Brigid Delaney says we need to stop torturing ourselves for wellness

I dieted so hard my body started eating my heart: The woman behind Netflix hit Wellmania says it’s time to stop torturing ourselves in the name of wellness after years of extreme treatments – including taping her mouth shut

• Brigid went on a ‘detox’ where the rules stated she was not to eat for two weeks
• The wellness industry is now estimated to be worth a whopping £3.5 trillion
• READ MORE: Dietitian, 25, reveals his lifelong fight for freedom from anorexia

Such was my desperate longing to taste something – anything – that I found myself licking the bottom of a frying pan my flatmate had cooked bacon in.

After a week without food, lapping at the cold, congealed remnants of her breakfast felt like consuming a Michelin-starred meal. 

Then, overwhelmed by ravenous hunger, I bought a takeaway, stuffing mouthfuls of Thai dumplings into my mouth before an attack of guilt made me spit them into the bin on the street outside, hoping nobody was watching. 

It might sound like I was in the grip of an eating disorder – but in fact, like so many other women today, I had persuaded myself that everything I was doing was in the name of a better me.

Blithely convinced it was actually going to be good for my body, I had embarked on an extreme 101-day detox. The rules stated I was not to eat any food for two weeks. The herbal concoctions I had to drink instead provided just 250 calories a day.

Brigid (pictured) said she embarked on an extreme 101-day detox. The rules stated she was not to eat any food for two weeks

Then for the remaining 87 days, I would restrict myself to just 50g of chicken or a boiled egg or half a cucumber.

And for the privilege of tormenting themselves with this starvation regime, women were asked to shell out several thousand pounds.

Countless devotees detailed in gushing magazine articles their amazing weight loss on the plan, which also cheerily promised to make you healthy and disease-free for the rest of your life.

The truth was I might have been losing as much as 2lb a day, but I felt utterly dreadful. Hardly surprising really – I had submitted to what was essentially long-term starvation, and all because it was recommended as ‘wellness’.

The wellness industry has become a seemingly unstoppable behemoth, now estimated to be worth £3.5 trillion (that’s around three times the value of the entire global pharmaceutical industry) – and it has women signing up to all manner of weird and, occasionally, wonderful practices.

Hot yoga, colonic irrigation, bone broth, sound baths, infrared saunas, group psychotherapy, silent meditation retreats, juice fasts, paleo, raw food, superfoods, psychedelic ayahuasca journeys, vitamin drip cocktails… there are so many ways you can improve yourself.

No sweat: Celeste Barber in the Netflix show Wellmania. Brigid says she put her body through such bizarre and damaging trials that she ended up writing a book about their effect on her, called Wellmania

As a journalist covering the wellness boom for the past 15 years, I’ve tried most of them; often I was given treatments for free, but had I been paying, it would have cost me tens of thousands of pounds.

Lucky you, I expect you’re thinking – and yes, some were bliss. I’ve been massaged to heaven and back many times. I’ve also found solace and meaning in practices such as meditation and going on retreat.

But along the way, I’ve also put my body through such bizarre and damaging trials that I ended up writing a book about their effect on me, called Wellmania. 

After that extreme fast, an academic specialising in fasting and metabolism told me the pains in my chest were likely to have been my own body eating its heart muscle for fuel. If there were any benefits beyond the pain, they were short-lived… I put all the weight back on, plus a few pounds more, in six months.

Over time, I saw how wellbeing experts promise quick-fix relief for women who are burnt out, but then after the retreat or yoga class or treatment is over, they are thrown back into lives that run them into the ground.

I wanted my story to make people laugh – but I also wanted to issue a serious warning about the way the industry can exploit vulnerable people looking for cures; exhausted women looking for rest; and lonely people looking for community.

I was also hoping women might start to question why we feel the need to torture ourselves like this. Why, when someone says join me on an incredibly tough diet or let’s go for a potentially life-threatening wild swim in sub-zero temperatures, we don’t just say, actually I think I’ll sit this one out, thanks?

But if anything, since my book was published in 2017, wellness culture has tightened its grip on the female mindset. So much so that a new Netflix series based on my experiences, also called Wellmania, has struck a real chord with women worldwide.

