The encounter ended quickly. The lesson I learned from it lingers.

Many years ago, I was told by my principal to attend a workshop. He must have deemed the information especially worthwhile because he knew I loathed losing class time and usually allowed me not to.Maybe the presenter picked up on my attitude. Or maybe he was frustrated at the initial lack of participation from the two dozen or so attendees that day.For whatever the reason, at one point he glared at me and asked, "And why are you not asking any questions?"He caught me off-guard. I spoke my first thought. "I don't know enough about your presentation yet," I explained, "to ask an intelligent question."The presenter recognized my response as an honest one. His scowl softened. He said, "How about if I summarize the key points and you comment upon one of them?"He did, I did, and then someone else commented upon my comment. A discussion developed. A good one. Good enough that I left there feeling the loss of class time was justified.To this day, I try to remember how I first felt in that workshop whenever I ask a content-related question in class and not a single student offers a reply. And I often remember the same as I begin a column.Last week's column ended with these words: "Remind yourself frequently of the [health and fitness] things that matter most."But what if you're so new to the idea of better living through proper eating and regular exercise that you really can't provide your own reminders? What if, like me at that workshop, you just don't possess enough prior knowledge to do what is being asked of you?Because of that possibility, permit me to do what that presenter did years ago. What follows are two sayings to remember when your goal is optimal health and fitness.Be consistentWhether your goal is to bench press 300 pounds or lose 10 of them, you need to know your destination before you can chart your path. And once you determine your destination, be consistent.Don't detour. Don't ever deviate from your planned course of action - until you have a specific reason to do so.Make the pattern to break the patternAny positive has the potential to become a negative, and so it is with consistency. While eating the same meals for weeks on end can insure little deviation in your body weight, doing the same exercise routine can create a mental complacency that diminishes the intensity and effect of exercise.When it comes to exercise, sometimes change is needed simply for the sake of change. Even when your brain doesn't need a break from the same routine, quite often your body does.Research has shown repeatedly that your progress plateaus after following the same exercise pattern for six to eight weeks - regardless of the degree of difficulty or intensity. At that point, implementing change is the only way to get past the plateau.Let's say you've made noticeable gains in strength and muscle mass in the weight room by using relatively heavy weights for six to eight repetitions, but now you've reached the eight-week mark and have plateaued. You haven't been able to increase weights or reps for two workouts.Worse, you don't have that same positive feeling about working out. Clearing time in your calendar, plotting your workouts, packing your gym bag, driving to the health club: it's all become a task rather than a treat.Don't fight that feeling. Don't dismiss that mental message.Recognize that knowing when to break the pattern is just as important as knowing how to make one initially.Give your mind a mental break. Take three or four days off.After that, give your body a physical one by changing the order in which you work the different body parts, the exercises you do for them, the amount of weight, and the number of reps.If your past work for your chest featured relatively heavy bench pressing for six to eight reps, try 25 reps of flyes at a 30-degree decline. These changes will provide an entirely different type of muscle stimulation.And different is good.Similarly, if the surprising size you had been adding to your thighs from relatively heavy squats suddenly stops, strip all the weight from the bar, change the squat to a lunge, and shoot for what might seem like a ridiculously high number of reps, maybe as high as 100. Such a change obviously makes the lifting more like an aerobic workout, but that's not all bad because that's not all it does.High-rep sets like this develop the muscle cell's mitochondria, which makes up a quarter of its overall size. Developing the mitochondria also increases the cell's endurance, which allows for additional improvement weeks from now when you hit the heavier weights again.