Strength after 68, reverse dieting, plus 4 reader Q&As) | Weekly Newsletter 276

Good morning and happy Saturday :)

So don’t be shy! Ask them below via Substack or simply reply via email, and I will receive them and answer them in next week’s newsletter.

We have tons of great ones that we can jump right into. Our first one is from Beth:

Hey Beth, first of all, I want to celebrate you for reaching out. Deciding to start strength training at sixty eight is one of the most powerful choices you will ever make for your independence, your bone density, and your longevity.

Since you are a complete novice, please know that you do not need to walk into a gym and lift heavy weights on day one.

Your main goal right now is simply building confidence and getting your body moving safely. I want you to start with basic bodyweight movements right at home.

Building strength is not a race, and you are building a foundation that will serve you for the rest of your life.

I would recommend starting with the basics: three full body workouts a week of maybe 20 to 30 minutes if you can. Focus on compound movements (there are tons of videos on my YouTube channel to guide you). Stay consistent with that for about 4 to 6 weeks before considering changing anything.

Ivy and I have a few workout plans on our YouTube channel, plus we have new ones coming out starting next week. As a side note, you can learn how to build your own plan in our new course and get it verified by me via our weekly group calls :)

I hope this helps 🌱

Clarence, congratulations brother on reaching your goal weight! That is a huge win!

But transitioning out of a weight loss phase is where most people get tripped up because no one teaches us how to stop dieting. Maintenance is actually an active, strategic phase. You do not want to instantly jump back to eating huge amounts of food.

Instead, slowly add about one hundred to one hundred and fifty calories back into your daily routine each week until your weight stabilizes over a few weeks (it is the process of reverse dieting that we teach our members, which is also now in our course).

Keep your protein intake high so you preserve your lean muscle, and use that extra food energy to push a little harder in your workouts.

Give yourself a natural three pound window for normal daily weight fluctuations, and if you ever bump slightly above it, simply tighten up your nutrition for a couple of days.

Once you have brought your calories back up, then it is a consistency game. You GET to keep working out for the rest of your life and have your food intake be higher at maintenance.

Honestly, down the road, you will probably have other goals you want to reach, and that will switch things up for you. So keep on that maintenance journey until you find a new fun goal to work toward. You are in a beautiful place.

Alright, I received three deeply thoughtful questions from Jackie, one of our readers who is balancing fitness with major family caregiving responsibilities, starting with this question about recovery:

First, I want to honor you for the deep care and selflessness you show by supporting your family. Life happens, I get it.

The reason why your muscles are sore the second day after is because of what is called DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). There are ways to reduce it through post workout stretching, mobility work, good nutrition, and proper rest.

As for your question of how long the recovery phase should be between full body workouts, assuming you are talking about resistance training, you want 48 to 72 hours between your sessions.

You also don’t need to go to a gym to get a full body workout in. You can do a full body workout from home with something as simple as a $10 to $15 resistance band from Amazon and your own bodyweight. You can achieve great results by spending more time under tension if you have lighter weights.

Honestly, I don’t like to keep referring back to the course, but I teach all of this stuff in my new course because these are common things that most people need to learn. I put them in the course so that I can go more in depth on each subject :)

And to appease your worries about not maximizing your supercompensation window: that concept is for what is optimal, but then there is also what is realistic.

And sometimes, depending on the chapter of life we are in, what is realistic is what we need to do.

Doing a full body workout on Monday, the next one on Friday because life happens, and the next one the day after on Saturday is MUCH better and will move you forward far more than doing nothing just because it is not the theoretical optimal way.

I hope this helps. Now let’s get to your next question ☺️

Fantastic question, as it is something that I receive often.

I’d love to tell you that I have a miracle solution for fixing lower collagen production as we get older. I’d probably be a billionaire if I did! lol

Here is what I can tell you: while we cannot completely reverse the natural loss of skin elasticity that comes with age, you can absolutely tighten and strengthen the structure beneath it.

A lot of what feels like a sagging midsection comes down to posture, deep core strength, and overall body composition. To pull the stomach inward naturally, you want to train the deep internal muscle called the transverse abdominis, which acts like your body’s natural corset.

You can practice abdominal vacuums and dead bugs, gently pulling your belly button toward your spine as you exhale. Combining that deep core activation with a clean, high plant protein diet and improving your posture will significantly pull your midsection in and give you back that feeling of strength and support.

Answering Your Questions About the New Forever Fit Course:

I did a live on YouTube where I answer the questions, show inside of the course, the community, the fitness software. You can watch the video down below, or you can read my answers to the questions below the video.

