Happy New Year! Now get off my treadmill

Every New Year brings with it the opportunity to reaffirm optimism in the world by inflating the psyche with attainable goals, which, inevitably, are never achieved.

Quit smoking, get out of debt, stop letting alcohol get you into trouble, cut back on the sweets, be less judgmental, stop biting nails, get straight A's – all common resolutions for the new year, which, in all actuality, are not unrealistic. However, the labeling of any standard goal as a "New Year's resolution" places it on an invisible list of inconceivability, doomed to become a coulda, shoulda, woulda.

What's the worst, yet probably most common, example of these failed promises? The resolution to get fit.

Any other time of year, the desire to jump on the treadmill and decrease the amount of jiggle on your thighs and minimize your chin count would be considered admirable. But please, not right after the New Year. Not when hundreds of other resolution-makers are doing the exact same thing and turning quaint little workout facilities like DePaul's Ray Meyer Fitness Center into downtown Tokyo during rush hour.

It's like clockwork. Without fail, the first three weeks of January are pure hell for regular gym go-ers. It is during this time when fair-weather health nuts flood into our space, invade our equipment, monopolize our drinking fountains and pollute our locker rooms. Still lingering with a false sense of renewal from the New Year, people who haven't set foot inside a gym in over a year are all of sudden springing for two-a-days and setting aside time in their class schedule for "30-Minute Reshape."

The worst offenders are obvious. After the "freshman fifteen" is extrapolated to the "freshman twenty-five" with the help of Christmas cookies and eggnog, first-year students flock like wild geese to the Ray Meyer Fitness Center. Most commonly, it's the girls who got matching black and pink Bebe workout outfits for Christmas. They tend to be at the gym continuously for three weeks before realizing they like Chipotle more than chin-ups and finally abandon their beach-body quest (only to reignite it three weeks before Spring Break).

This means that for six weeks out of the year, individuals who have actually made commitments to regularly work out are heavily inconvenienced by the fair-weather minority.

Care to jump aboard the "let's-get-healthy-in-2012" train? Go for it, just as long as it doesn't impede the workouts of the regulars.