you how it works.
Nobody Runs an Ultramarathon at Sprint Speed
I’d love to do a little test with you one day. Picture yourself on a running track. I ask you to run 100 meters as fast as you can. You give it everything. Great. Now I say: “Perfect, that’s your pace. Hold it for four laps.”
You know what happens. By the second lap you’ve slowed way down. By the third, you’re walking. Nobody can hold sprint speed for long.
Now think about what we’re actually doing here. Getting fit and staying strong after 50 isn’t a 100 meter dash. It isn’t even a marathon. It’s an ultra, hundreds of miles long. On a race that long, you run some sections, you jog some, you walk some, and on a few sections you’re basically crawling. The people who finish aren’t the fastest. They’re the ones who keep moving at a pace they can hold.
Busy seasons are the walking sections. You’re not out of the race. You just slowed down for a bit.
Treat Food Like a Daily Budget
The first basic is food, and I think about it like money. You have a daily food budget, the same way you might have a daily spending budget.
Say you spend three quarters of your money on a purse in the morning. That was your choice. You still have a quarter of your budget for the rest of the day, and you live with that. Food works the same way. If lunch at a restaurant is a 900 calorie meal, that’s fine, but now there’s less room for the rest of the day. And if you keep spending past the budget, you build up a debt. In fat loss, that debt gets stored as body fat, and you pay it back later with weeks of being in a deficit.
So during a busy season, the question is simple: can we go over the budget less often?
A member once told me she went off track at a wedding because she “didn’t have control over the food.” I offered a little reframe. You didn’t control what food was at the wedding. But you chose what went on your plate, and you chose the second and third plate. That’s not a criticism. That’s good news, because it means the power is still yours.
And when the only options in front of you aren’t great, you don’t have to eat a lot of them. Eat enough to tide you over until you can get a better meal. Processed food is low in fiber, vitamins and minerals, so it doesn’t fill you up, and that’s why it’s so easy to keep eating it. Have a little, then wait for a real meal. If 80 to 90 percent of your day is whole food plant-based, one less than ideal meal won’t undo anything.
Do Your Workout First Thing in the Morning, Even If It’s 10 Minutes
The second basic is the workout, and for me this one has a rule: it happens first thing in the morning. If it doesn’t happen in the morning, it doesn’t happen midday, and by evening you’re tired and it’s too late. Then that little voice follows you around all day: “You still have to do your workout.” Morning kills the voice.
It doesn’t have to be your full workout. Twenty squats, twenty pushups against the wall, a one minute plank. That’s a workout. In a hotel room with no equipment, use your body weight, or curl a kitchen chair. There’s always something heavy around.
Will 10 minutes give you the same results as your full session? No. But it trains a different muscle: the muscle of showing up, the muscle of doing things when they’re inconvenient. During a busy season, that muscle is worth more than one hard workout. Busy seasons don’t last. When things slow down, you won’t have lost the habit. You’ll just make the workouts longer and harder again.
One more thing. If you’re doing short workouts, do them every day instead of three times a week. We schedule rest days in a program because those sessions push you hard enough to need recovery. Ten minutes of body weight work doesn’t. You’ll be recovered by the next morning.
I learned this the hard way. There was a stretch of my life where I was a full-time caregiver, working 40 hours a week at a corporate job, and building my business on the side. I was sleep deprived and running on coffee, and I still trained. Most of us only need a few hours a week. The time is there. It’s a choice about priority.
Keep Your Steps Above 7,000
The third basic is steps. I always give our members a range of 7,000 to 10,000 a day. During a busy season, maybe you live closer to 7,000. That’s fine. Just don’t let it slide to 2,000.
There’s nothing magical about the number. Here’s what it really does: 2,000 steps usually means you only moved around the house. 7,000 means you probably went outside. And during a busy season, that walk outside might be the only break your brain gets all day.
I use my walks two ways. Some days I call my mom, my dad or my brothers and catch up. Other days I leave the phone and headphones at home, because there’s too much in my head and I need space to sort it out. A walk after lunch and one in the evening to decompress go a long way, no matter how busy the day was.
Change the Goal From Fat Loss to Maintenance
When things get really hectic, I change my goal. Fat loss needs longer workouts and closer attention to portions and protein. Maintenance needs a lot less. And maintaining is easier than most people think.
Think about the holidays. If you can enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas with your family and come back at the same weight, that’s a fantastic win. You didn’t take ten steps back. You held your ground.
And here’s the part most people miss. Even at maintenance, you can still make progress. Your body is made of fat and muscle. If you keep training and hitting your protein while you eat at maintenance, you keep building muscle while your fat stays about the same. More of your body is muscle, so your body fat percentage still goes down. It’s slower than when everything is dialed in, but it’s progress. You might feel a little puffier from extra sodium on the road, and that water leaves within days of eating normally again.
Take a Big Breath Before You Decide
Busy seasons come with a tightness. Shallow breathing, a scattered head, and decisions made in a rush. You’re at the counter and you order “what’s quick,” and what’s quick is two words different on the menu and a very different meal.