Mission: To continue to serve our community and help 10,000 people get lean, thrive, and reduce their risk of dealing with chronic illness by 2033 and a million by 2050 using the power of whole food plant-based eating . This course, along with the book and our one-on-one coaching, are just vehicles to help us have further impact to serve more people and to allow us to donate more to cancer patients every single month like we have for the past six years.

How does it work? The course is self-directed. It will teach you everything I know and then some. You can watch the modules as fast or as slow as you want. My intention behind it was to teach everyone how to do what we do with coaching clients in terms of manipulating workouts and nutrition to achieve health and a fantastic body recomposition transformation at any age. You will learn how to build your own workout program and meal plan.

You also have access to a beta version of my Forever Fit software to help you build your own workout plan and meal plan based on your preferences.

The course comes with 12 months of access to the software and 12 months of access to weekly group calls (twice a week with Ivy and me) *except during the first 7 days of every month when I am on a digital detox with Ivy.

You can jump on those calls for accountability, to ask questions, connect with others, get your exercise form reviewed, get a workout you built for yourself reviewed, and more. We are there to serve you during those 1 hour group calls.

It is a group setting. You do not get an assigned 1:1 coach, there is no weekly check-in form, there are no private 1:1 calls, and there are no custom workouts or meal plans created for you by a coach. That is what our 1:1 Coaching program is for.

When are the group calls? The official group calls start the week of August 10th on Mondays and Wednesdays. The times will vary, and everything is listed inside the platform where the course is hosted.

Who is this course for? This course is for beginners to intermediates, specifically for people who want to transform at their own pace versus joining our more intensive 3, 6, and 12 month coaching programs. This course is for people who want to get educated and learn the intricacies of transforming their body on a whole food, plant-based lifestyle.

How much is the course? What is the refund policy? The course is currently $1497 if you pay in full, or $167 per month for our first 20 founding members who join. After those 20 spots are filled, the investment will go up to $2000 and we will work out way up to $3000 +/

Also, the reason why the course is only $1,497 for the year right now is because it is a direct exchange for your feedback on how to make the course better. You get steep savings in exchange for your feedback!

As for refunds, there are none on the course since you get immediate access to my intellectual property upon joining. If you select the month to month option, you complete all 12 monthly payments to retain lifetime access to the course.

How do I pay in full if I only see the month to month option? When you go to the sign-up page, click on the yellow button for $167 a month. That will prompt you to enter your information. After that, it will give you the option to pay in full for the 12 months, which saves you over $500. I am answering this one because I have had a few emails about it :)

What happens after the initial 12 months? After the initial 12 months, you are grandfathered in at your current rate! Regardless of how much the course or community costs at that point, you will get to renew at the exact same rate. Now, if you have paid in full or completed the month to month option for 12 months, you have lifetime access to the core course. If you want to continue having access to the community, the weekly group calls, and the AI software to track your workouts, track measurements, and build plans, you will have the opportunity to renew at a big savings. Realistically, it will probably be the same amount as the founding member rate. If the public rate goes higher, you do not have to pay that as long as you secured your initial rate! That is why I am encouraging everyone to join now before it goes up.

Is there a workout tracker or meal plan tracker in the course? Since this is a self-directed course that you get to watch at your own pace, you get to build your own workout plan and meal plan. You come on the group calls to ask your questions for extra accountability. It does not come with a live food logging tracker inside the platform, but inside of our Forever Fit AI software, you will have the ability to track your weights and your workouts. You will have the ability to create meal plans, but you will not have the ability to track daily food intake inside our app. I have created a whole training video showing you how to set up your MyFitnessPal account to track your food if you wish to go down that path versus using a template meal plan.

I think that is pretty much it for this newsletter. There is a lot in here, a lot covered! I also did a live stream on YouTube where you can watch the replay as I go over the entirety of the course, its details, and how it works if you want to watch that before joining.

Besides that, thank you to Beth, Clarence, and Jackie for asking such incredible questions for this week’s issue. I want to receive more of your questions so that I can serve you even more. Please let me know in the comments section below or by replying to this email, and I look forward to connecting with you next week!

Sincerely,

Maxime Sigouin 📖 Read the Forever Fit Book → Here
🎓 Forever Fit Course/Community → Here
💪 Custom 1:1 coaching → Here
🏋️‍♀️ Join our Las Vegas Fitness workshop in September 2026 (Cut off to join is August 1st) → [Get more info]