Until Aptitude and Apt-get functionality come together (which is being done slowly)
Either use:
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade
OR
aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade && aptitude full-upgrade
Those live are equivalent for each one, they will act differently, but in the long run give exactly the same results.
And those lives are "just for demonstration"
You should really only do the update and first upgrade on the same line, then the second one.
For Apt-get I always add "-u" or "apt-get -u upgrade" which shows me everything its going to do.