How to Lose 10 Pounds Using Wine and Anxiety

Do you have 10 lbs. to lose, 10 months, and a bottomless wine budget? Great, let’s get started! (NB: Method not actually recommended.)

1. Have coffee and protein for breakfast, and eat it quickly, standing up. There’s no time to lose!

2. Work! Make sure you have a job that makes you so nervous that when 11 a.m. rolls around and you start to feel a little hungry, you just power through it since there’s no way you can leave the computer (everyone would somehow sense you were gone and realize that they did actually hate you after all?), and then at 3:30 p.m. when you do get a chance to break away, you’re strangely unhungry even though you know you’re probably technically hungry — but also you’re amazed because you never thought you’d be one of those people who “forgot to eat lunch,” as you always understood those people to be insane or liars, but here you are, a Busy Woman who forgot to eat lunch. So you either skip lunch entirely, get a thing from the vending machine, or go get a salad. Or, if you’re actually extremely hungry, go get a panini.

3. Have some more coffee! Have as much coffee as you want, all the time.

4. If you suddenly notice you’ve been sitting with your shoulders hunched and that there’s a clenching in your chest, good. And don’t breathe too deeply or easily — breaths should be short and shallow. So short and shallow that sometimes it feels like you’re not even breathing. In fact, sometimes you aren’t even breathing, which you’ll notice because you’ll suddenly, quietly gasp. It’s great to have a job that ENGAGES you, you know?

5. At last, the day is done! Ohhh wait, though, there’s that one other thing. Holddd onnn, do something for another half hour. OK, done for real! Unless there’s another thing? In which case, do it, obviously. Why wouldn’t you do something, no matter how useless and unnecessary it is?

6. When you get home, pour yourself a very generous glass of wine. Aim for 8 p.m.-ish, but if you get home earlier, start earlier. Whatever you want! White or red, it doesn’t matter.

7. It’s staggering how fast you can drink a single glass of wine while just doing stuff in your house. Repeat.

8. Now you’re a little bit drunk, which, thank god. What a day, jesus christ. But now you feel great! Very loose, easy breezy.

9. Eat whatever dinner you want. Although mostly you order sushi or Thai or Middle Eastern. Or make salmon with a vegetable. But really, whatever.

10. The bottle of wine is gone! It happens sooo quicklllyyyy sometimeeessss.

11. Go mess around online, keeping in mind that anything you write/post/send is guaranteed to be stupid. Oops, you write/post/send it anyway.

12. Well, it’s about 45 minutes after you should’ve gone to bed, but whatever. Go to bed/pass out now!

13. Do it all over again tomorrow and every day for the next 10 months, and watch a small amount of weight very slowly melt off. Oh, and on the weekends throw in some whiskey. Usually just on its own or with club soda, but also in Manhattans. And if you see a reason to have whiskey and/or Manhattans during the work week, WHY NOT.

14. Literally never exercise. Except once over Labor Day when you hike a mountain with your mom.

Optional step No. 15 being, of course: Write a how-to thing like this and then reevaluate the way things are going! N-E WAY, moving on.