Why I’ll never be friends with coconut water

In 2010 I decided to go on a ‘detox holiday.’

I was 25, had been living overseas for about 6 months working as a stewardess for an international airline and was in a state of imminent terror induced by the thought of coming back home for Christmas and having to be seen in public in a bikini after consuming more than few crème brules in Paris, pizza slices in New York and bottles of wine in Rome – not to mention the business class cheese platters. Taking advantage of the fact that I could basically fly anywhere in the world for free I decided to head to Thailand for a week of what I envisioned would be relaxing by the pool, invigorating yoga sessions and daily massages, and, most importantly, nothing to eat.

Detox resorts were all the rage with the girls (and the gays) on board and I was assured that after a week of submitting to twice-daily colonic irrigations, seemingly endless zero-calorie shakes of bentonite clay and psyllium husk to flush out all accumulated toxin in my digestive system and two fresh coconut waters to keep up my electrolyte levels I would come back positively glowing. I was promised shiny hair, whiter than white eye-whites, perfect skin and incredible energy levels. Of course, I would also drop at least a couple of kilograms. I mean, no food would pass my lips for a week. How could I not?

Eight days later, after changing my flights to go home four days early, I headed back home exhausted, defeated and a dubious shade of green. I had planned to stay on in Thailand for an extra few days and do a few fun activities, like you know, eat some food, or maybe have a drink, but was so miserable and lethargic that the thought of spending another day away was just too much. My skin was not glowing, my eyes were blood shot and I had lost a grand total of 0.8 kilograms.

Now I should clarify, I generally consider myself to lead quite a healthy life. I eat my veggies, lay off the bread (most of the time) and find my 30 (almost most of the time) – it’s just that when in Rome… So it would be an outright lie to say I was overweight by any stretch of the imagination pre-detox, I just wasn’t particularly happy with how my stomach was looking sans covering. But 0.8 of a kilogram! I mean come on, I’m sure all the contents I “irrigated” out of myself weighed more than 0.8 of a kilogram.

Today I still constantly read stories in the media about the benefits of detoxing and how amazing you’ll feel afterwards and, whether you agree with the (pseudo) science behind it or not I just wanted to let people know that I hated it. It made me miserable. It was without a doubt the worst week of my life. I don’t want to rant but with speculation about Peaches Geldof’s death being brought on by an ‘extreme juice cleanse’ rife in the media this week I think people need to be reminded that just because something is a “health fashion” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe or that it’s actually doing any good for you. As my all too sensible mum said when I told her about the holiday, “What exactly is it that you were detoxing from in the first place?”

What you think will be your downfall is the hunger. Surprisingly it isn’t. Prior to the detox people had told me that you wouldn’t be hungry after the first day. Whilst I willingly swallowed the ‘glowing skin’ argument I had written this off as an outright lie. I’m not going to be hungry? Impossible. I’m a person who’s never skipped a meal. Come 5pm get in the way of my hanger and I will eat everything in sight. But actually, for whatever reason, after going to bed with a rumbling belly on the first night I awoke on Day 2 not to experience hunger again for the duration of the week.

I concede that Day 2 was glorious. It was everything I imagined except the weather. There was yoga, there was an amazing massage, I felt like my stomach was flatter already but unfortunately there wasn’t any sun. Just a tip for potential travelers: if rainy season officially ends at the beginning of November it is quite possible that it will still be raining for most of the day on November 7.

Unfortunately this did not last. On Day 3 I woke up at 4am feeling like I was going to die. I was sweating copiously, every joint and muscle in my body ached and I felt ridiculously nauseous. I would have vomited if there had been anything at all in me to vomit (the clay was already well and truly on its’ way out by then). In my memory I see myself huddled up in fetal position like Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting when he’s coming off heroin and hallucinates a dead baby crawling across his ceiling.

Just replace the dead baby with James Van Der Beek – on the television, not the ceiling fortunately.

My dreams of dawn yoga were dashed, I couldn’t get out of bed the whole day (it was raining anyway), I felt too unwell to read any of the books I’d brought with me and so all I could do was watch the resort collection of DVDs which consisted solely of every episode of Dawson’s Creek ever made.

So what was happening to me?

According to the resort staff my body was experiencing a ‘healing crisis’ where all the toxins lurking in my body were pouring out through my pores. Do I believe this? I’m still not sure. All I know is by that afternoon I had called my family to tell them that I was pretty sure I was going to die in Thailand and I hoped they wouldn’t be too put out coming to collect my uninsured body (another moral of the story: travel insurance is always a good idea). The resort staff to their credit were extremely helpful and told me that if I wasn’t better by the morning they would take me to a doctor as there was no doctor on the staff. True to their prediction, I woke up on Day 4 feeling absolutely shattered but no longer like my death was imminent.

I never really recovered from this experience. I spent the rest of the week feeling too weak to enjoy my supposed ‘holiday.’ However, on the bright side the colonics were nowhere near as bad as I thought they were going to be. Despite them being self-administered and more vaguely uncomfortable than downright unpleasant I never really stopped feeling highly undignified and ashamed of myself. I could never bring myself to get into the whole “inspecting the contents of my poo to see what has come out of me” thing that a surprising number of people were doing, spurred on mainly by the resort urban legend of the guy who was here last month who had a match-box car that he swallowed when he was five come out during his colonic.

By the last day I was well and truly ready to pack my bags and head home but had booked in for one last additional massage. I, like the vast majority of females I’m sure, often feel like I’m a little bit bloated and the staff recommended I try the Chi Nei Tsang, an ancient Chinese technique designed to alleviate digestive issues, with the added benefit of improving your reproductive health. It wasn’t until I was at the door waiting for my massage re-reading the information pamphlet that I clued on to the fact that the “massage” was “internal.” An internal massage? What exactly was such thing? Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse yes, that’s right, I realized I’d just paid to be fingered by a middle aged Chinese lady. I’m not one to judge but that’s pretty much where I draw the line. So, I cancelled my massage and got a taxi straight to the airport. I’m not sure if it was that the Phad thai and mango sticky rice I had at the airport were delicious because they were the first Thai food I’d had since arriving in Thailand the week before, the fact that they were definitely not a part of the strict post-detox “food reintroduction program” I was supposed to be following, or the fact that Bangkok airport really does do the best mango sticky rice and Phad thai in the entire world.

So all in all I survived to tell the tale of my horror week. Would I do it again? Definitely not.  Would I advise any of my friends to do it? No, although some of the other people who I spent the week with saw significant benefits, lost substantial amounts of weight and really did leave feeling invigorated and refreshed. Me? Well nearly four years on and the sight of a coconut still makes me shudder, but hey, at least on the bright side I’ve saved myself a whole lot of money on the whole coconut water craze. I recently bumped into one of the people who I met at the resort and he could not believe how well I looked. I believe this was mainly because I wasn’t green. He, like me, had not enjoyed the program, we reminisced about our “near-death” experiences and agreed that all in all it makes for a pretty hilarious holiday nightmare story in hindsight. Whilst I’m not saying that all detoxes are a waste of time and money or implying that they’re dangerous to your health I am saying that it’s important to reflect on whether something is right for you, maybe get some advice from a medical profession and don’t just jump on board the latest health fad without careful research and consideration. You never know, it might kill you.

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Words by Shona McIntyre (@Sky_princess101)