Fitness Cruise Control

Nearly everyone relies on cruise control for driving. Turning it on makes a long drive much easier. Freeing your feet from the accelerator pedal, you can relax, not having to be concerned with maintaining a constant speed. Fuel efficiency is thereby optimized and the amount of time in getting to a destination is automatically regulated.

Of course, there are times when cruise control is not good. These include times when it rains, icy conditions or in heavy traffic. Then it is best to simply stay alert and keep your feet on the pedals. But, generally, these times are exceptions to the rule and are not part of this analogy for fitness.

Fitness cruise control is no more than setting up the significant parts of your fitness lifestyle in advance. This makes your life regular, taking the guess work out be getting in shape. It frees you to simply “let go and let nature do its ‘thing.” This occurs by simply deciding beforehand what is needed for each day, and doing no more or less than just that.

For supplementation, this means setting up your nutrients to be taken at a specific time each day. When you do this makes no difference. All that does, is doing it– getting your supplements ready to be taken at the most opportune intervals. For this purpose, the use of small cups is superior to relying on the MDs standard pill containers which allow no more than two to three small pills between each of the partitions. The cups can accommodate many large capsules such as vitamins far more easily. (Twenty or more per day is not unusual.)Having these ready for you every time that you need them to maximize your workout and recovery time is what makes them do what they ought. This eliminates having to open each individual bottle when you remember to do so, or, even worse, when you feel like it. Being like this only invites forgetting or cutting back to save save money. Such irregularity will not allow your supplements to work.

For dieting, you should plan all of each day’s meals beforehand. Being able to see an entire day’s worth of food in advance sends the message to your brain that there is more food on the way should any one of the individual meals leave you a little hungry. This is far superior to eating whatever is in sight until you are filled (“pigging out”), or eating as much as may seem normal right, eg.as much as mom might have thought okay. ( “Remember the poor starving people in India.”) All of the exercise in the world will never be maximized by eating like this. Too, by pre-determining what will be eaten during the day,you are freed from having to consciously balance each meal for optimal nutrition. If it is all done beforehand, you will help your body to optimally process each meal, using them best for both muscle repair and energy,

For exercise, fitness cruise control means knowing what exercises are to be done each day and then doing them. It is the opposite of doing what you feel like (eg. quitting early or not showing up) or even what you think you should be able (one more repetition than yesterday.) Being on cruise control means predetermining the number of sets and repetitions which will work the muscles groups best. Getting onto a program that does this on daily basis without causing extreme fatigue or pain is much like letting your car’s cruise control do most of the work for a trip so that you can simply relax and enjoy the ride (like what you begin to see in the mirror.)

Of course a few other lifestyle factors should be touched upon. Sleep is essential. Six to eight hours at the same time each day should be allotted. As water is far more necessary than most people believe, a set container should be on the sink at all times. Six to eight eight ounce glasses per day of the filtered variety are best. Too, the constant refusal to get into any of the bad habits should also be part of your daily life. These include-but are not limited to- smoking, alcohol consumption, and snacking on sweets, fast food or the tempting leftovers just because they are there (otherwise going to waste) and you feel like it.

The whole idea for fitness is to get your life onto a set pattern. This may be very hard for those who believe that rigor is somehow detrimental, but being on a set routine really is the same as using the car’s cruise control. This allows you decide upon the best speed beforehand, thereby enabling the car to metaphorically drive itself. The same type of thinking should apply to fitness. You do not want to to be making endless decisions throughout an entire day of what exercise is best to do, what capsules should or should not be taken, or of how much of what food is too much or too little. Doing this is exhausting, and invites early quitting–a phenomenon which is all too frequent.

For further thought on set fitness patterns order my ebook “Think and Grow Fit.”