I hope you had a fantastic weekend.
Ivy and I came back online on Monday from our digital detox in Ko Samui, Thailand to a bunch of emails from you guys. A ton of them were great and a few of them I was surprised by.
It seems that there was a misunderstanding about my newsletter from February 21st, when I spoke about being self-conscious on the beach and it taking me out of being present in the moment that I was having with Ivy on the beautiful island of Boracay, Philippines.
A few readers felt that the email was too focused on body image, and I want to address that directly because I think the core message got lost.
The email was never about how you look in a bathing suit. It was about presence. About the quiet, insidious way that feeling disconnected from your body steals your attention from the moments that matter most. The beach was just the setting. The real story was about being physically there and mentally somewhere else entirely, running a loop of self-conscious noise while one of the most beautiful places on earth sat right in front of me, completely untouched.
My point was simple. When you are not at peace with your body, that tension does not stay in the mirror. It follows you everywhere. To the dinner table. The family vacation. The hike you almost skipped. The photo you stepped out of. The moment you were present for in body but not in spirit.
What we build at Mavy Wellness is not a better reflection. It is a quieter mind. A body you trust. The freedom to walk onto any beach, into any room, to any moment that matters, and actually be there.
That is what health gives you back. Not aesthetics. Presence.
I hope that clears it up. And if that is something you are ready to build, you know where to find us.
Now, on to this week’s message :)
As I’ve mentioned Ivy and I just came back from digital detox and we’ve gotten many messages about how to navigate improving your body composition on a whole food plant-based lifestyle when life is HAPPENING. Since we are traveling many of you have been curious as to how to navigate your own busy lives.
We recently asked 84 participants in The Mavy Wellness Fitness Assessment how they handle disruptions to their wellness plan.
The results were honest. Only 15% plan proactively. A third adapt on the fly. Half lose structure for a few days. And 4% fall off completely until life calms down.
Here’s the thing: none of those responses are failures. They’re patterns. And patterns can be worked with.
If your goal is active body recomposition on a whole food plant-based lifestyle, building lean muscle, reducing body fat, improving how you feel and function, then disruptions are not the exception. They’re part of the game. The question isn’t whether life will interrupt your plan. It’s whether you have the tools to keep moving when it does.
Here’s what actually works.
For the 15% who plan proactively: sharpen the system
You’re already doing the hardest thing, which is thinking ahead. The next level is making your plan portable.
Before any trip or busy stretch, look at your training calendar and identify which days are genuinely going to be hard. One of our clients, a frequent traveler, described her approach well: “Because we travel a lot, you can look ahead and think, okay, that’s going to be a travel day. Maybe I’ll make that my day off and move my workout day somewhere else.” That’s not compromise. That’s intelligent planning.
On the nutrition side, the most practical move is knowing your numbers before you walk into a situation where you can’t control what’s on the menu. If you’re heading into a day with a business dinner or a long travel day, front-load your protein earlier. Most restaurants, especially steakhouses and Italian places, have limited plant-based protein options. Assume you’ll get 10 to 15 grams at dinner and build the rest of your day around that gap. A bigger lunch with extra tempeh, tofu, or legumes does the job without any drama.
When booking travel, search for hotels with a proper gym. It sounds like a small thing but it changes the entire dynamic of a trip. When you know you’ll have equipment available, you don’t have to improvise or negotiate with yourself the morning of.
For the 31% adapting on the fly: build your emergency toolkit
Flexibility is a genuine skill and you clearly have it. The risk for this group is that in-the-moment decisions start to drift when there’s nothing anchoring them.
A few tools that make real-time adaptation much easier:
Know your calorie and protein targets well enough that you don’t need to look them up. Not to obsess over numbers, but so that when you’re staring at an airport menu or a hotel breakfast buffet, you can make a reasonable call without guessing. If you know your lunch should land around 600 calories and 35 grams of protein, you can approximate that almost anywhere with beans, hummus, whole grain bread, edamame, or a grain bowl.
Use the “two anchors” rule when structure breaks down. Pick two things you will do no matter what, one nutritional and one physical. Maybe it’s hitting your protein target and doing a 20-minute resistance band session in your room. Two anchors. Everything else is a bonus. This is how you maintain momentum without needing perfect conditions.
