It would be fair to say I take it badly. Do I want to go to a remote Austrian medical health resort for 10 days to experience first-hand the booming industrial wellness-travel complex and write about it for Esquire? 10 days? This is the kind of thing you’d threaten me with if
you wanted me to reveal where I’d hidden the diamonds. Or to get me to tell you the secret codes. The suggestion that I’d do it the day after getting back from Glastonbury feels totally inhumane. I say I’ll do five, final offer. It still feels like a prison sentence.
Then again, it might be a useful way to detox from the festival. Or a different way, at any rate. Over the years, I have honed my own very precise Glastonbury detox: I lie in bed eating pizza and pasta for three days while drinking red wine and alternating between rewatching old movies and crying in the foetal position. While this system worked fine for me in my twenties and thirties, it might be fair to say it seems to have reached its limit of effectiveness as I’ve got older. There’s also the question of the extra two stone in weight I’ve been lugging around forever (see Glastonbury recovery diet above) and that no amount of dieting ever seems to shift. Might this be an opportunity to finally put a dent in that?
In short: Austrian health clinic here we come.
it is, of course, a tale as old as time: since the 19th century the rich have gone to the mountains, the coast and the deep countryside to undertake “cures”: for their nerves, their health, their weight and because, well, it’s just the thing to do. Nowadays we’re more likely to say “wellness” than “cure”, and while “wellness” is a word that makes me want to go on a three-day drinking binge, the wellness tourism industry in Europe is anticipated to grow by 20.9 per cent each year until 2025. For whatever reason — health awareness, medical advancement, rampant narcissism — our bodies are once again big business.
Today, the destination of choice for the true player is Mayrlife, formerly known as VivaMayr Altaussee (it used to be partnered with another resort in Lake Wörthersee owned by members of the same family, which still goes by that name). Tucked away in the mountains east of Salzburg, this is where the Australian actor Rebel Wilson came and began the process of changing her entire body shape. It is where Hollywood moguls, oligarchs and the simply very wealthy come to reset the body clock or to get the weight off before a big event.
The original “Mayr cure” was the brainchild of Austrian physician Dr FX Mayr, who, almost a century ago, believed we were destroying ourselves by eating badly and wrecking our guts. In 2005, Dr Christine Stossier and her husband Harald launched VivaMayr, basing it on Mayr’s practices, with the fundamental principle being you can improve your health through your digestion. Mmm. So far, so Road to Wellville.
It is, natürlich, heart-stoppingly expensive. A week-long stay plus all the recommended treatments and supplements won’t leave you much change out of five thousand quid (with flights on top). But, as I drive into Gatwick, the money isn’t at the forefront of my mind so much as the enormity of the gear-change I am about to attempt. I longingly eye up the McDonald’s beside the terminal and think about turning in to grab an Egg McMuffin and a hash brown, to see me off into the long days ahead, much like Renton scoring those opium suppositories in Trainspotting. I decide against it. I’ll do it when I get back — a wee celebratory treat for having survived the trip.
I wander into the BA lounge, bleary-eyed, at 7am. Just 48 hours earlier I had been stumbling around Glastonbury swigging freely from a flask of malt whisky with a pint of lager in the other hand, stopping by any food stall that caught my eye. As you get older, food replaces drugs as one of the big attractions of the festival. Pie and mash? Of course. A huge Yorkshire pudding crammed with sausages and onion gravy? Bring it. Senegalese curry? Plate it up. Having forsaken Ronald, I am now confronted with the temptation of the fine British Airways breakfast buffet. Well, it might be my last chance for proper sustenance for the next five days…
Onto the plate go three sausages, three rashers of bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns, tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding and toast. All washed down with a beaker of orange juice and a brace of foamy cappuccinos. Afterwards, sated, I spend a tense few minutes wandering duty free. Having found out that they do not search your bags on arrival at the clinic, my plan is to pick up a bottle of whisky and a couple of cartons of fags so that every day, after I’ve paid due lip service to health and diet, I can retire to my room and drink and smoke myself senseless. But some crazy voice I do not quite recognise comes to me and says something like —
Ach. Why not give it a go, John?