It became one of the platform’s most streamed shows globally within days of its launch last month – and is still climbing in the UK top ten.

Wellmania, has struck a real chord with women worldwide. It became one of the platform’s most streamed shows globally within days of its launch last month – and is still climbing in the UK top ten

I couldn’t have imagined this when I first started covering wacky new practices in 2008. The industry was far from the mainstream juggernaut it is today. Lighting a scented candle in the bath was the way to relax; yoga classes took place in church halls; expensive athleisure had not yet become a fashion and lifestyle choice.

Gwyneth Paltrow, the queen of woowoo, launched her website Goop that year – but we were a long way from learning about her surprising uses for jade eggs (she inserts them into her nether regions to strengthen internal muscles for a stronger orgasm) and fondness for ‘rectal ozone therapy’ (don’t ask).

Since then ‘wellness’ has become the new Holy Grail; it’s now seen as perfectly normal to spend hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds chasing the impossible combination of a toned, lean body, glowing ageless skin, perfect yoga-honed posture, a peaceful mind and – most elusive of all – a deep, spiritual sense of meaning and purpose.

It’s a lot to expect from overpriced herbal supplements and new-age therapies. So why do we keep persecuting ourselves in the pursuit of perfection?

That question is at the heart of the new TV series. It stars comedian Celeste Barber, whose brutally honest Instagram parodies of celebrities and influencers have won her 9.5 million followers — ironically including Gwyneth Paltrow herself.

Celeste plays a fictionalised version of me: a binge-drinking, pleasure-seeking writer called Liv, who steps out on what proves to be a treacherous road to wellbeing just before she turns 40.

Brigid said it hasn’t always been easy recreating her own wellness ‘journey’ on screen. Pictured: A scene from Wellmania 

Like me, Celeste has had plenty of past experience with the pursuit of wellness – in fact, she has successfully debunked a lot of its worst excesses on her Instagram account. 

It hasn’t always been easy recreating my own wellness ‘journey’ on screen. In one scene, Liv smears blood across her mum’s living room wall after a ‘cupping’ treatment goes horribly wrong.

My own experience with cupping, where heated suction cups are applied to the back to boost my energy levels, left me disfigured.

I couldn’t use a public changing room or swimming pool for a week because the sight of my back made others gasp in horror.

But nothing can compare to that 101-day detox. Sadly, the reasons I was willing to try something that was, in retrospect, so obviously harmful will probably be all too clear to many women reading this.

I was approaching my 40th birthday and was feeling terrible from too much partying and gorging on the wrong foods. 

I’d always told myself that turning 40 would see me magically become a sensible grown-up; someone who wouldn’t be constantly hungover, inhabiting a body that felt permanently bloated and abused.

Now, it was dawning on me that I’d have to actually change my ways to make that happen. I needed a hard reset; I wanted to feel healthy, pure and calm. I told myself this regime could provide just that.

I was attracted to the idea of cleansing my body from the inside. (I later learned that this idea of ‘detoxing’ is a major wellness myth – our bodies are already designed to effectively detox themselves via the lungs, kidneys and liver.)

Celeste plays a fictionalised version of me: a binge-drinking, pleasure-seeking writer called Liv, who steps out on what proves to be a treacherous road to wellbeing just before she turns 40

Yes, I was swayed by the sophisticated marketing of the detox plan, but I also craved change, a respite from my hectic life, and this seemed a way I might achieve it.

The experience proved to be brutal. I was so light-headed at times I didn’t feel safe to cross the street; I smelled so bad — perhaps caused by ketosis, a process of burning fat that creates acidic acetone in the body — that at one point I thought someone had left a rotting chicken carcass outside my bedroom window, before realising the rank smell was coming from me.

I veered between sleeping endlessly, and having fitful, sweat-soaked nights, tormented by terrible dreams.

I made it through the first stage, motivated purely by the fact I was losing at least a couple of pounds every day and friends kept telling me how good I looked. In the second week, I could see I looked great — my eyes were clear and my skin dewy.

