No cold chamber? I just nip into the garage in my pants
THE BOOK: The 50 Healthiest 10-Minute Recipes (£ 22, available from the Lanserhof at the Arts Club, London). THE SPA: Lanserhof has three clinics — one in Austria and two in Germany — where you will get little change from £5,000 for a week’s stay. There’s also the Lanserhof at the Arts Club in London, which is a private members’ club with a £2,000 joining fee and £2,500 per annum membership fee. Membership to the Lanserhof centre costs from an additional £334 per month.
WITH A dusting of frost outside, it is almost possible to make believe I’m at the exclusive Lanserhof Lans in Austria. Sadly, rather than being at the clinic where the uber-rich and fabulous, including Cara Delevingne and Karlie Kloss, go to rest and repair, I’m at my own humble abode in Oxford.
So it’s a DIY detox for me and I attempt to recreate the ‘Lanserhof Cure Active package’, which in-house costs around £3,516 for a week, excluding accommodation (from £371 per night per person for a single room). It’s designed for their ‘healthy, athletic and ambitious guests’.
Yes, I’m aware I’m none of those things. In fact, when I walked into David Lloyd for the programme’s recommended yoga session the instructor nearly fainted, but they don’t offer a Sofa Cure and I want to get fitter so needs must.
THOUGH I obviously can’t replicate the vast array of medical checks and more exotic treatments the Lanserhof offers — such as four sessions in a cold chamber where one’s skin is exposed to temperatures as low as -110c (-166f) for up to three minutes — I figured my Siberian garage would perhaps be a fitting substitute.
If my partner wondered why I was nipping in there in my pants, he failed to mention it.
I may not have access to the highlyskilled Lanserhof chefs either but, thankfully, there is a cookbook created by them, which feels like the next best thing. Now, as well as having joint
degrees in failed diets and reluctant exercise, I am also the proud holder of a PhD in cookbooks.
Harking back to my restaurant critic days, I have amassed several hundred, and, oh boy, I know how to use them. So yet another diet book did not thrill me. But let me tell you, this is not just another cookbook.
As it contains the sort of meals you might be served in the spa, I feared it would be fiddly but, thankfully, this is The 50 Healthiest 10-Minute Recipes and at the words ‘mashed potato’ I sigh with relief.
Full of fast, gourmet-style meals that make you feel like you have transformed into Gordon Ramsay, but better looking — the cauliflower burgers were a particular triumph. The diet involves good organic protein, vegetables and fruit.
Even my partner loved the food, though I gave him more carbs. Mine were minimal and based around grains
such as spelt bread, which I confess I bought — I’m not that wholesome.
Drinking with meals is verboten, as it dilutes the digestive juices, as are all the fun things — get thee behind me coffee, alcohol and soda. I did, however, quite enjoy the special Lanserhof tea which can also be purchased for £16 from their London outposts and is one of the recommended drinks (though between meals, of course).
I did three online classes and a Pilates session as a substitute for the four personal training sessions offered by the Lanserhof. And yes, the expectation is that you start your day with a dose of salts, literally — the Epsom variety. I found an acceptable variation in the form of prune juice, which also gets things moving.
After a week of daily exercise, lots of rest, and clean eating, I lost five pounds and felt re-energised. Lanserhof may be on to something.