This Is The One Thing You Must Do Before You Go Out Drinking Tonight

Greetings, sweet kittens. It's me, Zara, your digital big sister.

While I love the weekend as much as the next free-wheeling, high-heel-wearing, winged-liner-sporting, booze-swilling, red-lipsticked PARTY GIRL, 99.9 percent of the mistakes I've made in my life have taken place during the weekend. I've spent one too many Mondays spiraling down the dark vortex of weekend guilt, regret and shame. 

But hey! Don't fret. Because I'm going to be here every Friday to stop you from the awful weekend f*ck ups that are screwing up your life. Here's this week's Very Important PSA. 

Not eating dinner tonight is a huge mistake.

Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this for you. Skipping dinner tonight is a terrible, terrible idea. If I could, I would stop you dead in your self-destructive tracks and push you into the nearest restaurant, where I would spoon-feed you the perfect mix of carbohydrates and protein.

You will screw up your entire weekend (and quite possibly the rest of your life, THIS IS HOW UNINTENDED PREGNANCIES HAPPEN) if you don't eat dinner before you go out drinking. And I'm not talking about a f*cking protein bar. I'm not talking about picking up a damn banana at the bodega when you're en route to the club. A proper, fully realized DINNER -- that's what to eat before drinking.

I can't tell you the amount of times I've made this mistake before. The dark, eating-disordered girl who lives inside my head would start whispering to me at happy hour.

“Think of all the calories you'll save, Zara. I mean, you're already drinking. You've gone through too many cals for the day already. Just. Skip. Dinner. You will feel so THIN and BEAUTIFUL in the morning,” she would purr, her bony hands lighting up a long, old-fashioned cigarette and blowing perfect rings of smoke into the air.

“Err, I don't know if that's a good idea,” I would meekly respond, my head already spinning after one glass of wine.

“It's up to you. But remember: Food never tastes as good as THIN FEELS,” her velvety voice would whisper as she disappeared into the hazy cloud of drugs and booze.

But her words would stay with me. And my friends were usually on the same page.

“TEQUILA SHOTS!” my best friend Ruba would giggle, tossing hers back very quickly for a 90-pound 22-year-old, banging the empty shot glass hard against the bar.

“TEQUILA SHOTS!” I would slur back to her, attempting to mimic her badass glass slamming technique, but instead shattering the shot glass because I don't have the swagger to pull off that kind of move.

And that would be the last thing either of us would remember. And we would wake up next to each other, because we had been too sh*t faced and ugly for anyone to want to go home with us, trying to identify the foul tastes in our mouths.

“UM, why does the inside of my mouth taste like f*cking tomato sauce and vodka?”

“UM, why don't I remember anything?”

We would look at each other in horror, eyelashes stuck together, stains on last night's pretty dresses.

“You both really made FOOLS of yourselves last night,” one of our smug roommates would say, cascading into the living room where we had passed out, fresh-faced in a pink silk robe, an “I just got laid” glow radiating from her porcelain skin.

“What happened?” I would ask, filled with fear and regret.

“I don't want to know!” Ruba would say covering her face with her hands.

“Well, you both got us kicked out of The Gansevoort Hotel, which is no easy feat. BTW, Zara you might want to apologize to Owen. You were pretty nasty to him last night, and you both ate an entire pizza EACH before midnight. You're lucky I was there to get you home,” Smug Roommate would say, opening up the blinds to let the light in.

Ruba and I would collectively shudder at the painful bright light stinging our sore eyeballs.

This scene repeated itself more times than I care to admit. And truth be told, we were lucky. Most of the time.

In my early 20s, there were other times when I skipped dinner, blacked out and woke up with a horrible feeling that something really BAD had happened. My girl alarms would go off, only I wouldn't be able to remember what exactly went down. Not eating, I swear to the higher power up above, is the precursor to a dangerous evening.

So, kittens, here is the greatest advice I will ever give you: EAT F*CKING DINNER.

If you don't, it will backfire on you and you will drunkenly eat a gazillion times more than if you didn't eat dinner. And you will eat with a hungry rage, and it won't be a pretty sight. That, or you will vomit your insides out in front of your crush and he or she will never want to have sex with you again. OR you will have sex with an ex and wake up vulnerable and pregnant. Basically everything that could go wrong will.

NEVER, EVER DRINK without a full meal in your system. You're already ingesting a ton of calories from drinking, so dinner is the least of your caloric problems.

Don't think you can trick your body into not eating dinner. Your body will always outsmart your brain. And I really don't want anything bad to happen to you, because as your older sister, I'm deeply protective of you and love you with a fierce intensity.

If you're tempted to skip dinner, just try to visualize me in the corner of the bar (wearing something cool), whispering, “Eat dinner, kitten. Eat dinner, kitten. Eat dinner, kitten.” Message me if you have to!

Happy weekend!

xo, Zara