I put the malt and the Marlboros back on the shelf. I fall asleep the second I snuggle into my seat on the plane and, moments later it seems, Paul the driver is saying, “Afternoon! This your first time?” as I come, yawning, through arrivals at Salzburg airport. Paul turns out to be tremendous value: a Brit and an ex-copper who ran a B&B in Austria before retiring. He now drives part-time for the clinic. I ask how long the drive is. “About an hour and a half.” It occurs to me that it is lunchtime.
“Mmm. I’ll just use the loo,” I say.
Back in the terminal I hit one of the ubiquitous snack stands where I pick up a big slice of atrocity pizza, a coffee and a half-litre bottle of Diet Coke. Well, I reason again, this might be my last chance for proper sustenance for the next five days. I scarf the lot in the car park and get back in the car. “Cheers Paul.”
We wend our way east, climbing into the mountains, passing clear lake after snow-capped peak. I’m trying to enjoy the scenery, but one thing keeps gnawing at me. Why didn’t you at least get cigarettes, you madman? I mean, even in prison and rehab they can smoke.
Seeing from Paul’s SatNav that we’re getting very close to our destination, I finally panic.
“Hey, Paul, I don’t suppose there’s anywhere I can get fags?”
“Sure, there’s a tabac in the village.”
“The village?”
The clinic, it turns out, is 300 metres from the beautiful Austrian hamlet of Altaussee. We pull up on the high street, where I see no fewer than two cafes, a supermarket with off-licence and a gorgeous Austrian restaurant, where schnitzels the size of bath towels and beaded steins of golden beer are being brought to sunshine-kissed tables by waitresses in full dirndls. “Uh, how far is the clinic from here?” I ask. “Oh, five minutes,” Paul says cheerfully.
“Driving?”
“Walking.”
“And can I — ”
“Oh yeah,” he says, way ahead of me. “You can come up here anytime you like. It’s not a prison.”
Oh God, I wish to Christ it was. For I will now have to engage perhaps the most underused muscle in my body: willpower. I make a vow: if I get through the stay, I will come here on my final night and go absolutely tonto on veal, fries and lager.
The Mayrlife building itself is a beautiful wood-and-glass structure, like several big interconnecting chalets. The feel in the lobby, with its expanse of marble, beaming reception staff and soft music, is exactly like checking into a five-star hotel. All familiar. Nothing to fear here.
I’m taken up to a gorgeous corner suite with views of the lake and the mist-wreathed granite mountain and I wander out onto the wraparound private terrace to peruse the arrival literature. I am pleased to find I have nothing in my diary until tomorrow, when I am to meet with my personal doctor on the first floor, the medical floor. My only appointment for tonight is the always welcome word “DINNER”, which is starting shortly. Fantastic — a solo dinner with my book. One of life’s great underrated pleasures. The literature also tells me that the mountain I am looking up at is called Mount Loser.
This feels portentous.
Like the lobby, the dining room is spacious and airy, continuing the five-star hotel vibe, except for… well, there’s obviously no wine or cocktail list. And, despite there being several other diners, it is incredibly quiet. I pick up a leaflet on my table that tells me loud conversation is “discouraged” as it detracts from focusing on the food. Tablets, phones and laptops are also discouraged. As are “reading materials” like newspapers, magazines and books. Shamefully, as though I’ve wandered in holding a skunk or a large sex-toy, I slide my novel onto the seat beside me as a waiter appears holding an iPad. Like all the staff here, he is gentle, friendly and very, very healthy-looking. “Dinner, Sir?”
God, yes.
