Much has been written about the competitive nature of Northwestern’s campus, from joining clubs Fall Quarter of freshman year to securing consulting gigs as upperclassmen. However, I think competition can be detrimental when applied to some facets of campus life. One example is fitness. Both the ways we set and discuss our health goals are intense and oriented towards achieving immediate success. An obvious effect is a campus norm of being and looking healthy, an outcome that has received national attention. Setting and discussing aggressive, short-term fitness goals is never effective for long-term health.

The first issue is how we set goals, and in particular with the common use of short-term, end-of-quarter or event-centric endpoints for health goals. For example, a 2007 University of California-Los Angeles review of short-term diet studies found the majority of dieters gained any lost weight right back, and one- to two-thirds actually exceeded their starting weight. The results of the study demonstrate that if you set a short-term goal, it will unlikely lead to lasting results.

What the study fails to recognize is that health is a lifelong pursuit, and any achievements like weight loss will be lost without continued efforts to maintain them. In other words, students set themselves up to return to baseline health levels by setting goals that have a quick endpoint, such as losing five pounds or dieting until a certain day. If students were to take a step back and simply acknowledge any sort of long-term plan for persistently improving health, I’d imagine that most would be more successful in their health goals. Although this solution may seem obvious, it’s one that was neglected in many of the studies incorporated into the UCLA review. Most of the patients went off their diets after achieving weight loss, returning to the food choices that led to their initial weights. Once you realize the diets most likely didn’t work simply because their participants were not instructed to maintain them, it seems more reasonable that students might lose any health gains just because they don’t have a plan to keep them.

My second issue is the way we publicly discuss our goals with others. I sense NU students feel pressured to discuss the our impressive health goals just because we’re generally used to being impressive. Although one might think that verbalizing goals would generate accountability and success, it actually has the opposite effect. When we acknowledge our aspirations, we receive some satisfaction despite not actually doing anything, and are may be less likely to follow through with our goals. Derek Sivers’ 2010 TED Talk discussed research indicating telling other people about your goals makes you less likely to succeed. So, when you say you’re going to “get huge” for Dillo Day, the very act of saying so aloud may actually reduce the chance of filling out your tank when May 30 comes around.

I’m not arguing that keeping your personal health goals private guarantees success — the only reason I occasionally drag myself to Patten is because my friends want to keep me accountable for my own goals I’ve mentioned. However, I’d like to stress that it is not necessary to have vague, lofty goals such as cutting gluten for the whole quarter. In fact, telling other people about such goals propagates a culture in which everyone has to be impressive to keep up. Instead, I propose making concrete, quantifiable goals such as hitting the gym four times per week, and keeping personal goals more private. NU may produce highly qualified graduates with its oft-competitive environment, but health is one field that does not benefit from that kind of attention.

Alex Koh is a Weinberg junior. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].