Have you ever had a perfectly planned day go awry through no fault of your own? (Haven’t we all?) While I can’t help you with a refund on your Busch Garden tickets if it rains, I CAN help you when it comes to keeping your nutrition and fitness goals on track, even when your initial plans fall through.

Let’s start with a day-in-the-life of two individuals – we’ll call them Jack and Sally. Both are working toward body composition goals and have implemented routines to help them succeed.

Jack’s Day

Jack sets an alarm for 5:30am so that he can go to the gym before he needs to be at work. He gets up, packs a change of clothes, and goes to the kitchen to pour his coffee and grab a banana. What a great start! Much to his dismay, Jack sees that the last banana in the fruit bowl is gone (one of his children ate it as an after-dinner snack), and he forgot to press the preset button on his Mr. Coffee the night before. Jack waits in an early-morning stupor for the coffee to brew and rushes out the door as soon as it’s done, forgetting the lunch that he packed in the fridge.

This is where things really start to go downhill. The gym is crowded, Jack is late, and the machine that he usually starts with is occupied. He waits until it’s available, but now his remaining workout time has been cut in half. He rushes through as much of his normal routine as he can (about half), feeling annoyed that he got a sub-par workout. He drinks the protein shake that he packed, but because he didn’t have his usual banana and is feeling low-energy, he stops by a coffee shop drive-through and impulse buys a pastry.

At work, Jack stops by the break room to put his lunch in the fridge as usual and quickly realizes his mistake. He decides that he’ll just skip lunch since he can’t have the high-protein meal that he’s already tracked. Later, feeling foggy and hungry, Jack stops by the break room to refill his water and notices a box of donuts. Reflecting on his poor workout and missed nutrition, Jack starts to think that the day is already a lost cause. Plus, that Boston Creme looks so good…

After dinner, Jack typically goes on a walk around the neighborhood. But given the day that Jack’s having, it probably comes as no surprise that while he was eating it started pouring rain. Jack gives up on his walking plans, grabs a coke, and turns the TV on instead.

Now, let’s look at how Sally’s day went:

Sally’s Day

Sally also sets a 5:30am alarm for the gym. When she goes downstairs and sees the banana missing (her children also like bananas) and the coffee not brewed, she takes a deep breath and pivots. While the coffee is brewing, Sally grabs some raisins from the pantry – while it’s not her preferred pre-workout snack, she knows that her body does better with some fuel. Sally also knows that she’ll have to cut her workout short and begins thinking about how she’ll change it. This distracts her from packing her lunch, too.

Just like Jack, Sally’s gym is crowded, and her starting machine is occupied. Instead of waiting, however, Sally flips her routine and is able to get through most of it. She already knew which movements she was going to cut, so she is still able to have great sets of the exercises she does do. It wasn’t exactly what she had planned, but it left her feeling good.

When she gets to work, Sally discovers the forgotten lunch. Knowing that she needs a balanced meal to keep her going and prevent crashes and cravings later, Sally uses her lunch break to run to the nearby grocery store where she picks up a rotisserie chicken breast with roasted vegetables and potatoes from the hot food bar. She has to eat it quickly and loses the opportunity to take her typical after-lunch walk, but at least she’s feeling full and focused. When she goes to the break room later to refill her water, she easily passes on the communal cupcakes.

When Sally gets home, she sees that it looks like it might rain, so she decides to get her walk in before dinner. She has to shorten it to 15 minutes vs 30, but she knows it’s better than the chance of not walking at all.

Both Jack and Sally started their days with the best of intentions and a solid plan that supported their goals. When variables changed, however, Jack felt stuck in his routine and ended his day feeling defeated, whereas Sally remained flexible and had a day that was still aligned with her original plan. While planning and routines are crucial to success, learning how to adapt when the situation changes is just as important! This is where systemic flexibility comes into play.

Systemic Flexibility is the ability of an individual to adapt their schedules, decisions, mindset, and actions on a regular basis to maintain consistency with a chosen framework, even when faced with unforeseen challenges.

If you’ve ever worked with me before (or regularly read my articles), you’re probably familiar with the concept of “all-or-nothing thinking.” While this mindset often leads us to view decision making as rigid and constrained, systemic flexibility gives us the freedom to do the opposite. No one can control all life’s variables, and even the best designed system will inevitably be challenged at some point. Knowing what to do when this happens, and thinking about it correctly ensures that our system remains strong, and we keep moving towards our goals.

At the gym, Jack was rigid in his thinking when it came to exercise order, while Sally was able to adjust again and complete her entire (revised) workout. It’s important to note that systemic flexibility is not just about the actions we take, but also about the mindset we adopt. The better we feel about our actions, and the more we can set ourselves up to feel like we have succeeded vs failed, the more motivation we have to continue.

Jack waits and rushes → half workout, negative mindset; Sally flips routine → solid sets, success mindset

Jack stood no chance against the donuts when he saw them because he was stuck in an all-or-nothing, failure-focused mindset (in addition to feeling physically poor because he was undernourished for the day!). Sally was feeling good about her decisions (and was well-nourished), so she was easily able to stick to the “no unplanned sweets” part of her system.

The actions and decisions we implement most of the time are what drives real change, while our ability to adapt is what makes that change sustainable. Allowing ourselves kindness when things don’t go quite as expected and choosing “good enough” alternatives is what keeps us feeling positive and motivated about what we can accomplish.

How to Start Building Systemic Flexibility

Systemic flexibility can look wildly different from one person to another, because everyone’s system and life demands are different! Here are a few examples of what practicing this crucial skill might look like in your life:

• Buying precut vegetables and frozen chicken breasts to save time when a family obligation runs into your blocked meal prep time.
• Walking up and down the stairs at work or in your home when the weather or time constraints prevents an outdoor walk.
• Changing your dinner plans to be something more moderate when the catered lunch winds up being more off-plan than you expected.
• Breaking your evening workout routine into several smaller increments when your child surprises you with a last-minute school project so you can help them in between sets.
• Choosing the food bar at a grocery store instead of takeout when your doctor’s appointment runs long and you don’t have time to go back home for lunch before your next appointment.
• Doing a quick calisthenics workout after work when you accidentally slept through your morning alarm and missed the gym.

Just like physical flexibility, systemic flexibility needs to be practiced regularly in order to be maintained. The good news is, the more we stretch, the easier flexibility becomes. Start by thinking of a situation that has happened to you in the past where you felt thrown off your routine and see how many alternative options you can identify that will still be a net win. Do this for as many different situations as you can, and remind yourself that these are viable alternatives, not system failures!