Rather than handing me a menu, he consults his iPad, nods and leaves. Mmm. Must be a set menu deal. He returns moments later bearing a white, ceramic teapot. Which turns out to contain vegetable broth. I am given a minute piece of spelt bread and a teaspoon with which to eat it. In lieu of anything else, I read more of the leaflet on the table, which tells me all the rules in the dining room are intended to focus you on “mindful” eating. Of savouring every bite and trying to chew each mouthful “40 to 60 times”. This is a bit of challenge with my broth starter, but I slurp slowly and mindfully, finish, put my teaspoon down and wait patiently until the waiter approaches again. Without anything to read I gaze at the ceiling, trying to do so intelligently, as they say Richthofen’s dog Moritz used to do. The waiter approaches and we both exchange hopeful smiles. “Sir?”
“Ah, the next course?”
“Next course? Would you like more broth?”
It transpires that because I ticked “weight loss” as the primary reason for my visit on my admissions form, I have condemned myself to a “broth-only” evening dinner plan. Fuck! I get a second pot and look out over the trees, up towards the village where, right now, there is undoubtedly a Fall-of-Rome scenario going on fuelled by schnitzel and lager. And so, to bed, where it takes me an hour to get sleep, what with my stomach growling like Richthofen’s dog. Christ, I should have got that Scotch.
Oh well, at least the spelt roll was quite nice.
The medical floor turns out to be straight out of a 1970s sci-fi film. Or a Michael Crichton novel of the period. The Stepford Wives meets Coma with a hint of Westworld. Soft lighting, polished hardwood flooring, beautiful white-smock-clad nurses moving gracefully hither and thither. My personal physician, Dr Jandl, is a straight-talking German woman who — like everyone here — looks incredibly healthy, with great skin and clear, tranquil eyes. She could be anything from 40 to 60. We go through my normal diet.
“Breakfast?”
“Oh, nothing really. Coffee. Maybe a piece of toast?”
“And lunch?”
Hmmm. This bears thinking about. There’s lunch, as in a sandwich at my desk, or there’s lunch, as in when I go out to lunch, which is one of my very favourite things in the world to do.
A proper lunch will begin with at least one, but ideally two, cocktails — usually a martini (very dry, olive, thanks), sometimes a whisky — before moving onto wine with the meal.
The previous week, I’d had such a lunch at Langan’s in Mayfair, a birthday meal for the very talented writer Ian Martin (Veep, The Thick of It etc). After two pre-lunch martinis I had half a dozen rock oysters and several glasses of Chablis before moving onto most of a bottle of Burgundy with my chicken Kiev. Then cheese and Calvados, before staggering out into Mayfair around 4pm. Standard. However, telling the good doctor this would involve revealing that I had consumed what I have claimed (again on the forms) to be my total weekly alcohol consumption in a three-hour period. So, I give her a watered-down version, removing about 70 per cent of the booze.
“Hmmm. And dinner?”
Again, I embark on a version of events just the right side of credible. We then do some tests. These involve me lying on my back on the examination table and holding my right leg up perpendicular to my body, which the good doctor then tries to push down while I am advised to use all force to prevent this. No problem. She cannot move it. Then she tickles a muscle somewhere on my elbow and — like magic — down my leg goes. We now begin a series of tests where tiny amounts of various foods in powdered form are placed on my tongue before she attempts again to push that leg down. We go thorough nightshades and proteins with no problem — the leg remains immovable — and then, on cow’s milk, after I take the powder, she pushes it straight down. The same thing happens with the bread sample.
“OK,” she says. “So, your body does not like cow’s milk or gluten.”
“Eh? But I eat bread and drink milk all the time!”
“And how do you feel? How are your energy levels?”
“Fine. Well, I usually need a nap in the early afternoon. And I’m generally crawling to bed around 10pm. But, no, alright really.”
“Well why don’t you try this and see how you feel?”
Ach, why not give it a go, John?
“Right. OK.”
I am weighed, have bloods taken, am asked to drop in a urine sample and given a load of supplements to take before my meals. And something called Epsom salts, which I am to take first thing in the morning, starting right away. Finally, I get sent off for breakfast, which can’t come soon enough, as I was beginning to think about eating Dr Jandl’s stethoscope.
