I have a confession to make. I broke down and took the predictable sheeplike step of joining a gym, and, yeah, I started going right after New Year's. In my defense, I hasten to say I am still going. Almost every day. And I'll tell you something: In the past month, I have noticed that my doggedness and hard work have yielded noticeable results.

I feel terrible.

My back hurts, my calves ache and I spend more time doing laundry than I spend wearing the clothes.

Most alarmingly, for the first three weeks I went, I gained weight. Seasoned gym rats and other Gatorade-drinkers of the fitness-industrial complex are quick to counter, "That's muscle," but I'm not buying it. Muscle does not wobble.

There I was, turning up day after day, putting in hours of my life that I didn't much enjoy and will never get back, huffing, puffing, heaving, straining, and then emerging from the locker room to wreck myself on a stationary bike or Pilates mat, and every day the towel I wrapped myself in after my shower was getting less and less adequate to the task.

No wonder my ancestors survived the Ice Age. I could probably live for a week on four french fries and a piece of wilted lettuce and still have the energy to wipe down the rowing machine.

Male jocks, the kind with no body fat or necks, are always smugly assuring everyone that weight loss is a simple matter of mathematics, where the number of calories in minus the number of calories burned equals the net capital gain subject to taxation ... sorry, I think that's amortization. Anyway, men are full of wilted lettuce on this matter, because men do not retain water.

I know they have hormones. But men's hormones make them tailgate and buy women flowers, whereas women's hormones make us swell up like parade balloons on a cyclical basis, or whenever the hormones are triggered by the presence of a bathing suit or camera.

My theory is that when I started working out and frantically guzzling bottles and bottles of water, my body was caught completely off guard. "What's up with all this water?" asked my kidneys. "Where's the caramel color and aspartame?"

"I've never seen anything like this," my liver worried. "Maybe we're getting ready to traverse a parched post-apocalyptic landscape where people fight to the death for a few precious liters of Aquafina. Better put the word out to conserve.

"That's weird -- I could swear I smell french fries."

(Is it any wonder I signed a donor card?)

I had taken exercise classes, but I had never gone to a gym before. I wasn't comfortable with the idea of putting myself on display in a locker room or on a machine, working out so close to other people you can hear their iPods, in front of a window where passers-by eating ice cream can critique the cut of your bike shorts.

But belonging to a gym is so much more than all that. It's also getting changed, drying your hair, packing your bag and putting on makeup along with eight other women in a space smaller than a regulation pool table. It's taking a shower with flip-flops on so you don't get those horrible green nail fungi you see pictures of in ads.

It's going home at night with a bag of clothes that are still damp, and developing a close personal relationship with Febreze. It's watching with increasing distress as the spinning instructor sweats through his shirt, his shorts, his socks, his sneakers, his towel, his bike and the linoleum on the floor.

I don't know if all this is going to make me fit or strong or slim, but it's definitely going to make me deaf. There is no peace at the gym. There is only endless music, ranging from loud to seismic, and it is almost all awful. Well, that's a bit harsh. On a bad day, I'm in an electronica-mad dance club or that car that pulls up next to you at a light and shatters all your mirrors with its subwoofers. On a good day, I'm in an episode of "Scrubs."

They do turn it down a bit in the yoga studio, which is a mercy, but it's up so loud for the spinning and kickboxing classes that the instructors wear a microphone and have to bleat at us anyway. I'm not sure I'm going back to kickboxing anymore. I can't hear what the instructor is saying, and anyway, dancing around kicking and punching the air ... it's not that it's too strenuous, really. It's just somehow not dignified. What good is kicking and punching without a target?

I'm looking at you, Neckless. What, you think I can't take you? Don't be fooled by the wobble. That's all muscle.