Review: "Wellmania" by Brigid Delaney

Wellmania by Brigid Delaney
Published August 2017 via Nero
★★★

Wellmania chronicles some of Delaney's steps in the quest for wellness—whatever that might mean. For Delaney, at various times, it meant dieting and fasts, yoga and meditation, colonics and spiritual retreats entailing multi-day hikes.

I found the whole thing a bit hit-or-miss for me in terms of how engaged I was as a reader, but that's largely because an enormous chunk of the middle is dedicated to yoga—and that's all good and well, and yoga is wonderful for many people, but I do not find it personally interesting in practice or in theory, and I don't find it interesting to read about other people's experiences with yoga.

But what does interest me is that Delaney is writing about this from a fairly balanced perspective—that is, recognising that many of the things she tried had no lasting impact, or made a difference only as long as she was laser-focused on them, or simply were not sustainable in the long run. Take this, about the period after a challenging fast:

"I eventually ended up at the weight I started. What goes down must come up. Several months after I stopped fasting and the weight returned, my blood pressure levels went back to a high reading and I returned to taking blood pressure medication. But something in me had shifted. I think it was the knowledge that if I really wanted to lose a lot of weight, I could do it. But I was making a choice—and that choice was one of drinking and eating what took my fancy. Of enjoying food, and making it central. Of not saying no to anything (within reason). At other times of my life I might not see food in this way, but at this time I did. 

Dr Liu suggested I go on the full fast again—stop eating, and just start drinking the foul herbs, but my heart wasn't in it. I had been clean—achieved that almost miraculous, hard-fought place where it felt like every toxin harboured had exited my body. Getting to this level of clean was the wellness equivalent of Scientology's 'going clear'—the highest state of enlightenment you can achieve, a special place only a few can enter. But I didn't think I could do it again." (p. 83)

I'm opting not to include the details of the fast/detox that Delaney describes in the first section of the book, because frankly parts of that section would be, to some, like an instruction manual for an eating disorder. But I'm reminded of Starvation Heights, which details the way a 'fasting doctor' treated (and ultimately killed) many of her patients—the extreme fasts, the bruising massages, the sense that it is this or nothing. (Though, just in case it needs to be said—there is zero suggestion that Dr Liu of this book is killing his patients for their money.) I'm also reminded of a tabloid-y 'documentary' in which two journalists tried to get down to a US size 00 in a very short amount of time. One journalist picks a plan and basically sticks to it, though at the end she is very clear that she is ready to go back to eating normal food and maintaining a normal weight; the other bounces around and eventually develops eating disorder habits, like purging. In Wellmania, Delaney describes 'cheating' on her fast by chewing and spitting, itself an eating disorder behaviour (and for some a precursor to purging). Even as I understand that fasts can be valuable for some people in some situations, the whole thing here speaks to me more as...a sad part of an industry that is preying on people's insecurities, I guess, and on a culture that does not reward balance.

Other takeaways: Lululemon sells (or sold) $108 prayer beads (p. 135); at one point more than a fifth of all priests among the Benedictines in New Norcia had been accused of child sexual abuse (p. 148); Bali might be lovely but frankly it sounds like the western wellness industry has made it markedly less lovely; children are taught to fat-shame (and poverty-shame) from a young age...

"It reminds me of being at a supermarket in Sydney with a friend's children. The friend eats really well, and is into organic produce. We were walking down the aisles behind a family that you could describe as obese. The mum was putting chips, chocolate and frozen foods in their trolley. The children I was with laughed and pointed, but didn't call the family 'fat', they called them 'fat and poor'." (p. 78)

I...I would like to redescribe this friend who 'eats really well' as a friend who 'teaches her children toxic societal values'. (Early in the book, Delaney describes telling people not to put pictures on Facebook because she was at a weight she wasn't happy with (p. 6), and...oh, the whole thing just makes me sad.)

This is not the most cohesive review I have ever written, but there you go. Might appeal to people who are more interested in yoga and meditation...but if you're looking for something with even an inkling that a happy medium might be possible, well...look somewhere else, I guess.