Some 30 years ago, Daniele Cernilli, in order to lose weight, went to Merano, to Spazio Henri Chenot, a well-known and reliable specialized center. In times of “costume test,” let’s have fun rereading his chronicle.
The alternative was between quickly losing about ten pounds or growing ten centimeters in height. For a moment I thought my doctor was serious, then I caught the “veiled” irony. After all, for some time my nearly 100 pounds had been starting to cause me real problems. New clothes unusable, stairs equivalent to means of torture, difficult movements. Even tying my shoes was a feat.
So let’s try a specialized center, I said to myself. The choice fell on Villa Eden in Merano, where there is the Henri Chenot Space. Friends in the wine world had told me about it. Three to four million for a week, admittedly quite a splurge, but for health…. And here’s how it went.
Saturday February 26th
I arrived in Merano after a nine-hour train ride and walked through the gate of Villa Eden at 4 p.m. sharp. For a week I would not leave. I worked up my courage. I am assigned a nice double room for single use on the ground floor, from the windows I can see large fir trees and, further away, the Alps. Immediately to the weight: 100 kilos round, three more than it showed on the old scale at home. “It will be to bring on more guilt,” I think, but the truth is that my poor scale must have deteriorated so much from suffering the indignities of my weight that it no longer works well.
At 7 p.m. everyone in the meeting, and here is the great Chenot himself welcoming us (Henri Chenot died in early December 2020, ed.). We are about sixty people, Pavarotti is also there to listen. I can’t believe my eyes. Then there are mostly women of all ages, even 25-year-old girls with a few extra pounds, who I find frankly beautiful. “It’s all a brain-related problem,” Chenot judges. He is obviously thin, short, in his fifties, wearing a pale sweet waist under a very elegant gray double-breasted suit. He looks vaguely like Gilbert Becaud. “You will not only lose weight, you will detoxify, forget stress, feed naturally, and eat little.” I begin to understand. I am reminded of the Meursault Clos de La Barre ’90 I drank the night before offered by my friends. “Drink it, then you forget the wine there.” Prophetic words.
On to dinner. Cream, or rather, garlic “juice,” bitter but good, then steamed vegetables, without oil but with herbs. A barley coffee without sugar, a glass of water and lemon and two teaspoons of a whitish, toothpaste-tasting potion. “It’s for ‘purifying the bowels,'” my tablemates, a mother and daughter from Piacenza and a friendly wholesaler from Bologna, tell me. At 9 p.m. to bed. Senonché the “purification” begins to take effect and until 1 a.m. the whole hotel is cheered by a rhythmic concert of flushing. It sounds like Gaber’s song. I think with dread that the ritual will occur for all nights. I also think of Pavarotti and laugh. Common ill…
Sunday February 27th
The first real day of treatment begins with treatment at the Beauty Farm. Eight hours of massages in six days, one hundred and five thousand liras an hour. Relaxing massages, I think, then lymphatic drainage, which I don’t know what it is but it has a nice name. I get a pretty masseuse, from Calabria, very thin, but with frightening strength in her hands. I feel like I’m being beaten by a truck driver. I leave bruised and go to the hot tub. Huge tub, pleasant temperature, a cakewalk. After twenty minutes they let me out, direct me to a cage next door and start pelting me with a powerful jet of hot water. “Bearable,” I think. Then the feral news “now I’m sending it cold, it’s to reactivate the circulation.” I thought I was going to die.
Lunch is good. Vegetable juice, raw vegetables in pinzimonio (no oil), rice and vegetable sushi. 1:30 p.m. Medical examination. 98,800. More than a kilo in one day. “It’s liquid,” the therapist tells me, cooling my enthusiasm. She suggests I take a “bowel shower,” which I discover is a 37° enema that lasts twenty minutes and must be repeated twice. I refuse by making pitiful excuses. The passive exercise treatment begins. I have electrodes all over my body and my poor flesh is agitated by rhythmic series of electric shocks. I end up destroyed.
Evening reduced menu. Cooked and raw fruit, cream of vegetables, a spoonful of brown rice with radicchio. To drink water and lemon and again the purée. Even that seemed good to me. I begin to look with interest at the flowers dipped in water inside the beautiful crystal centerpieces from Riedel.
Monday February 28th
Algotherapy is carried out in two stages. The first consists of a scented whirlpool, the second in the following manner: one lies on a couch and is sprinkled with a very hot mush of algae. Then, wrapped in large sheets of transparent plastic and woolen blankets, you are left “baking” for twenty minutes. They say it is good for you.
