No booze, no coffee and just 600 calories a day – I loved it!
£4,000 for a ten-day luxury detox isn’t an extravagance, says Kirsty Lang, it’s the best investment possible
FASTING is fashionable. I don’t just mean the 5:2 diet but fasting holidays. From Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Gove to writer Jeanette Winterson, they’ve all tried it and raved about how great they felt afterwards, not to mention being a lot thinner.
The Original FX Mayr Health Centre on the shores of Lake Worthersee in Austria is, well, the original. Here they pioneered the concept of feeding guests fewer than 600 calories a day in the comfort of a luxury spa hotel with sauna, steam rooms, massage and forest walks to help them forget their hunger pangs.
The guests divide into three camps: the wealthy wanting to lose weight, stressed-out professionals, and those with health problems looking for a solution they haven’t found elsewhere.
I belong to the final category. I had breast cancer last year and the scientific evidence of the benefits of fasting for cancer patients is compelling. I also wanted a detox after chemotherapy.
Based on the 100-year-old teachings of Franz Xaver Mayer, the key elements of the ‘cure’ are rest, good eating habits and cleansing the gut. Breakfast and lunch are served in nouvelle cuisine-like portions, and supper is vegetable broth eaten with tiny spoons. It means that for 16 out of 24 hours, you’re fasting.
We are encouraged to eat in silence, chewing each mouthful up to 30 times. The theory is that it gets the digestive enzymes in the saliva going and makes you less hungry.
Everyone starts the day with a dose of Epsom salts and there are plenty of conveniently placed loos. We are also instructed to swill our mouths with vegetable oil for five minutes when we wake up to get rid of the gut bacteria that collects overnight, producing nasty morning breath.
I travelled with my mother for a ten-day detox, which was about right. A week is too short because you spend the first three or four days feeling terrible.
Once I had settled into the routine (the Austrians place a lot of emphasis on routine), the place began to have a hypnotic effect on me. I spent hours staring out of the huge windows at the mountains and the lake, watching the sailing boats and the birds. As the days went by I began to feel like a character in Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel Du Lac, forming strange, awkward bonds with my fellow guests.
The predominant nationality is British, otherwise there was a Swiss, a few Turks, two Kuwaiti women, a Russian and a couple of Americans. We exchange notes on our symptoms and weight loss on the daily hikes through the forest and across hills covered in wild flowers.
Everyone is assigned a doctor on arrival whom they see every day except for the weekends. During each appointment, you discuss symptoms and get your tummy massaged (it gets the gut moving, apparently). They pride themselves in providing individ-
Our hunger is forgotten as we hike across the nearby hills
ually tailored programmes for every guest. I was prescribed a multi-vitamin intravenous drip on my first day, a course of herbal medicine, and a holistic test for food intolerance. Austrian doctors don’t seem to have the cynical aversion to complementary medicine that their colleagues in Britain have. My biggest fears before going were being hungry and very bored. Neither happened. The day quickly fills up with treatments, guided walks, swims in the lake or reading books. And I didn’t miss coffee or alcohol, two substances to which I’m normally quite attached.
The 47-room Original FX Mayr is housed in large, wooden, chaletstyle hotel with traditional green shutters and a pitched roof.
There are plenty of cosy corners with large white sofas and cream throws where you can read and drink herbal tea.
I rode a bike to the lake to look around a rival clinic, Viva Mayr, which was set up a few years ago by a couple of ex-employees.
It’s in an equally beautiful location but the building is modern and much larger, a fusion between an expensive private clinic and minimalist five-star hotel. There’s a jewellery store in the lobby and a designer clothes boutique. A couple of Mayr regulars I met had tried both. The consensus is that Viva Mayr is ‘a lot more bling’.
One of the English guests told me in a disdainful whisper that ‘it’s for Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern potentates’, before adding that Cherie Blair had also visited.
However, the arrival of this new kid on the block forced the Original FX Mayr to up its game. The regulars – who make up about a third of the guests – tell me it used to be a little spartan until a couple of years ago. In the past two years it has undergone a significant makeover under manager Gabriella Schnitzler, who spent years working for luxury brands including Prada and Louis Vuitton. It now looks and feels like a tasteful, upmarket country house hotel.
A slim, elegant blonde, Gabriella looks like a walking advert for the Mayr cure. She’s discreet and won’t tell me which celebrities have been to the hotel, but reveals that one big star went completely unrecognised. ‘Everyone looks the same in a towelling dressing gown with no makeup,’ she says with a smile.
The current medical director, Dr Stephan Domenig, was poached from Viva Mayr. When I asked him what the differences were, he said the cure was the same but the vibe was different. What they share is the fact they’re both very expensive. With extras included, a tenday cure at the Original FX Mayr will set you back more than £4,000.
One fellow cancer sufferer told me she saves up all year, putting aside a bit every month, to pay for an annual visit. ‘I think it helps keep me alive,’ she says, ‘so it’s an investment, not an extravagance.’
I think I agree.