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Telegraph Travel Feb 4th Travel with Mother Article by Viv Groskop
Fast and Furious Viv Groskop has fat issues with her mother. Can a spell in a Portuguese hippie boot camp resolve them? For most of my life I have believed I am quite fat and at risk of becoming fatter. It is only recently - I am 32 - that I have realised, from looking at photographs of a younger me, that I never actually was fat. Until now. In the past few years the fat thing became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more I believed I was fat, the more I ate like a fat person. So guess what? Now I am fat. Who do I blame for this? My mother. I had contradictory messages about food throughout my childhood: 'Would you like some of this chocolate cake I have just made?' followed by 'Dont eat too much, you'll get fat' My mother has always believed, wrongly, that she is fat. Now in her mid-fifties she is - as she always has been - a slim size 14 with shapely legs. Whenever I remind her of this she says, 'I know - but I would like to be a size 12' So the chance for the two of us to 'bond' on a five-day detox near Faro in Portugal was rather horrifying. I was hoping to take the opportunity to talk my mother into realising that she has never been fat and that it is time to stop all this nonsense for both our sakes. She was hoping to drop at least one dress size. (I was, too, but pretended to be more into the yoga.) Moinhous Velhos is a beautiful villa set deep in the Algarve countryside. It was founded as an alternative community in 1993 by two Norwegian health practitioners. The break does not start well. There is a strict detox regime for between seven and 14 days. I hadn't realised that the 'fasting programme' would be quite this lateral and begin to feel quite panicky. We are allowed a glass of fresh juice (carrot, tomato, watermelon, apple, cucumber) three times a day, washed down with a clay mixture and a handful of diet supplements in tablet form. At 7pm every day we are served 'soup' boiled water which once experienced momentary contact with a vegetable. The other inmates - there are nine of us - seem equally nervous. Ranging in age from 20 to 50, they include an Australian chef, a British woman, a Swedish film producer. (The French actress Isabelle Adjani was here a few weeks before we arrived.) We are woken every day at 6-45am for two hours of meditation and yoga There are daily treatments (allergy-testing, reikei, cranio-sacral therapy, massage): You get the odd (Cornetto-free) trip to the beach and there are some beautiful walks around the valley, It has the feel of a hippie boot camp: a sauna and glorious saltwater pool are the only concessions to spa living. Within 12 hours I am desperate to leave - or, more importantly, to eat. But my mother has other ideas. By 2pm on the first day she looks at me and declares, 'Your stomach looks smaller' On hour later she says deliriously, 'If I carry on like this, I will be a size 8!' She is in her element, behaving as if she has been drinking wheatgrass and chanting 'om' her whole life. I grit my teeth and force myself to focus on the word 'tolerance' during the meditation session. By day two, however, we are of one mind: sceptical enjoyment. We both decide the ´clysmatic' (self administered colonic irrigation is a detox too far. We exchange conspiratory glances when the therapist demonstrating the technique (not literally, thankfully) says, 'Do not stand up in the middle of the procedure. It will make a mess' But we are having a good time: it is strangely relaxing to be on a holiday where there is no deciding where to eat that night (and bedtime is at 10 pm anyway) There is nothing to do and nowhere to go - and yet we seem curiously busy, waiting for our three-hourly juice treats. We talk more than we have in years and I feel as if I am getting somewhere in convincing my mother that she has never been fat. As the days pass, I become obsessed with the 7pm boiled water, which tastes increasingly like a seven course gourmet meal. Weirdly, neither of us is hungry and we begin to say stupid things like 'I could go on fasting for ever' By the end of five days I have lost four pounds and my mother has lost five. (By a week later, several others have lost up to a stone.) We are ecstatic to have made it through the programme but equally pleased to leave. I feel great, My mother, I am rather proud to say, looks amazing. I am not sure it has had the desired mental effect, though. 'I just need to do this for another 40 days and then I really would look great.' she says. Yes I mutter, but you would also be dead.
14 nights at Moinhos Velhos from
£1,560pp based on two sharing
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