At restaurants, don’t be passive. Ask for modifications. Ask for a side of greens, extra legumes, or sauce on the side. Most kitchens will accommodate you. The ask takes ten seconds and the difference in how you feel the next day is real.
For the 50% who lose structure for a few days: this is the most important section
You’re the majority. And your struggle isn’t discipline. It’s the absence of a system built for imperfect conditions.
The single most damaging thought in this group is: “I’ve already messed up today, so I’ll start again Monday.” That thinking is what turns a three-day disruption into a three-week one. One of our clients described feeling like she was “just flailing out there, oh I got to do this, oh I got to do this,” spinning without any anchor. The fix wasn’t more willpower. It was getting the structure dialed in so she didn’t have to rely on willpower at all.
A few practical reframes and tools that help:
The 80/20 rule applied to real life. If 80 to 90 percent of what you eat is whole food plant-based, the remaining 10 to 20 percent at a restaurant or social event is not going to derail your body composition goals. Your results live in the consistent baseline, not in the edge cases. Stop treating every imperfect meal as a crisis that requires recovery.
Track your protein, not your perfection. During disrupted stretches, protein is the one metric worth protecting. If you hit your daily protein target, somewhere in the range of 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of lean body mass, you will preserve your muscle tissue even if your calories, carbs, and fats are off for a few days. Muscle loss during short disruptions is not the real threat. Letting the disruption extend indefinitely is.
Have a “minimum viable workout” defined in advance. Not your ideal session but your floor. For some people that’s 20 minutes of resistance bands. For others it’s a 30-minute walk with bodyweight squats and push-ups at the end. When you’re traveling or stressed, you don’t negotiate whether to train. You just do the minimum viable version. It keeps the identity intact, and identity is everything here.
That last point matters more than people realize. The biggest reason this group loses weeks instead of days is that they’ve unconsciously tied their identity to the plan rather than to the practice. When the plan breaks, they feel like they broke. They haven’t. The practice just needs a smaller form for a few days.
For the 4% in all-or-nothing mode: the real conversation
Waiting for life to settle down before restarting is a strategy that has never worked long-term for anyone. Life doesn’t settle down. The chaos is the context. The goal is building a version of this that lives inside your real life, not a parallel version where everything is calm and you have infinite time.
The all-or-nothing pattern almost always comes from a history of programs that required perfect conditions to work. Rigid meal plans, complicated protocols, zero room for adaptation. When those programs fell apart under real-life pressure, the conclusion drawn was “I couldn’t stick to it,” when the actual problem was that the program wasn’t designed for a real human life.
A sustainable whole food plant-based approach to body recomposition doesn’t ask for perfection. It asks for a consistent enough baseline that your body can keep adapting over months and years. A few days of imperfect eating during a stressful week is noise. The trend line is what matters.
The most practical tool here is a pre-decided re-entry protocol. Not a punishment and not a detox. Just a simple set of actions for the morning after a disruption: drink water, hit your protein, move your body for 20 minutes, check in with someone who’s holding you accountable. Pre-deciding this removes the friction and the shame spiral that otherwise delays restart by days or weeks.
The thread connecting all four groups
What our most successful clients have in common isn’t that life stopped interrupting them. It’s that they stopped needing perfect conditions to make progress. Gary and Linda travel constantly and have for years. Their approach is simple: do the best you can in the moment, eat as clean as the situation allows, and get back to whole food plant-based eating when you’re home. As Linda put it: “It’s like, that’s life. We just do the best we can and when we’re able to eat clean again, do it.”
That’s not lowering the bar. That’s building a practice that actually survives contact with reality.
The goal isn’t to have a perfect week. It’s to still be doing this in ten years, leaner, stronger, more vital, and with a body that keeps up with the life you want to live.
I hope this week’s newsletter helps to serve you on your own journey.
I have something special coming out next Saturday to celebrate 6 years of coaching and of Mavy Wellness existence’s (1,200 + transformations around the world ❤️) please stay tuned for it :)
I appreciate you and I hope you have a fantastic weekend.
Sincerely,
Maxime Sigouin
🎙️ Youtube Videos / Podcast: New Episode You May Have Missed
How to Stay Fit While Traveling (Without Obsessing Over Every Meal) Ep.431
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Best healthy eats in Manila, Philippines for sustainable fat loss
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Have an incredible rest of your weekend, and I look forward to seeing you next week!
Maxime Sigouin
Founder Mavy Wellness