Low fat witchcraft

At the start of my second appointment with naturopath Elizabeth Gibaud (see previous posting of 8 April), I realised my first instincts had been right. I really didn't like her one little bit. We started off our session with a heated debate on panic attacks with her telling me that what I had been having for the past four years were not panic attacks - enough to send me spiralling into a bit of a panic on the spot.

Oh really Elizabeth? Well, don't tell me about panic attacks. I know all about them having suffered them, having been scared witless for the first two years because a range of eminent 'ologists failed to diagnose them, having had just about every medical test known to man to eliminate all other nasty possibilities and having researched, written, published, read, spoken, lived and breathed them and been for endless therapy and alternative treatments. We found ourselves spatting about the symptoms with her telling me that, for example, the chronic chest pain I suffered mid-attack was not part of panic syndrome. I resolved to print out some up to date information and present it to her on my next visit but to get off the subject before I punched her in the mouth or wasted any more of my time during the short appointment.

So, I'd lost 8lb which was fan-bloody-tastic and now (she said) I must stay on the detox for the following week except that there were a few more things to exclude. I shouldn't eat lettuce or celery or even look at rocket. I mustn't touch a sweet potato or be tempted by avocado. I should continue with the eighty three supplements she had prescribed, try to factor porridge into my breakfast (no way was I going to do that, I hate porridge) and cut down on the fruit allowance she had previously allowed. Why, I asked her? What harm could celery do? It's too salty dear, she said. Where do you think celery salt comes from? I didn't bother to ask about lettuce and rocket as the explanation was bound to disappoint.

I left her feeling pretty miserable about the prospect of the coming week. I had some social arrangements involving eating in restaurants and was worried about coping with those. Ordering plain chicken or fish with no seasoning whilst all around me scoffed things with sauces and chocolate desserts was, even at this early stage, getting horribly boring. Still, I resolved to continue as the results were showing on the scales - her scales, I never weigh myself at home lest I should be discouraged.

It was a hard week. Two dinner dates and a family gathering meant that my self control was stretched to the limit. As I'm a person who can resist anything but temptation, I was really proud that my resolve was steady and I barely strayed from the Elizabeth's restrictions, barring the odd bit of unavoidable lettuce in my undressed salads.

I arrived at the third appointment with a feeling of trepidation. I didn't think I'd lost that much more weight although I was holding the panic attacks at bay and the reflux hadn't bothered me at all. I jumped onto the scales to find I'd lost another four pounds. That was a total of twelve pounds in two weeks! I could have wept with joy.

What was Elizabeth going to tell me to do next and perhaps she's a witch I thought.

Is the Church right or am I just getting old?

I must be getting old or something. This morning, the news reported that Church groups take exception to major football matches being scheduled on Easter Sunday, the holiest day in the Christian calendar. Today’s match, Aston Villa against Everton, is in their direct line of fire. The Church groups say that they now accept that Sunday is a working day for many people but that Easter Sunday, when shops are shut by law, should be different. Scheduling major football fixtures on this holy day shows, they say, disdain for the country’s religious traditions and lack of sensitivity toward many football supporters and employees.

Well, as a Jew, I heartily agree with them but I’d go one stage further. Not only do I think that Easter Sunday, Christmas Day and all major Christian festivals should be sacred (we’re living a Christian country after all) but I don’t accept Sunday as a working day and believe that Sunday trading should cease too. We always used to manage when the shops were closed on Sunday and I’m sure that with a modicum of personal organisation, we could do so again. Lack of observance, dwindling respect for the traditions of the country in which we live and worship at the altar of the shopping mall erode human values and are perhaps partly responsible for, what I see as, the general deterioration of today’s society. People, and young people in particular, need to have the option of a framework in which to operate. You reap what you sow and by gradually removing all the boundaries we had when we were growing up we grind down today’s kids leaving them kind of rootless and aimless, unsure of their role and uncertain of what they’re supposed to do or how they’re supposed to behave.

