It's New Year's resolution time, and you know what that means! Yes! It's time for everyone to resolve to lose weight and get in shape! This means that starting Monday, the gym will be ridiculously clogged up with a bunch of people who are going to be starving themselves and jumping around like crazy for somewhere between one week and a couple of months, and then settling back in front of the TV with the pizza delivery menu for the rest of the year.

See, here's the problem. You only want to go to the gym because you want to look good. So you'll crash off 10 pounds or so, buy some tight pants, lose your motivation, eat your way out of the pants, feel even worse about your looks, and add an extra 5 pounds of self-loathing over the original problem. If that's all you're going to do, then you should stay home: you'll save money, you'll be 5 pounds lighter in the long run, and the rest of us won't have to wait as long for space on the mat or a machine.

Yes, I know, you're all going to pounce on me for being discouraging about people's efforts. And yes, there are some people who are going to make the resolution and stick with it. But what I think I've learned so far about Working Out is this: the vast majority of those who stick with it do not stick with it in order to wear tight pants.

If you don't have some other motivation for working out, the couch is going to win, because your body is not going to look all that different all that fast. Heck, I've worked with personal trainers for over a year, and did exactly what they said 3-4 times a week, and here are the top three visible changes so far:

1. My triceps stick out when I lean on my hands. Woo-fucking-hoo.
2. My ribs no longer look like the sides of a starving dog. This pleases me, but how many of you see me without my shirt on? (Oh, so that's you peeping in my windows, is it? Well, you're getting what you deserve, then.)
3. I had to buy smaller bras. No, I did not need that. Not by a long shot.

Big whoop.

What I'm saying is, you'd better be after something else. Like, you want to feel stronger and have more energy and be sick less often and be more ready for your favorite sport and put off the day when all you can do when you wake up is shuffle to the couch to press buttons on the remote. If those sorts of things aren't really and truly valuable to you--valuable enough to get your butt out of bed a couple hours early when it's cold or hot or raining or you're tired, or to keep you out a couple hours after work when you really want to head home--then you're probably about to waste your money on that gym membership.

Time to go to the gym and enjoy the last uncrowded morning till March.