Oh my good lord. That is not a hill. That is some kind of inter-stellar torture device disguised as a body of land. I have been down (down being the operative word) blakc slopes as Val d’Isere and this behemoth made them look like a slight incline in comparison. At one point, I seriously thought I was going to have to start crawling on my hands and knees. It kept winding round and round and round and each corner ushered us to a steeper slope. It was like Russian dolls with reinforced concrete.
Our guide Sathit got us through it a) by shaming us into keeping on going by pointing and laughing at us b) by telling us that last year a lady who weighed 115kg (approx 18 stone walked up and down that fucker EVERY DAY for 10 days. I wasn’t about to be beaten by no Lardy Bum, no Siree. I asked if she’d used a stick, like the one he was holding. He showed us that it wasn’t a walking stick, but was a retractable club, to be used on “wild dogs”. So great, a never-ending back-breaking climb potentially to be punctuated by murderous hounds. And this is a holiday? In the event, we didn’t encounter any. Although after 5 days without food, i could very well have wrestled one to the ground and savaged it for protein. We all know dogs can smell fear, maybe they can also smell starvation that is not to be messed with.
Having said that, i continue to feel pretty good. I’m hungry, obviously, but not in an all-encompassing way. More my body giving me a poke in the belly every once in a while to remind me that this cleansing business is all well and good, but that I mustn’t forget to start eating when it’s over. I thought I’d be shattered and totally listless, but we made it up that hill in 35 mins (Lardy Bum took 75, but it’s almost the equivalent of me doing it whilst also carrying myself in my arms, so pretty incredible – she lost 13kg in 12 days, amazing) and I managed yoga a few hours later with no problems. I really wanted to come away with war stories; bile spewing from my every pore and fainting through a combination of hunger and exertion. But no. I just keep plodding along. The hardest part of my day is my struggle to stay in a steam room for 40 mins at a time. Not exactly Mein Kampf, is it? Everything is so organised here that Charlotte and I just sunbathe in the gaps between drinking 19 pints of various liquids a day/massage/yoga/meditation (in my case: Nap)/steam/workshop – typical topics “The Liver”, “Parasites”, “Nutrition”. Nutrition comes in 2 parts, both of which seem focused around: “Eat only broccoli and tofu to live to be 120 years old”. As some wit once said, we probably wouldn’t live any longer, it would just feel longer.
My colon continues to dump out a sieve full of grey and green solids every night. Turns out Charlotte has no green. A week ago, I’d never even met her and now I know her bowels as intimately as my own. I asked Sandi, our perky Australian teacher/counsellor/New Best Friend about it and she says my body obviously isn’t absorbing the Vital Greens that I take every morning. I worry, as these supply all of our minerals etc, and ask what I can do. She breezily lets me know that my body will automatically absorb what it needs and just flush out the rest. So hang on, I’m not eating, am subsisting on 1 coconut juice, 1 watermelon/pineapple/lime juice and 1 bowl of clear vegetable broth a day and my body doesn’t need any more minerals? I suspect I may be the miralce product of some kind of scientific experiment. I am the Bionic Woman. So weird. Stay off caffeine kids. That’s the only reason I can think of that this has been relatively painless. I never drink coffee, hardly ever tea and I get pissed about once every 2 months. And apparently this is pretty good for you. Believe the hype. Or just carry on enjoying yourself and don’t come here to find out how mangled your innards are. Ignorance is bliss.
Controversially, today I should be starting my liver flush, but I’ve declined the offer. A liver flush is where you go nil by mouth for nearly 24 hours starting at 2pm, apart from drinking a cup of olive oil and orange juice at 10am the following day. In theory, you then flush out a load of gallstones at around 12pm that day. Clinical medicine is sniffy in the extreme about the value of colonics, but whether they offer any positive health benefits or not, when it comes to my colon I’m very much of the opinion: “Better out than in”. Liver flushes however induce howls of derision from doctors. The “gallstones” are apaprently actually just how olive oil looks when it combines with citric acid. Which makes more sense than me having 400 gallstones, which is what is being claimed. So yeah. Not wanting to offend sensitive detox beliefs, I’ve just said I think total dehydration for that long is too big a strain on my already starved body and they’ve allowed me the woman’s right to choose. Suckers… It also gives me an another 24 hours to sunbathe. result!
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