The Daily Telegraph, SHA Wellness Clinic, Spain

07 September 09

Feeling the autumnal blues?  Start planning a holistic holiday now.

SHA Wellness Clinic

Change is in the air. As children head back to school, and the evenings start to draw in, there's a distinct autumn chill. With the final bank holiday of the year already a distant memory, September, though far from the cruellest month, can nonetheless feel like a wasteland. So it's a good time to lift your spirits by planning a healthy break, or "holistication".

If you want a life-changing break, Europe's first luxury macrobiotic retreat ticks all the buttons. At the gleaming-white SHA Wellness Clinic, nestled between the mountains and the sea outside Alicante, Spain, they not only feed you with delicious, nutritious food – a world away from the Costa Brava's more usual fish and chips – they'll pamper you with spa treatments and generally top up your batteries. They may even change the way you eat for ever.

Don't let the fact that Madonna is a fan put you off your first macrobiotic meal. The super-healthy but highly specialised diet has long come in for stick. Taken from the Greek for long (macro) and life (bios), it began as a holistic system of health and happiness devised in the 1930s by a Japanese man called George Oshawa to cure himself of tuberculosis.

The cornerstone of macrobiotic living is a mostly vegan diet heavy on whole grains and vegetables (though some fish is allowed), but which also takes in an at-one-with-nature philosophy and requires an understanding of the impact our food choices have on the environment as well as our constitution. Needless to say, such ideals flourished in late 1960s, free-thinking California.

Today, the world expert in macrobiotics is Dr Michio Kushi. When he is not director of natural therapies at SHA, he acts as a consultant to the likes of Madonna and her wholemeal friend, Gwyneth Paltrow. "Modern macrobiotics has come a long way from its dictatorial past when it was mainly seen as a cure for cancer," says Bill. "In reality, it's a flexible system that can be used by everyone to achieve wellbeing."

SHA is an immaculately-designed, 93-bedroomed centre a world away from vegetable stew-eating, Birkenstock-wearing 1970s America. When I arrive, I feel groggy and unattractive, hovering on the brink of a chest infection and harbouring a cold, complete with runny nose and noisy cough, that a session in the steam room brings to the fore the next day. So what can they do for me?

For my first breakfast, I am presented with a bowl of miso soup complete with a couple of spoonfuls of brown rice, strips of wasame (Japanese seaweed) and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds. It's delicious and nourishing, and stops me wanting to go back to bed. I'm advised to steer clear of dairy for the duration of my stay so I don't produce more mucus than I already have. I am also given a small Japanese pickled plum to suck for its anti-bacterial properties while I take a mid-morning walk by the sea. It's an acquired taste, but I've a savoury, Marmite-loving tooth and I don't mind it.

During a consultation with Bill Tara, a Californian who discovered macrobiotics four decades ago and who is now head of natural therapies at SHA, I'm told that my generally restless nature and chronic stiff shoulders mean I have an excess of "yang" energy in my system.

Macrobiotics is based on the belief that everything in the universe is made up of chi, an energy that contains opposing yin and yang forces that need to be kept in balance for us to be healthy. This goes for foods, too – those that grow above the soil, such as leafy vegetables and mushrooms but also sugar and spices, have an expansive yin energy, whereas foods that grow downwards into the earth have a contracted yang energy, including root vegetables and seeds. Salt and meat does, too, because animals eat yang foods.

My excess yang is why I am partial to my daily glass (or two) of good red wine (an "extreme yin drink," Bill tells me). It's also why wine goes so well with a steak, which is an extreme yang food. In macrobiotics, it's advisable to avoid these extremes, and so I am fed a core daily diet of fibre-rich, organic whole grains, vegetables, legumes and pulses. Everything that is perishable is locally sourced and in season, and I'm encouraged to chew well to aid digestion.

My protein comes mainly from beans (think chick pea stew), soy products (such as tempeh rolls) and stir fries using seitan and fu, both products made from wheat gluten which I find an incey bit cloying in texture.

Some nutritionists criticise the diet for lacking in protein, especially the eight essential amino acids that are found whole in animal foods.

"To get all the nutrients you need from a macrobiotic diet, you have to eat a huge variety of vegetables, grains and pulses," explains London-based nutritionist and naturopath Vicki Edgson, who has studied macrobiotics in the UK. "Madonna and Gwyneth have the luxury of chefs to assist their dietary needs around the world. But the average Westerner living a hectic lifestyle wants to create their meals as quickly as possible with as little variety as they can get away with."

During my four-night stay, all the dishes I am served are beautifully presented in small, manageable portions and impressively varied. But I soon realise that following the diet at home isn't going to be a simple case of cooking up my favourite veggies with rice every day.

A few weeks on from my "holistication", I have managed to incorporate some aspects of macrobiotics into my diet. I have swapped my usual breakfast muesli for miso soup, and have my own roasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, rather than reach for a piece of out-of-season, sugar-packed tropical fruit, and I certainly feel lighter, slimmer and more vibrant for giving it a go.

But I doubt it will last. Eating macrobiotic every meal is just too time-consuming.