Breakfast turns out be more expansive.
After my meds and Epsom salts, I choose the salmon and trout with broccoli puree. “And for the bread?” my waiter asks. “Oh, the spelt again, please.” He shakes his head. “I’m afraid it’s not on your diet plan,” which has already been updated by my doctor. “No wheat I’m afraid. You can have…” He lists the gluten-free breads and I wind up with a quinoa roll which has the texture and flavour of bird seed mixed with plaster.
The salmon and trout are delicious, although the four pieces combined are about the size of a train ticket. Ravenous, trying — and failing — to chew mindfully, I look around at my fellow diners. The guests — patients? — fall into two categories: the Healthies and the Chunkies. The Healthies glow with vitality and look like they are in their very favourite place in the world, while we Chunkies have the look of the damned on our faces, like we are in a gulag with bonus arugula. Indeed, reading my new diet plan I realise I will be subsisting on 800 calories a day, which is about the same as prisoners in Stalin’s Siberian gulags were given. Oh well, at least I’m not expected to do any back-breaking labour, or deal with extreme sub-zero temperatures. I review my appointments for the afternoon: various tests (myodiagnostic, acid/alkaline/mineral analysis), an infusion by IV drip with vitamins, trace elements and vitamin B12, and then something called a salt peeling, whatever the hell that is, for which I am advised to wear only a bathrobe.
I don’t much like the sound of this.
Shortly after breakfast, the Epsom salts kick in. Walking across the lobby I feel my bowels turning over like a bad old car trying to start and suddenly I am sprinting for the nearest bathroom. I will spare you — dear, gentle reader — the precise details. Suffice to say that if you can picture jet-washing your patio with a pressure hose hooked up to a vat of Mulligatawny soup you will have some idea. Fifteen minutes later I emerge trembling, as pale as a Sex Pistol. This process repeats itself four more times that morning, until it reaches the point where I am genuinely nervous to be more than 50ft from a bathroom. I am now violently expelling my scant 800 calories a day about as fast as I can consume them. Great. Perfect.
I arrive for the salt peeling in the advised bathrobe with my swimming trunks underneath.
“Ah no,” the lady says, ‘you must wear this.’
She hands me a tiny package. It contains a black, paper thong. “Uh, really?”
“Yes. I will return.”
General MacArthur leaves the room and I change into the paper thong. It is microscopic.
I look at my reflection in the shower door: naked save for my mad bullybag crammed into the cheese cutter, the great expanse of my gut spilling out. In terms of dignity the outfit makes Borat’s mankini look like a Tom Ford suit. I look insane. Oh God, how did it come to this?
But the lady doesn’t seem to mind or notice when she returns, she just lays me on the table and begins to slather me in a mixture of oil and salt. She then wraps me in several sheets of plastic and presses a button, whereupon the table begins to descend into a bath of lukewarm water. “And why are we doing this?” I ask.
“Detox,” she replies. “This will help to get the toxins out of your skin. I will return in 20 minutes.” She leaves. In fact, it’s not unpleasant and I promptly fall fast asleep, dreaming of food, dreaming of my final night here, when I will be elbows-deep in schnitzel.
Day two unfolds much as day one: wandering around starving with a pounding headache before embarking on a series of tests, IV infusions and treatments, the first of which is something called “Cryotherapy”. Again, ominously, I am advised to wear a bathrobe. This time I am not forced into the thong. Rather I am naked and then dressed in a woollen cap, a Russian-soldier-style fur hat with ear flaps and thick woollen bootees with matching gloves. I am then led towards the Cryochamber. I see the temperature display.
“MINUS 110°C.”
I will have to be in there for three minutes. To return to the gulags for a moment, the most asked question by the prisoners was simply, “Zachto?” Meaning “for what?” “For what reason is this happening to me?” Once they understood that “here there is no for what”, they simply stopped asking the question. Still, I give it a go.
“For what?”
“Detox.”
