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Eat cheese, drink wine and lose weight…

21st August 2012 by Helena 12 Comments  

It is a well-known fact that French women don’t like the gym. In fact, they would rather do anything than go to a gym, including, as with one woman I interviewed once, not eating croissants for over 30 years. French perfumeries, chemists and supermarkets are full of slimming creams, pills, lotions and potions. A French woman will not fight her cellulite on an exercise bike, she will try to smother it with unguents.
During our stay in France this summer I took this ‘no pain, lots of gain’ philosophy a step further. I was introduced to a massage man called Sehil, who claimed to be able to melt fat by means of massaging my stomach with a machine that sends infrared light into your fat cells. This melts them and the fat is then drained away through your lymphatic system. In addition to melting fat, this miraculous machine tones the skin and improves its texture by promoting the production of collagen through heat.
Of course I didn’t believe any of this for a minute. “Only the French would come up with the notion that a massage can make you thinner,” was my immediate thought. But of course I am never one to turn down an opportunity for a kip, and I figured it was worth a try. In addition, Sehil came highly recommended from a girl I know whose thighs used to be a different size, and are now, thanks to the massage man and his machine, perfectly matched. “He calls is body sculpting,” she told me. “It’s incredible.”
After the first session I was still skeptical, but I did fall asleep so I figured it was worth it whatever else happened. Sehil also catered to all my inner neurosis by telling me that parts of my lymphatic system was blocked and that he was going to release it. Ah, so that’s why I’m so bad tempered/insomniac/neurotic/scatty etc etc.
I arrived at the second session with a dreadful hangover. I didn’t tell him, but after a few minutes he asked me how much I had eaten and drunk the night before. Then he pressed a few points on my body (which hurt) and by the time I left my hangover was gone. The fat melting by the way happened every session as well, just as soon as my other issues had been dealt with.
By the end of my third session I noticed a huge difference. My jeans shorts were suddenly too big – a miracle considering I had done practically nothing since I arrived in France bar drink and eat. Endless long lunches and dinners, not to mention the aperitifs, must have all added up to thousands of extra calories. But where were they? Not around my stomach, that’s for sure. My stomach was flatter than it had been since the children, and I felt great (despite daily hangovers).
Sehil tells me the effects of the treatment go way beyond just the body sculpting. “You will feel rejuvenated in so many ways,” he told me. He is right, I am not only thinner, but I feel much better on so many levels. Maybe my lymphatic system really was blocked.
Anyway, whatever it was, I am doing a Remington (“I liked it so much I bought the company) impression and bringing Sehil and his magical fat melting machine to Abu Dhabi in January.
Form an orderly line please ladies…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2012


Filed Under: blog --> Tagged With: cheese, drink, weight

12 thoughts on Eat cheese, drink wine and lose weight...

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    wow sounds terrific :), and where is sehil located? is there a weblink?

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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