Personal Training, Session One: I'm standing at the front desk, waiting for the mythical "Barbie" to appear. While I was sucking down water and aspirin earlier today, trying to shed my hangover, I started thinking about how judgmental I can be. I mean, why should I have instantly freaked out when I heard someone named Barbie was going to be my trainer? Sure, the name brings up images of gorgeous girls with long blonde hair, shiny white teeth, deep tans, and impossible — to achieve, completely enviable figures, but maybe this Barbie is different.

Maybe Trainer Barbie is a dark, homely girl with an overbite and she took up fitness to feel better about her hump and her skin condition. Yes, that's it. Barbie is all hideous and disfigured and she will have a heart of gold and because of this, she'll be devoted to nothing but making me lose weight...

I stand by the magazine rack and I'm about to pull out this week's In Touch when I hear my name being called. I turn around and look for my gargoyle of a trainer.

But I don't see any monsters.

All I see is a gorgeous girl with long blonde hair, shiny white teeth, a deep tan, and an impossible to-achieve, completely enviable figure standing there. "Hey, are you Jen?" she asks. "I'm Barbie!"

Of course you are.

"A surprisingly charming weight-loss odyssey, Lancaster's third weight-centric memoir (after Bitter is the New Black and Bright Lights, Big Ass) tells the story of her struggle to drop the ice cream and step away. Though morbidly obese, with a worried doctor hovering anxiously, Lancaster is blithely casual and never feels sorry for herself: 'I'm a hundred pounds heavier than I was in high school, my veins are full of crème fraîche, and yet I look in the mirror, take in the hair and makeup, and think, Damn baby, you fiiine.' Still, at the end of her thirties, she knows she needs to lose weight-mostly to stay healthy, but also because she can't face the shame of having to buy an extra seat on an airplane. While the first chapter is full of chatty asides and aren't-I-cute footnotes which can grate, Lancaster relaxes into her journey through Atkins dinners, Jenny Craig coaches, Weight Watchers meetings and bouts of personal training with the winning honesty and humor her fans have come to expect. Anyone struggling with weight issues while trying to maintain a sense of humor (if not necessarily a positive outlook) will find much inspiration, and plenty of laughs, in Lancaster." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Jen Lancaster is like David Sedaris with pearls and a super-cute handbag." Jennifer Coburn, author of The Queen Gene

"Carrie Bradshaw meets Barbara Ehrenreich." Kirkus Reviews

"She's bitchy and sometimes plain old mean, but she's absolutely hilarious." Chicago Sun-Times

A former vice president at an investor relations firm, Jen Lancaster has written for NYHS and Hatch magazines. She lives with her husband and far too many pets.