|
COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Caesar's doctor, it is said, once gave him some good diet advice: "Rise from the table half full." What would the world be like if, knowing what was good for us, we did it, and, knowing what was bad for us, we resisted? Eve might have asked the same question after breaking the fast of her innocence.
Atonement takes as many forms as wishful thinking, and last February I signed up for a three-day retreat at We Care, a holistic fasting spa in Desert Hot Springs, California, that is popular with celebrities. For a week before it began, I had followed the spa's instructions to prime my body and will power by abstaining from coffee, alcohol, sugar, fats, meat, dairy products, and medications. I was fairly confident that my resolve could hold out (the noun "fast" and the adjective have the same etymological root, in the concept of firmness), but not everyone blows off the serpent. "I won't mention names," the minivan driver told me on our way to the spa from the airport, "but certain clients have called my husband at midnight, begging him to pick up a pack of cigarettes, or some take-out, and meet them in the parking lot."
We Care is a cluster of adobe buildings on a five-acre tract of the Mojave Desert that can accommodate about twenty guests. The owners profess to be devout environmentalists, so I was puzzled by the lushness of the garden and the lawns, which ordinarily need lots of water. Just beyond the grounds lies an austere landscape of pale, cactus-studded sand rimmed like a piecrust by majestic peaks that change color--from pale rose to dark blue--in the pure air. This picturesque isolation, marred only slightly by the carcasses of old cars, and by the debris from obscure revels tangled in the sagebrush, is part of the spa's mystique. Fasters are essentially sequestered, as in a cloister or a boot camp, several miles from the temptations (bars, restaurants, and delis) of the town. You can't smell any cooking, and employees eat out of sight. A high fence shields the compound from the road, and an unmanned police car is parked permanently behind the front gate, apparently to discourage trespassers, or teen-age boys hoping to catch a glimpse of Gisele Bundchen, though it makes a somewhat penal first impression. No one checks your luggage for contraband, but, once you register, you forswear solid nourishment until the day you leave, when each guest receives the parting gift of a small salad in a plastic container. (The salads sit in a glass refrigerator under the tea bar, and after a while they begin to look as mouthwatering as tarts in the window of a French bakery.)
A three-day fast is wimpy by We Care standards. The average stay is a week or two--long enough, the spa's literature claims, for the body to surrender its toxins. Blood glucose is burned up first, within twenty-four hours; then glycogen in the liver gets melted down; and, after about two days, your system starts raiding its muscle tissue. (When a third to a half of those stores have been depleted, death usually ensues.) Blubber, in the meanwhile, is supplying about eighty-five per cent of the calories needed for basal metabolic functions, so the more you have, the longer you can last. Some clients tough it out for a month, but all fasters--fat or lean, old or young, fit or decrepit--subsist on the same daily regimen: unlimited lemon water and herbal teas, which are said to cleanse the liver and the kidneys; an array of dietary supplements to...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
