A firsthand account of a one-time colonic.

The billion dollar weight-loss industry is booming like acne on a hormone-riddled teenage boy, and there are no signs of it slowing down. As long as there are wedding dresses to fit into, bikinis to look good in, and ex-boyfriends to make merry, products and services promising the svelte figure of a prepubescent girl will have a lucrative place in our world.

As a victim of 20 years of I-have-no-discipline-and-I-procrastinate-eating-healthily-but-need-to-be-thin-this-weekend dieting research, I’m here to bestow some useful yet non-expert advice: never get a colonic for weight loss.

If someone told me I could lose weight by crawling on all fours through hot coals every morning, I’d have some seriously callused kneecaps and a keen hatred for BBQs. Similar to donuts, cheese, and a good glass of wine, weight loss snake-oil is a weakness of mine that borders on addiction. When you live in a weight-conscious city like Los Angeles, searching for a miracle weight loss cure is modus operandi. From grapefruits and cabbage soup, to cayenne pepper and lemon juice, to infomercial exercise products to carb-cutting and the good ole chew and spit – I’ve tried it all short of anorexia and foreign diet pills.

So when my friend told me how she lost “5 pounds of feces” in one colonic session it was no surprise that I was on her therapist’s table in a bunless gown with no underwear on before I could Google the word “colonic.” Had I researched the treatment like a normal person before making the appointment, I would have discovered that colon hydrotherapy utilizes special equipment and tubes to inject water into your colon via your rectum. This is the kind of information you want to know before it’s being done to you.

As I innocently lay on the table, Sonja, a Ukrainian woman with more hair on her forearms then on her head, started snapping on latex gloves and lubing up a 6-inch plastic disposable tube attached to what looked like a giant electric toothbrush with a hose attached. Quickly I begin to scan the walls for any sort of diagram illustrating how this process worked, or for some sort of certificate or diploma; I figured if my manicurist has one, this woman should, too.

“Roll over,” she said in her thick accent, the smell of onions and sauerkraut from her lunch distracting me long enough not to realize what she was doing. SLURP. The plastic tube was in.

I’m going to avoid any sort of medical terms because I don’t know any, and the experience was not what I would describe as medicinal or healing in any way. In layman’s terms, it felt like my body was a water balloon and she stuck a hose up my ass to fill it. Before I could come up with an excuse as to why I couldn’t continue with the treatment, 100-degree water started to pump through the tube. “This is going to fill your body cavity.  The more the better, so let me know when you can’t take it anymore,” she said.  At first I felt a calming warmth, but was then overcome with a feeling of the worst case of diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, and a hatred for all things beautiful all at once.

Sweat started to drip down my face.

“STOP!” I yelled.  I couldn’t take it anymore. Then she told me she was going to release the water, and to keep an eye on the tube to see what was coming out of me. The excitement on Sonja’s face felt out of place; it was like she was giving me a sonogram only it wasn’t a baby we were looking at, it was a turd. There it was. Christmas dinner from 1983, gone. I was attempting to find the positive in this traumatic situation, but no amount of “mind over matter” thinking, dim lighting, faux flowers, potpourri, or Yanni playing softly on the ipod dock speakers in the background over the hum of the poop machine could make this entire experience okay. She was able to repeat the inflation and release process two more times before I cried “uncle” and threw in the towel. She then attempted to console me by telling me that first-timers always struggle.

SLIP. The tube was out.

When I got home, I ran to the computer to read up on what miracle I had coming to me now that I was done suffering. According to Wikipedia, “No scientific evidence supports the alleged benefits of colon cleansing. The bowel itself is not dirty and improperly prepared or used equipment can cause infection or damage to the bowel.” What the *@$#?  Not only did I not lose a pound, but I spent the next three days farting water.

As an intelligent woman who knows better, I’m embarrassed to say I succumbed yet again to the false hope of an easy weight loss answer. I am not going to blame colonics, my friend, Sonja, or even the weight-loss industry because it’s not evil. Like the tobacco industry, it’s built on people’s conscious decisions to ignore the truth. In the end, I deserved to be out $125 and to have a memory burned so deep into my soul that I quiver whenever I start my electric toothbrush or see a lawn hose.

Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Image: His_beautiful_girl94

The post Consciously Avoiding Colonics…And Never Felt Better! appeared first on EcoSalon.

There are period panties, and then there are period panties.

Hello, my name is Jane, and I’m a thirty-three-year-old woman who still wears underwear from high school. Saying it publicly doesn’t make me feel better, but I’m told it’s the first stage in recognizing you have a problem. Although I never really thought it was a problem. As I type those words, I realize that’s exactly what people with problems say.

