Health Kicks

"Trust me, I've been there," says Zoe Williams.

There's a famous health spa hotel in Austria that, once you’ve been to, six months never goes by before you see another article about it. It is the spa du choix of the alternative-health-chattering classes. Here are the basic principles: you go there and they starve you. You’re on the banks of this wonderful Austrian lake and the hotel itself has a brilliantly old-fashioned, gabled look, like a cross between The Sound of Music and Swiss Family Robinson. But none of it means anything at all, because you’re just incredibly hungry. For a week, or if you’re Sarah Ferguson, two weeks, you starve. And then you come home, not exactly rejuvenated, but… what’s that word? Thin.

This place distils quintessential spa-dom for me. It pretends to be about a load of different things – it is about digestion, and the way we overload our poor tums with hastily gobbled food. Or else, it is about abstinence, how you can rediscover simple pleasures by unlearning a lifetime’s gluttony and taking the time to concentrate on your senses. Or maybe it’s about science, and how Epsom salts are good for you, even though they taste so unbelievably bad. But really, lady, it’s all about you. You, you, you, from every angle, in every mood. This seems so obvious you’ll wonder why I’m even pointing it out. But when did “indulgence” stop being a dirty word? When did it get so clean that it smelt of lavender and tea tree? When did vanity turn into a destination?

You are allowed to go anywhere now, travel any distance, spend any amount of money, all in the name of a spa experience that is really just exaggerated, generally horizontal, self-love. Perfectly respectable country house hotels from the UK to France to Portugal, ladies and gentlemen, have re-styled themselves as spas by adding strange attractions. A facial instead of a full English? A “couples massage”? Seriously, why not just video your couples’ counselling session and show it to your friends if you want to be embarrassed? You can travel to the foothills of the Himalayas, just to exfoliate and talk in a low voice, and have your carbohydrates monitored.

I will never forget the surrealism of the owner of a Palm Springs spa where they served no food but lemon wedges and whey, explaining to me how they vetted potential guests for eating disorders. “We can tell when people are booking in for the wrong reasons,” she said, delicately. Wrong reasons? This place is narcissism gone nuts. Everybody’s here for the wrong reason! We should all have our heads knocked together. No, wait… imagine what that would do to our chakras.