At lunch the feral news: from now until the evening of the next day fast. Twenty-four hours to water and broths. The centerpiece flowers are looking more and more appetizing. Medical checkup at 1:30 p.m., weight 98.400 kg. Then passive gymnastics, massage (harder than the day before) and meeting at 7 pm with Madame Dominique Chenot, Henri’s wife. About 40, great charm, light makeup, wears a light pantsuit with white blouse. She gives us directions on the dietary regimen to follow. “Avoid mixing carbohydrates and animal protein. Vegetables with everything, little meat. Good fruit at breakfast and before meals, never cappuccino and brioche. Nothing new. A surprise exit: “What about wine?” I ask her. “A little red wine at dinner is not forbidden,” then adds “once a week forget Chenot and have a leisurely dinner, even at a restaurant, and drink what you like.” Nice girl.
For dinner seaweed broths and Chinese mushrooms. I find them palatable. Must be the hunger.
Tuesday March 1st
Fasting takes effect: 96.700 kg. Ovations from the dietician, a beautiful girl, dark hair, tall, sweet-looking. I’m almost proud of her compliments. Usual passive gymnastics, then massage with lymphatic drainage. I have not yet told you what this real torture consists of. Two glass bells are placed on the body, connected to a machine that creates a vacuum, sucking the flesh inside the bells. It is, in short, a violent pinching continued for about an hour all over the torso. Only those who have experienced it know what it feels like afterwards.
At 4 p.m. I meet Chenot; I had asked him for an audience to get permission for the photographer to come. He greets me without really knowing who he is and what he wants, but he is kind. He is not a “guru,” he says things that are perhaps obvious but reasonable. He is not an extremist. In the evening again philosophical-food lecture that goes on for almost an hour amid protests from the fasters. I am weaker than hungry, but the fresh fruit with mango cream I devour in a second. “Eat more slowly,” the Bologna wholesaler admonishes me. He is right but in my heart I send him to hell. Then vegetable and seaweed soup and finally excellent whole wheat ravioli stuffed with vegetables and pomidoro. To finish the purée, and to bed early.
Wednesday March 2nd
Guess how much Renato Pozzeto lost when he was here? But seven kilos in seven days, of course. I’m trying to emulate him and this morning it’s 96 exactly. And I’m not very hungry. Of course, drinking carrot juice and apple juice for breakfast is a bit sad. Lunch, however, was good: usual vegetable juice, vegetables in dip (always without oil) and fantastic whole wheat crepes with ricotta and spinach. Visibilism in the hall.
Today at the algotherapy Pavarotti entered right after me in the tub. He sang like a regular guy in the shower. He said he hated Chenot’s muessli, while he found, rightly, brown rice great. I went back to the room with a bit of a headache. “It’s the toxins in my system,” I was told. I didn’t know I was producing toxins like staphylococci. Anyway, I secretly took ten drops of Novalgine. If they found out, they’d dick me. Fancy dinner: fruit coulis, cream of vegetables and, hear hear, steamed fish with naughty sauce.
Thursday March 3rd
Today begins the second day of fasting, and the 1 p.m. lunch is the last meal until Friday night. Vegetable juice, an obsession, raw unseasoned carrots, two steamed spinach leaves, grilled vegetables and a spoonful of boiled wild rice. And that’s it. Twenty-four hours of starvation await me, but most of all, weight: 95,400, six ounces less than yesterday. Then two hours of massage. “Your hand is really heavy today,” I tell the masseuse. “But did you come here to lose weight or to get a massage?” she asks me ironically. Hard to blame her.
At 7 p.m. Chenot lectures. At the end a portly elderly gentleman complains almost shouting “at noon they only gave me five grams of rice, I was due at least thirty: it’s an injustice.” Then over hot broths the fasters do nothing but talk about recipes and restaurants. The punishment of contrapasso.
Friday March 4th
Senigalliesi, the photographer, arrives and we go down to algotherapy together. The girls on the ward are very kind and cooperative. Only one gentleman protests, a former Christian Democrat politician, I am told, who is afraid of being photographed. The only subject of the photos is me, but he protests anyway. The Last “blow” of arrogance from a soon-to-be Trumped. Then at Henri Chenot’s. This time he is much more friendly. He tells me that he is a wine aficionado and confesses that he cannot drink just one glass per meal. “Red wine is a great product, it contains des tannins, it should be drunk in moderation, but you can. Then I am friends with Gaja and Zanella and so…” We begin to take witty pictures. We fear that Madame Chenot will not approve but some forcing is part of the job. However, the dishes she had made for photos are splendid, full of color, worthy of the best Gualtiero Marchesi.
At 1:30 p.m. last medical session, final weight 94.500, a triumph. The next morning it would even be 94 net, but the weigh-in was “unofficial.” I am also photographed in the massage room. I hope you will forgive the sight of my poor penguins, but appreciate at least the sense of humor. After all, after the pig special on the Shrimp, this was all we needed. Let’s finish with Chenot in high spirits at the final meeting. He is cheerful, talking about concrete things and not just Chinese medicine, his great passion. Topic of the concion foods, how to use them and how to choose them. A perfect lesson in food popularization. Could be a piece for the Prawn, I think.
Excellent final dinner: fruit composition, tomato cream, whole wheat lasagna with vegetables. Kudos to the chefs. Tomorrow is another day.