Don’t get me wrong. I see myself as a liberal thinker and wouldn’t advocate the return of capital or corporal punishment or anything draconian like that but shouldn’t we have a day a week when there are no shops open and nothing much happening? Wouldn’t that be refreshing and cleansing – and quiet? Wouldn’t it mean a day fairly free of traffic and general rushing about? Would it not give us time to contemplate, calm down and spend time with our family and friends? We could do olde fashioned things like cooking Sunday lunch, going for a walk and sitting down, all together, in front of a nice film with a bumper bar of Cadbury's dairy milk.

So, unusually for me, I find myself in complete agreement with the Church - on this matter at least. Now, where are my car keys? I’m off to supermarket.

The three letter F word

Well, I finally had an epiphany. In my minds eye, having seen myself as a slim, happy 29 year old, the mirror told a different story. I won’t use the ‘F’ word but let’s just say I was very overweight and physically way below par suffering from a variety of niggling ailments. 29 was a distant dream.

Oh I’d tried dieting over the years but failed miserably. The very word ‘diet’ made me want to stuff myself with chocolate and have another bottle of wine. My new husband and I are what you might call 'foodies'. We love cooking, eating, drinking and entertaining. In fact, you could say that we live for those and egg each other on. I blame him and he blames me. I was really feeling quite desperate.

Quite aside from the weight, I’d been suffering from crippling panic attacks for the last four years. Initially triggered by a traumatic divorce, they varied in number and intensity but to an extent, they were ruling my life.

I turned to the bony shoulder of an über slim and very fit friend who tentatively suggested that I see the naturopath she herself had consulted. Her problem had not been weight but hot flushes which were driving her to distraction. She claimed that since seeing the woman and making some small changes to her diet, she hadn’t had another hot flush.

I’m a born again sceptic and don’t really believe in any hocus pocus, supplements, food combining or tarot cards. But, I was at that I’ll-try-anything-once stage so called for an appointment which wasn’t easy to get.

A month later I found myself waiting to see Elizabeth Gibaud, naturopath to the stars and credited with bringing various well known names back to health and slimness. I took an instant dislike to her.

She works by doing ‘facial analysis’ by which I mean she has a good look at you under a bright light and says things like “you should never eat mushrooms again”. She doesn’t respond well to being questioned and her level of explanation of her methods is minimal in the extreme. As a nosy parker and one who like to know what I’m doing, I felt very uncomfortable with the idea of blindly following her baffling advice. Anyway, after weighing and measuring me, she set me on a ‘detox diet’ (oh, how the very word made me laugh inwardly) which she told me to follow for a week before seeing her again. I won’t bore you with the finer details of the ‘detox’ but it involved giving up coffee, tea, salt, pepper, sugar, alcohol, red meat, yeast, mushrooms, sweet potato and parsnip. It meant embracing dandelion and nettle tea, various supplements, large amounts of water and a daily jacket potato. As I’d paid my money, I put scepticsm aside and thought I’d give it a try for a week.

I’ve never been one for weighing myself so resisted the temptation to get onto the scales during the course of the week. Anyway, I could hardly move because the coffee withdrawal set up a thumping three day headache and I felt incredibly tired, lethargic and stiff. In a quirk of fate, as a result of having a minor surgical procedure, my husband was diagnosed with high blood pressure that same week and told to lose weight and drink less. This made rigidly sticking to the diet rather easier as he was 'in the zone' too.

A week later, I was back in front of Elizabeth who weighed me, measured me and triumphantly announced that I’d shed eight pounds and lost a total of around 6 inches from various parts of my body. Indeed, my clothes were feeling more comfortable and blow me down, by the time of that visit, I was starting to feel quite a bit better. I also realised that during the past week, I hadn’t had to take a drug, or even a Rennie, for my oesophageal reflux and I’d had a week free from panic attacks.

Maybe there was something in this after all.

Watch this space for the next instalment.