I am ushered in. Jesus Christ. It is difficult to describe how cold minus 110 is. After 30 seconds you cannot think. The only thing I can do to keep from going insane is singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to myself in an increasingly deranged tone, like the computer HAL breaking down at the end of 2001. Then I just start growling and barking. Somehow, though, I get through it. As I am enveloped in a warm towel I ask my handler, “Does anyone just give in and beg to get out?”
“Yes, many.”
“And you let them out?”
“Oh yes.”
If only I’d known that going in.
And it turns out there is much I did not know going in. The clinic is a little like the gulag in other ways — there are tricks and dodges only known to old-timers. For instance, at lunchtime I see another diner asking for a second helping of our (miniscule, but very good) piece of duck with vegetables. I follow suit and a second, even smaller portion arrives. It’s smaller, yes, but it helps. It also transpires that a tureen of broth is laid out mid-morning by the herbal tea bar in the foyer and you can help yourself. As in prison, as you learn the ropes, life becomes a little more bearable. At the end of the day, I have a second consultation with Dr. Jandl, where she answers my “Zachto?” with a more detailed explanation of exactly what we are trying to do here…
By middle age most of us, and certainly the overweight like me, have very poor digestion. The body burns sugars much more easily than it burns fats. Which is why dieting, when still coupled with poor digestion, can be ineffective. We are trying to reset my digestive tract and get rid of a lot of harmful parasites in my gut. “So now, even after two days, your body will be moving into a fat-burning stage and you will start to feel a lot better. You won’t feel so hungry.” I tell her about the five-times-a-day explosions of diarrhoea. She is utterly delighted. “Five motions? Excellent. Very good!” And my headaches? “Caffeine withdrawal. These too will stop.”
I’m not sure I’m buying all of this. I go for a swim in the infinity pool, with views of the grounds. I can see waiters laying out the tables on the terrace for dinner. It’s nearly six o’clock, the cocktail hour, and for a second I forget where I am. Quick dip, wander down to the bar. Maybe a negroni before dinner. Nice steak…
I snap back to reality: the broth and quinoa roll await.
It is only as I am towelling down that it dawns on me: it is six o’clock now and I have not had my afternoon nap. I have not even felt the urge for one.
That’s weird.
Day three. It turns out that my willpower was not the most underused muscle in my body. Oh no. I was sorely mistaken. It was my sphincter. Which is now getting an inhuman workout and has gone from being a benched player to banging in goals from all angles every other minute. And another development on Day Three — for the first time I sleep like a top and wake up without a headache. In fact, I…
I feel pretty good. Better than pretty good. Tip top. At lunch I find am chewing every mouthful of my wheat-free noodles with vegetables 40 times with ease. I have another IV infusion, this time a cocktail of glutathione and selenium, to help my liver. I do some more tests: for my level of free radicals and my biological antioxidant potential. And, incredibly, as the afternoon rolls on, I even exchange a cheerful nod with one of the Healthies, rather than a mournful grunt with a fellow Chunky. And it continues into the following day, Day Four. The afternoon nap has gone. I am no longer hungry all the time. (But don’t get me wrong, I am still going to pound that schnitzel and lager tomorrow night for my end-of-term celebration.) I am bursting with energy. I am loving my three to four apocalyptic bowel movements every morning. I go for a swim in the lake, the sun beating down, the water an ideal 20°C and, as I float on my back looking up at Mount Loser, it finally begins to occur to me that, for the first time since I’ve been here, I feel… oh no. Not this. Anything but this.
I feel happy.
The following morning, my last full day here, I have my final appointment with Dr Jandl to go over all my test results and have the weigh-in. What I want to say to her is — “I’m living on 800 calories, which I immediately expel from my butt in a torrent of filth, and I haven’t had a drink in a week. Why the fuck am I so fucking happy?” But she’s so nice that when she asks me how I’m feeling I just say, “Uh, really good actually. Why?”