It all started Labor Day weekend, which began like every three-day weekend: with a Saturday hangover. And let’s be clear, by Saturday I mean day, because once you enter your 30s, hangovers are your biological clock’s sick way of reminding you what a loser you are because you’ve chosen drinking and fun over having babies.

I spend my day of repent (read: regret) in nothing but day-old underwear and my oversized terry cloth robe. I eat four ice cream sandwiches (they’re low-fat, so I can eat the whole box) and two bags of microwave butter popcorn (not low-fat, so I limit it), and watch five hours of a “Cheers” marathon. As I daydream that the stodgy waitresses at my neighborhood watering hole are more like Woody and Carla, I receive a text from a friend: twins! I order pizza to celebrate/cope. Luckily, my husband is away – he doesn’t need to see this.

Sunday, I manage to text my friend the obligatory “Yay! CONGRATS! LOVE the names Brooks and Dunn. Love you!” and start to clean at a frenetic pace. Maybe I think I can vacuum away my inability to have one or two glasses of wine like a “normal” person, or that I can vacuum an entire box of ice cream sandwiches out of my stomach via my belly button.

As the day approaches 5 p.m. – well past the hour I enjoy doing laundry – I open the dryer and gather up every last piece of clothing in one giant ball like I’m grabbing turkeys on “Supermarket Sweep” with twenty seconds left on the clock.  Successfully guilting my husband in to helping me fold, we both dive in, bobbing for clothes, me erratically and he with patience and purpose.  Then: “Are these…yours?” he asks. I look up to find my husband holding a pair of fraying fuchsia underwear with just the fingernails of his thumb and forefinger, as if he just found a strand of anal beads in our bed.

“Give me those! They’re my period panties,” I screech as I snatch them from him like a feral cat being fed from a human hand for the first time.  As the blood rushes up through my face, past my nose, behind my eyes, and up to my hairline, I curl the panties into a ball so tight in my hand that you can’t see them anymore. “Your what?” he asks, as he wipes the two fingers he held them with on his jean leg.

“God, they’re not dirty, they’re just the undies I wear during my period so I don’t ruin my pretty ones.”

His face transitions from disgust to that look men give when they hear something they don’t really care to know about (like when you try to explain the difference between tampons and pads).

As I shoo him out I begin to uncurl my hand, finger by finger by finger, to take a long look at them. If they were a person, they would be a 98-year-old dying of skin cancer…and bullet holes. They were one pair in a collection of eight ratty broken down pairs living in the back of the top drawer of my plastic 3-tier drawer tower that I purchased from Target for $19.99 in college. As I open the drawer to return the pair back to their hideaway in their low-income pantie housing, I feel like I’m trying to hide a stash of crack from the Feds. They might as well be stored under a loose floor board in tinfoil. Instead, I shove them in the back right corner, under the lacy thongs, and a pair of crotch-less panties I’ll never use.

For the first time I’m realizing how wrong it is that I have them, and how embarrassed I would be if someone found out. Why am I choosing to keep pairs that knew me through puberty, that followed me through college sports, and that survived with me through my twenties? That’s a lot of wear and tear, not to mention DNA.

Sure, there are scarier skeletons in a person’s closet than 18-year-old underwear, yet these hot-mess panties all of a sudden have me questioning my entire existence as a normal human being. Is something wrong with me? Am I fit to be a mother? Am I one of those gross people you whisper about like the woman in my office who squeezes white heads on the back of her arms during meetings? We all have that stash of less-than-lovely undies that we keep around for that time of the month, but did you wear yours to prom?

And suddenly: the ding of a text. Another friend is bringing home another baby and I’m here with another fading hangover, lingering depression, plastic drawers that belong in a dorm room, and barely-legal underwear. Fabulous.

Deflated, and borderline suicidal (OK, I’m being a bit dramatic) I handle the situation the way I do every weird-to-bad choice. By justifying (read: making excuses for). I’ve never bought anything full price online and I frequent the kind of stores that are questioned for foreign child labor issues like H&M or Zara, so maybe I’m just economical? Or maybe I’m cheap, or lazy? But I have an answer for every excuse, leaving me to the only remaining option: maybe I really am gross.

But what defines gross? People don’t talk about picking their nose, but everyone’s done it. I think we each have our secret nasty moments, and as long as we aren’t hurting anyone we shouldn’t beat ourselves up over it. We are animals after all, and no amount of etiquette, money, technology, judging, or clothing is going to change that.

So join me in saying, “Hello my name is ____________, and I might have super old underwear.”  And as long as they stay in the shadow of my closet and the shroud of that time of the month (or until they disintegrate), my 18 year-old gross undies (aka grundies) are here to stay.  And kudos to you Ralph Lauren – you make one fine underwear product.

Image: Helga Weber

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