We all know that sinking feeling. You've taken your car into the garage for some routine maintenance. The mechanic opens the bonnet, takes one look inside, sucks in his breath and shakes his head. 'You're not going to like this,' he says. I had the equivalent sensation during the medical examination on my first day at Espace Henri Chenot. They'd lifted my bonnet, and didn't like what they saw. It wasn't that my gasket was ready to blow, but my carburettors definitely needed a clean. More specifically, I was tired, stressed, overweight, my diet was a disaster, I drank too much alcohol (thank heavens I hadn't told the truth!) and my body was chock full of toxins. 'But apart from that,' I asked, 'I'm in good shape, yes?' Not a flicker. This was clearly no laughing matter. The doctors, dieticians, masseuses and fitness instructors needed to get to work urgently, or I would no longer be fit for the road.
The Chenot centre is housed at the Palace Merano Hotel in the spa town of Merano in the mountainous South Tyrol region of Italy. The hotel is indeed palatial, and imposing, with its magnificent gardens and marble halls, and speaks of luxury and comfort. There was real grandeur in its setting, too, encircled by the Tyrolean peaks. For the five days of my visit, however, indulgence had to take a distant second place: I was here to get in shape. The tone was set on the night of my arrival. I was shown to my room by Marco, who gave me my timetable of appointments in a ring binder, which, he said, I had to carry with me at all times, 'like at school,' he said.
'The week will be long,' he added, rather ominously, and when I studied my schedule, I understood what he meant. I hadn't had such a packed programme since I was in the fifth form. By lunchtime the next day, I'd had an hour with a personal trainer, a massage, an assessment of my energy levels, a checkup with the doctor and a meeting with a dietician. I had learnt more about my insides in a few hours than I'd ever thought possible or, indeed, desirable.
But I am getting ahead of myself. First, let me explain why I had gone on this journey of self-discovery. I needed to lose some weight. I wanted to detoxify my body. And I'd been advised to de-stress myself. This was to be no ordinary spa break full of pampering and preening: it was a no-holds-barred, heavy-duty immersion in the Henri Chenot doctrine: biontology. This particular 'ology is the invention of M Chenot himself and is, simply, if rather unscientifically, explained as 'the discovery of natural health through harmony between body and mind'.
In my short time there — the ideal stay, they say, is a week — I was given a crash course in the Chenot philosophy. Marie-Pierre, a formidable French woman who took a special interest in my case, explained the mechanics of chronobiology (the body clock), the benefits of Chinese medicine, the five elements of the human body, and the seven-year regeneration cycle of our cells. For the uninitiated like me, she relied on metaphor: at various points, my body was a castle, my heart was an engine, my veins were motorways, my cells were like soldiers. The message was, like Marie-Pierre herself, clear and straightforward: to achieve health nirvana, I had to eat less, eat better and drink less (I was told to drink only red wine, and Italian rather than French, but that may have been for nationalistic reasons).
