Nothing Left to Lose
Lessons From a Ten-Day Fast
In November, I went on a ten-day fast in Spain at the Marbella outpost of the venerable Buchinger Willhelmi clinic. You can read my story about it in the new Esquire. I got the courage to go from my friend Matt Hranek, who came back from Buchinger HQ on Lake Constance and loved it. I was moved by what he wrote in his newsletter and how he reassessed his approach to the trencherman’s life.
So last fall Emilie and I set out to Spain. She’s a wellness person and a natural fit for a long fast. I am…not a wellness person. I give up drinking for a month and try not to eat food out of a package (except Snyder’s pretzels, when in season!), but that’s about it. We started our trip enjoying the high life at the incredible Marbella Club, a lovely resort down the hill from the clinic. I was living well on cold beer and Rioja before saying goodbye to all that.
Then we took a short cab ride to Buchinger and I started to get nervous. How hungry would I get? Would I have a complete and total breakdown? Would I stealthily head back to the Marbella Club and start pounding almonds and San Miguel? I couldn’t stop thinking of Sterling Hayden’s character in The Long Goodbye trying to escape the clinic in Malibu and being chased by that little doctor. The whole thing felt like a bad idea, like when you arrive at a salmon river that has no fish.
The Marbella Club in the Slim Aarons era.
You can get the sordid details in Esquire. But you probably want to know if I suffered. That’s the first thing everybody asks—perhaps in some way they want you to. But the answer, at least for me, was: not so much. Which surprised me. Within the friendly walls of Buchinger everything felt natural and you quickly get used to the rhythm of the days. There’s some tiredness in the mornings (at least for me). Emilie was in her element and went running for miles along the water. I did some slow gentleman laps in the pool and then hit the steam room, which is really my favorite form of healthfulness.