by Jay (Thu Feb 04, 2010)
It was clearly a Choco Leibniz biscuit
too far. And I couldn't deny it
anymore. There was a ‘muffin top' emerging over my waistband, I had that awful
itchy tight bra feeling, and having to push aside a stubbornly protruding roll
of flesh to get into a yoga position is just downright humiliating when you're
the teacher.
Being a rather impatient type with
intermittent willpower and an interest in health rather than faddy diets, I
chose to shed my pounds the hard-core way and signed up for a week-long detox. That's
six whole days on a juice-only fast. Which is six days of not eating. And I
LOVE my food. Yikes.
And so I found myself on a converted
farm in North Devon. It was idyllic. Pretty little cottages created out of the
old barns, a swimming pool, sauna and oodles of countryside to walk in. But no
food.
I say no food, but there was something
reasonably solid to ingest five times a day. It's called psyllium husk and it scrubs
out your giblets and supposedly fills you up. Well it did, a bit. But it had
all the appeal of swallowing damp sawdust, and even in my ravenous state it was
not something to look forward to.
The psyllium, a digestive enzyme
supplement and freshly squeezed juice (and by the end I was even looking
forward to beetroot) was all we got. Of course you can cheat, and the people
who run the course told great stories about packets of Maltesers being
discovered stuffed behind wardrobes after detoxers have gone home. They told us
this at the end - had I known it before that, I would probably have turned my
room upside down for old stale biscuits in secret corners.
But no, I didn't cheat. And I was
really very chuffed with myself. The juice concoction was enough to ensure the
hunger wasn't overwhelming, and somehow I sensed my body saying, ‘Hey about
time too, now just leave us alone for a bit so we can spring clean.'
That spring cleaning was assisted with
twice daily colonics. Yep, that's twice a day setting up a contraption of tubes
and boards in the bathroom, turning on Radio 4 (in my case), lying back and
letting it all happen. And boy did it happen. All those choc biccies aside, I
like to think my 20 years as a vegetarian and recent years of no alcohol mean I
live a fairly healthy life. But...oh my. I won't go into too many details in case
you're eating your dinner, but just Google ‘mucoid plaque' and believe me when
I say those pictures aren't hoaxes.
We were kept busy and distracted from
our hallucinations about roast potatoes with yoga, meditation and talks about
nutrition, the highlight of which was the unveiling of a year old fast food
burger which hadn't deteriorated at all; the logical conclusion being that it's
mainly made up of stuff that isn't actually food.
My fellow detoxers and I became a close
knit little bunch, sharing intimate details of internal workings that would
never normally be accepted in polite company. There were tears, there were
headaches and sniffles and sweats and all manner of strange detox symptoms. And
on the final evening we fell like wolves upon the raw food feast that was
prepared for us. Unbelievable how utterly divine salad tasted.
And so off I trotted home with a bag of
onion crackers and bee pollen, intent on injecting more raw and superfoods into
my diet. I have. A bit. And the oddest thing is, so far I really haven't
fancied a chocolate biscuit. I think right now that getting back into my jeans
tastes better than anything.