So a few times a day, I stop and take the biggest breath I can. I relax my shoulders and remind myself: we’re fine. Nobody’s in danger. We’re moving, we’re traveling, we’re seeing family. Those are beautiful problems to have. Then I ask one question: what’s the best decision I can make with what’s in front of me right now?
When an Injury Takes Your Workout Away, Train What You Can
Busy isn’t the only hard season. On the same call, a member was dealing with a shoulder injury and couldn’t do any pressing. She was feeling low about it, and I understand why. When fitness is a big part of who you are, losing it feels like losing yourself.
I’ve been there. When I played basketball, I got a concussion and for a while all I could do was stand right under the net and shoot short shots for 30 minutes. It looked ridiculous. When I hurt my wrist, I spent a month and a half dribbling and shooting with my left hand, badly. But I kept the skill moving.
So if your shoulder is hurt, that’s the perfect season to build your legs. Work with your coach or your healthcare provider on what’s safe, and train everything you can. And if a big part of your identity is tied to being “the fit one,” spread your eggs into more baskets: the parent, the friend, the reader, the partner. Those are much harder to take away.
There’s always an opportunity in these seasons. Sometimes it just doesn’t look like one at first.
None of This Means You Failed
If you’ve ever stopped everything during a busy season, that wasn’t laziness. You were trying to sprint, and nobody can sprint forever. Every member I’ve interviewed for our success stories had an imperfect journey. Not one of them did it perfectly. The only thing they had in common is that they got back on track, again and again, until the results showed up.
Your Busy Season Plan
Here’s how to put it together the next time life speeds up.
Before it starts, decide your three basics: your daily food budget, your morning minimum (even 10 minutes), and your step floor (7,000). Write them down.
Change the goal to maintenance for the length of the busy season, and tell yourself that holding steady is a win.
Plan movement into travel. When my wife Ivy and I drive long distances, we stop at a gym in whatever town we’re in, train, shower, and keep driving. When I book a hotel or an Airbnb, I look for a gym nearby first. Community centers and YMCAs count.
Breathe before you decide, especially around food.
After a mistake, write down what happened and what you’d do differently next time. Most people know they should learn from a slip. Very few actually stop and think about why it happened.
What Doesn’t Work
Waiting until Monday. If you wait until Monday, you delay your progress by days. Wait until next month, you delay it by a month. Win the next meal and win the next workout instead. The journey is long enough already. Let’s not make it longer by delaying the restart.
All or nothing. All or nothing has probably brought you a lot of success in other parts of your life. But you can’t live at all or nothing for 90 plus years. Most of your meals and workouts will happen on days you feel kind of “meh” about them, and those are the ones that add up. Learn to live in the gray. That’s where the results are.
Expecting your body to change like it did at 20. It didn’t change overnight at 20 either. Most of us have done some strange things with food and exercise over the decades, and the body takes time to respond. When the scale doesn’t move as fast as we hoped, we feel defeated and quit. But there is no downside to strength training, walking more, or eating more whole plant foods. None. Keep doing them.
One Step Today
Picture a mountain that takes 140,000 steps to climb. Most people look at it and try to get up as fast as they can, and they burn out halfway. At 10,000 steps a day, you reach the top in 14 days. At 5,000 a day, in 28 days. At one step a day, it would take a very long time, but it’s undeniable that you’d get there.
I’ve read at least two pages a day for almost three years. It’s undeniable that I finish books.
So here’s your one step for today: write down your three basics for your next busy stretch, and put them where you’ll see them tomorrow morning. Then do your morning minimum. Even 10 minutes. You can’t lose if you don’t quit.
Quick Answers
How do I stay on track with fitness when I’m traveling? Do a short workout every morning (10 to 20 minutes of body weight exercises works), keep your steps above 7,000, and choose places to stay near a gym when you can.
Is a 10 minute workout worth it? Yes. It won’t build as much as a full session, but it keeps the habit alive and makes it easy to go back to full workouts when life calms down.
Should I keep trying to lose fat during a busy season? Aim for maintenance instead. Holding your weight while you keep strength training and eating enough protein is still progress.
If you’re over 50 and want help building a plan that holds up when life gets busy, I teach a free masterclass every two weeks. Come join us at mavywellness.com/live.
Maxime Sigouin
Co-founder of Mavy Wellness
Author of Forever Fit
Get your copy here, free worldwide shipping
P.S. Most plant-based people over 50 who come to us are eating about 40 grams of protein a day when their body needs closer to 100 to stay strong. So I built the fix: the Forever Fit Starter Kit.
4 weeks of whole-food plant-based meals with 100g+ protein a day, a grocery list for every week, 36 quick recipes and our mindset video course, all already planned for you. See everything inside: mavywellness.com/starter-kit
This article is based on a live group coaching call with Mavy Wellness members. Member details have been changed or left out to protect their privacy.