Many of us know that we live in and out of whack world, in places where high fructose corn syrup and sodium loaded sandwiches are the menu of the day, where high-pressure computer jobs, combined with seductive nighttime TV and video games lead to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, where overworked commuters grab a hot dog for lunch or eat out of the vending machines in the lobby…. you get the picture. For most of us, we don't have to hear this kind of litany to realize our responsibility to ourselves: to somehow wade through all of this and come up with our own personal agenda for getting ourselves fit, and staying that way.

But for many of us, it's a case of “easier said than done”. In reality, how do you change your eating habits when faced with the reality of food availability in your neighborhood or your office building? How do you change your fitness habits when you know there are only 24 hours in the day? How do you juggle a job, a family, and much more, while finding time to work on your own physical fitness?

Although this is a complex question, some basic guidelines apply to what most people would consider “Smart fitness planning”. A little of this goes a long way to lift an individual out of this unfit society and upward, toward some reasonable health goals.

Smart planning: the long view
lots of beginners start with a “Birds-eye” view of where they want to go. Now, this can backfire if an over-enthusiastic individual starts to feel like they can do all of their long-term goals in a short time period. Confusing your long-term goals with your immediate goals is not the way to go. Instead, it's good to define these long-term goals while keeping them at arms length, as a kind of practice in “abstract planning”. If this is less than clear, take a look at the next few paragraphs.

Smart planning: the time line
When you know where you want to go in terms of fitness, you proceed to a timeline that will be part of your  “roadmap” in helping you get there. Fitness planning is in some ways a lot like project management: your original long-term goals are your “baseline”, your timeline is your “schedule”, and using both of these, you can pinpoint deviations and figure out how close you are to your eventual goals.

Smart planning: short-term actions
With your timeline and long-term goal in hand, you can look at “action steps” that will help you approach your plan concretely. Again, you can continually devise solutions for “taking the next step” along your timeline. What you want in your short-term action plan is clarity, focus, and steps that address the specific points that you're working toward. Whether it's cardio training, muscle tone, core development, limb strength, or any combination of these, getting specific activities into your timeline is going to pay off.

There is a lot more that goes into a person's overarching strategy for physical fitness, but this can be a good start. Keep these basic considerations in mind when you begin contemplating how to raise yourself above an unhealthy situation.