She smiles as she explains that I am now well into burning off fat and my digestive system is beginning to function more efficiently than it has in years. The monstrous amounts of caffeine have left my system, hence the absence of headaches and the deep, restful sleep. She is also slightly amazed at my test results. Despite what I have done to my system over the years (and boy have I roared and gorged and boozed and smoked my way through my time) I am “fundamentally very healthy”. Finally, I hop on the scales.
I have lost nearly three kilos in four days.
Six pounds.
Almost half a stone.
Now, obviously, this isn’t totally unexpected given what is going in and what is coming out, but what is unexpected is that, already, I am no longer hungry all the time. The good doctor is writing up my follow-on plan, for what I am to do when I leave tomorrow to go back to normal life. Basically, I must follow the same diet I’ve had here for another two weeks and then a slightly more relaxed version of it for a further two months:
1) Light breakfast and lunch, just broth in the evening.
2) Absolutely no mixing carbohydrates and proteins.
3) No gluten, no dairy, no alcohol.
4) Take all my supplements.
I decide to go for full candour and tell her of my scheme for the evening. I edge my way towards it with, “Surely, though, a little bit of what you fancy now and then does no harm?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“So, if I was to, say — just thinking aloud here, you know, just spitballing — have a schnitzel and fries and a couple of beers tonight…”
“Well of course you can,” but that “can” is very much delivered in italics. I wait for the other shoe to drop. Which it soon does. “But you’d be eating protein along with carbs. Also, there would be gluten and alcohol. Basically, it’d set your treatment back a few days.” A few days. After what I’ve gone through in the last few days. Resetting the system. Turning the course of a mammoth oil tanker.
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“Not at all. And drink more water.”
I wander outside, towards the path that winds its way up towards the village, just a five-minute stroll away. Early Friday evening. They’ll be laying out tablecloths. Firing up the grill. Pouring the first drinks of the night. Dunking those thin slices of pounded veal into seasoned breadcrumbs and then…
And then it dawns on me: I can look at this trip as having cost the best part of five grand in order to lose half a stone, or I can look at it as an opportunity to reset the way I eat for months and finally lose those two extra stones I’ve been carrying forever. With a groan probably audible in the village, I turn around and walk slowly back towards the dining room. Maybe I’ll treat myself to a sandwich on the plane home.
The waiter is smiling as he brings over my teapot of broth. A nod to my Chunkies, a nod to my Healthies, and I pick up my teaspoon and begin.
Reader, I did not have that schnitzel. Nor did I have the sandwich on the plane nor turn the car into the McDonald’s at Gatwick. No, what I did was haul a sack full of supplements back home with me and continue the programme until, one lunchtime, not thinking, I make the mistake of eating some poached chicken along with a few boiled new potatoes. The old me would have called this a health meal on a par with nibbling a few leaves of spinach. For the new me, the results of this carb/protein crossing of the streams are almost immediate: within an hour my previously fully pumping digestive tract has ground to a halt and — even with the Epsom salts — I do not have a bowel movement for 24 hours. It is a salutary reminder to follow doctors’ orders. And a salutary lesson in how I used to eat, when I’d pile down, say, a massive cheeseburger and fries and wine — protein, dairy, carbs, booze and gluten all in one handy bundle — and then wonder why I was a bit sleepy and why on earth does it feel like someone has hammered a foot-long, cast-iron plug up my night fighter? A week after getting home, I get on the scales.
I have lost a further eight pounds.
For a total of 14.
A stone in two weeks.
I am having to punch another hole in my belt and my trousers are starting to feel loose. I am up at 5.30 in the morning and working like I haven’t done in a long time, going right on through the afternoon, no nap involved. Friends comment on how well I look. How healthy my skin is. Along with my sphincter, my willpower is getting a long-denied workout too: I even manage to survive a night out with friends on just a few pieces of grilled meat and the odd tiny sip on a white-wine spritzer, heavy on the soda.
I must carry only one heavy and rather unexpected regret.
God, I wish I’d taken the full 10 days. ○
John Niven’s memoir “O Brother” is out now (Canongate)
