Last month, after my first barre3 class, I got to chatting with one of the girls as we were exiting the class. "You look so long and lean, " she gushed. “Do you do other workouts?” I confessed that I had just gotten back from Siargao and Bangkok and hadn’t done much exercise at all.

I lamented that, even if I did work out more, if I continued to eat and drink the way I did, that there was no way I could lose weight, especially during the Christmas season. I told her about the whole 70%-diet-and-30% -exercise thing, with the diet percentage possibly increasing as one got older.

She look puzzled. “Why? How old are you?” It turned out that she thought we were the same age. (I am significantly older than she. Although, truth be told, I thought she and I were the same age.)

Fast forward to this morning, during the barre3 cool down, I noticed in the mirrors that she had lost weight so, after the class, I complimented her on it. “Really? You noticed? Does it look good on me? You’re my inspiration. I told my husband that I want to be like you.” I couldn’t tell her that, over the weekend, I had eaten everything in my mother’s refrigerator and had gained two kilos. Ironically, she was now skinnier than I.

It was my turn to ask her how she did it. She said she was eating mostly salads and that she aspired to be vegan. I, involuntarily, scoffed.

When I told her that I was a carnivore that hardly slept, drank a lot, and only recently quit smoking, she couldn’t believe it. “But your skin…?” Yeah, I missed the Wednesday class because I was hungover.

For whatever it’s worth, I am now Facebook friends with a midget boxer. I don’t think a lot of other people can make that claim.

Seriously though, even though I am probably more Cautionary Tale than Role Model, I’m glad that, every now and then, someone can take something from me and make it work for them.

In the meantime, I’ve renewed my barre3 membership for another month (which means another month in Manila), I am declaring the first (failed) week of the resolution a practice run, and am starting (in earnest, I hope) again today.