But I felt ill, lonely and disconnected from the world. I’d stolen food off another friend’s plate when their back was turned, which I’d immediately spat out into a napkin.

And my parents were getting upset because I kept calling them in the evenings, asking for graphic descriptions of everything they’d cooked or eaten that day. In the end, 70 days later and just over two stone lighter, I quit after developing chest pains so sharp I thought I was having a heart attack.

The clinic that was supervising me had said not to worry and all the advice I read on the internet about fasting insisted that this was just a ‘crisis of healing’ and that my body was bound to experience pain on the bumpy road to wellness.

Thankfully, I decided to stop anyway. Just two years later the clinic closed down, the doctor who ran it having suddenly retired. Looking back, reassurances that my chest pains were akin to a healthful breakthrough now feel like gaslighting to me.

I interviewed hot yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, only for him to insult me and call me ‘fat’ –  and insist I take up his yoga in order to improve my appearance

In my drive for ‘wellness’, I have also — separately to the extreme fast — submitted to daily organ massages in a herbal medicine clinic which left a bloom of bruising across my stomach. Surprise, surprise, I didn’t feel any better for it.

I’ve been on a retreat where I had to scream, shout and lash out at a mannequin that represented a hurtful figure in my life (actually I loved that one). And another where I spent the whole day shaking my body, which was supposed to rid it of illness, but just seemed exhausting and weird.

I wasn’t ill, but the fact that other people there had cancer and were looking for a miracle cure made it feel exploitative.

I’ve had my aura read, and insulted — I got told it was ‘dirty’ and that I had a ‘bad vibe’. The woman telling me this didn’t have any suggestions for how I might clean it up, beyond buying some expensive crystals.

I interviewed hot yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, only for him to insult me and call me ‘fat’ — and insist I take up his yoga in order to improve my appearance. Instead, the heat nearly made me pass out.

In order to learn how to breathe more ‘efficiently’, I spent a week trying to sleep with my mouth taped shut with gaffer tape. It works by forcing you to breathe through your nose, which apparently sends more oxygen into the blood and helps with circulation.

The longest I managed to keep the tape on was an hour — try sleeping feeling like you’ve been bound and gagged. I persevered for several nights, but the tape took off so much skin each time I ripped it off, gasping for breath, I was worried I’d end up permanently scarred.

Colonic irrigation, at an otherwise relaxing retreat in the Philippines, was supposed to make me feel physically and emotionally ‘lighter’. In fact I was terrified my bowel would get perforated, and I ended up feeling very empty, with stomach cramps.

But it’s not all bad news. In the course of my research, I also explored wellness practices that worked — including a retreat where you have to dig your own grave (it helps in focusing your mind on the shortness of life), silent retreats that allow time for contemplation and Vedic meditation — where you repeat a mantra in your mind, and which helped reduce my anxiety.

When making the Netflix series, my co-creator Benjamin Law, Celeste and I all agreed to come at the wellness world with an open mind: some things can be harmful and other things can be helpful.

The result is a great send-up, but it is also a reflection on the power of real wellness that comes from community and connection, not shelling out huge sums on the latest fad.

I just hope people watch it and, through the laughter, pause to think about what can make them truly well. Is it something you have to starve yourself for? Should you pay a fortune to get a short-term fix?

Post-Covid, the wellness industry is booming, catering to those of us with high disposable incomes, insecurity about our bodies or health, or who’ve just been lured in by the latest influencer on Instagram.

Meanwhile, smartphones have become ubiquitous and we live tethered to them via the apps that run our lives.

The personal information that we give so freely morphs into targeted advertising, and the increasingly sophisticated wellness industry takes full advantage of this.

But I’ve learned that the only way to truly feel better is to find something simple you can integrate into your life, that makes you feel better, and – crucially – is low or no cost.

It’s time we said no to doing anything that claims it will make us feel better, while making us feel far worse in the process. These days, I recommend meditation as something that truly works – and costs nothing.

And needless to say, I’ll never go on another detox.

• Brigid’s book Wellmania (£10.99, Coronet) is out in paperback now. The TV series Wellmania is available on Netflix.

Interview by Rachel Halliwell

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