Ageing With Attitude: Reboot with a liquid diet of coconut water
WE are accustomed to women embarking on liquid diets and swopping weight-loss stories, but the prospect of a group of Irish men sipping coconut water together instead of pints, and rejecting solid food for a week, stretches the imagination.
However, that’s exactly what London-based Cork doctor Dermot O’Flynn is managing to achieve, as several Irishmen aged 50 and over, accompany him on bespoke detox programmes to his idyllic home in Brazil, where they live off a liquid regime of water, coconut water, herbal tea and miso soup for the week, and do four to six hours’ exercise daily.
Though all of them, apart from the trim 57-year-old doctor, are driven by the need to lose weight, it is only a secondary goal to that of increasing energy levels, “getting their system functioning better” and rebooting from an unhealthy lifestyle that starts with what they put in their mouths.
“Anyone who has been hauling their guts around in the world for 50 years will generally have an element of low gut inflammation,” says Dermot.
“The reason the fasting works is that you are turning down the inflammatory noise for a period of time — that’s all your doing.”
The inflammation can cause a range of symptoms, including anxiety, depression, bloating and fatigue, which the doctor addresses with his patients back in London, using his LA (low allergan) clean-out diet, which teases out which foods are the irritants.
Meanwhile, in the relaxing climate of the Brazilian village, Bahai, where he has been bringing groups of four Irishmen on the health-kick trip, “magic begins to happen”, he says.
The seven-day detox works on many levels: “What happens without the guys realising, is it’s a kind of group therapy— you do get a kind of hit from the detox — you do get a buzz. There’s a lot of joking, winding up. You have a bunch of five Irish guys sitting around drinking coconut water and we’re having as much fun as if we are getting pissed.”
The men swap life stories and talk openly about comfort eating — personal topics, I suggest, more easily shared surely by women? “Men do it as well, but they hide from it better,” says Dermot.
“I think when you put them in the setting of men-only, they will open up. It just happens automatically.”
Neither is the weight loss so much about how they look: “You don’t see the vanity upfront, it’s not a prime issue; it’s more about health and energy. Once men get into their mid-50s recognise they’re slowing down.”
During the week of the detox, or reboot as he prefers to call it, Dermot as team leader and on the liquid diet himself, uses the opportunity to educate the participants about the long-term effects of their lifestyle habits.
One man who has taken the trip, which is a nine-day commitment when flights are included, is 50-year-old management consultant, John Drury from Cork, who had been on Dermot’s LA diet “on and off for three years” and had lost three stone.
“A friend came back from the seven-day programme and was transformed — it knocked years off him,” says the father of three.
“I felt I needed something to keep me on track weight-wise and for my energy levels. I have a pretty full-on job and my energy doesn’t replenish in the same way as when I was younger, so I have to manage it.
“I thought I wouldn’t be able to go on a liquid fast to save my life, but I didn’t have any food cravings while there. Some of the nights we went into the village to a bar and I could smell the cooking and see the beer and there was no craving — I was able to do that.
“I was super concentrated on what was going into my body and how it was reacting. I realise now that there is a difference between a craving and what I need, and I’m more conscious of the foods that are energy-giving and energy–sapping for me.”
The camaradie and the exotic environment was memorable also: “It was a bit like Big Brother but without the TV and no trouble,” he laughs.
“It was a great bunch of blokes who didn’t know each other. We were all conscious we had given up a lot to go this distance – leaving family and work behind.” John says his wife, who is a nurse, was hugely supportive.
“She gets the whole thing that as life changes, our health needs to be managed.”
* The trip costs €2,000 for the week and flights are extra. See www.detoxinbahia.com
