I'm Not So Good With The Advice. Can I Interest You In A Sarcastic Comment?

My latest attempt to get healthy involves counting points, going to the gym, and sitting in the backseat of a friend's car announcing several times that I'm hungry and will need to eat within the next eight minutes. I think everyone in my life is starting to feel like they're on this diet (it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change!) with me. The new Red Barbie comes with giant bottles of water, 100 calorie packs, and a scowl. Attitude upgrade sold separately.

In all seriousness, as much as I kind of dislike Weight Watchers because there's very little wiggle room and DAMN YOU, FLORINE MARK, I'M HUNGRY, it really does seem to be the best system for me. It's about normal portions and regular food, and I've never been meant to be breadless or have frozen prepackaged meals delivered to my door every morning.

As far as working out goes, let's just say that having a second job helps me pay for the gym. It's very nice and clean and just for women, which I never thought would be a major selling point, but it turns out I really like that aspect of it. They always have a stack of the latest Improper Bostonian. Even the lighting is good. It's quite a departure from the ghetto warehouse gym that I used to go to sporadically. It was cheap but full of sweaty equipment, fluorescent lighting, and grunting meatheads.

Speaking of? Although I hadn't been to the meathead gym for, um, more than a year, I was still paying for a membership until this month. I cringed every time I saw the $19 withdrawn from my checking account; it may not have been much but it was money lost due to sheer laziness. So I finally called a few weeks ago and learned that because I had stupidly and optimistically signed a two year (!) contract back in the day, I could only cancel if I was moving or for medical reasons. "Oh, well, I'm moving," I told them. "Where?" "Uh. New York." Then they said they'd need verification of my new digs: a copy of a lease, a bill sent to my new address, or verification from my new employer. Damn. Those people REALLY wanted my $19 every month. But whatever, I can play that game. So I called my new employer, conveniently located in Manhattan, who promptly faxed the meathead gym to inform them that as of March first, I was employed as a live-in nanny to her two beautiful children, Hector and Flores.

The new job's going well. She's really a terrible mother, though... hardly ever spends time with her fictional kids.

Anyway, the only problem with the nice gym is that the members are snooty. If my gym were a man, it wouldn't call. If it were cat food, it would be Fancy Feast. If it were an actress, it would be Gwyneth Paltrow. If it were a band, it would be Coldplay. If it were a toddler, it would be Apple Martin. If it were a baby, it would be Sashqualah Jolie-Pitt.

All the women who go there have zero percent body fat, incredibly cute gym outfits, and they don't smile or say excuse me. Ever. They're maybe the opposite of me in every way. They've probably been hungry for years, come to think of it. Anyway, thanks to Nabbalicious, my blogfriend and virtual personal trainer blersonal blainer, I don't need to rely on any of those ice queens for moral support.

What I love most about the gym is the fact that they have an all-Friends channel. Two of the channels on the ellipticals are whatever DVDs they're playing that day, and one of them is always a random season of Friends. Now, THIS is the way to get me to exercise. If only they had a mojito and Cadbury mini egg dispenser set up next to me, I'd be all set. Yes, it might defeat the purpose of being there in the first place, but if you're going to fall off the wagon, might as well go down in flames.

Another one of the channels is an aerial view of the daycare center, presumably to monitor the well-being of the little tykes you may have left there. (Like they're not all off with the nannies, being pushed around Anthropologie or Restoration Hardware in strollers made of organic canvas and whole grains.) It's such grainy, documentary-like footage ("Is that a four-year-old or a giant wasp?") that sometimes I flip by expecting to see something crazy happen, like it's suddenly the hidden camera on To Catch a Predator. (Which is maybe the best show EVER, by the way. On the last episode I saw, one of the 'philes was in the chat room saying stuff like, "Damn! I hope this doesn't turn out to be a ruse and I end up on Dateline! lol" That, combined with the monotone announcer reading the chat transcripts? "I want to blank your blank all blanking night oh my god you make me so blank." It makes for good TV, my friends.)

Anyway, this incessant Friends-watching (even more than usual) has made me arrive at a startling conclusion: All this time I've identified with Monica, but I'm suddenly noticing that there's another character on the show who's a neurotic only child with relationship issues and always at the ready with a bad pun... and whom I believe also once had trouble getting out of a gym membership ("I wanna quit the gym!").

To sum up: I'm not Monica. I'm CHANDLER.