In Search of the New You

As waistlines keep expanding, so too do beauty resorts--the places that thin people like to call fat farms. Once the exclusive retreats of aging women seeking youth in a steam box, these all-purpose spas are now catering to a new clientele: the flabby, frazzled American male. Associate Editor Ray Kennedy, 5 ft. 10 in., 185 Ibs., recently took the cure at La Costa, near San Diego, Calif. His report on one of the U.S.'s newest and most lavish spas:

Though the La Costa brochure promises a "new you," a newcomer's first reaction is embarrassment with the old him. During the preliminary physical examination, Medical Director Dr. R. Philip Smith smiles benevolently and says that you are not fat; it's just that "your chest has fallen a bit." Sucking in your stomach, you proceed into the lush, hushed inner sanctum of the Men's Spa. The design is Spanish modern, the ambience neo-Nero. Through glass walls you see a garden with a Roman pool gurgling in the sun. Stationed here and there like bouncers are the "gentlemen technicians," muscular young men in tight, white T-shirts who seem to be flaunting their triceps at you.

Surrounded by such specimens, you stand nude for the weigh-in ceremonies and realize what a wreck you are. Then out of the gymnasium waddles some titan of industry looking like a grapefruit in his gold stretch-nylon sweatsuit. "Hi, tiger!" says Spa Director Ward Hutton. "You've got a good sweat going!" Wearily looking up, the titan mutters, "Hello, muscles." Suddenly you don't feel embarrassed any more.

Hutton, a physical culturist for 30 years, bounds toward you, pumps vour arm, gestures expansively and exclaims: "Instead of just existing, we're going to teach you how to live! We're going to get the toxins out of your system, burn off the fat and redistribute the muscle factor. It's gorgeous!" BUTT KICKING. First on your Personalized Toning-Up Program is a spin in the Roman pool. As you bask in the hot, healing waters, a gentleman technician offers cups of dietetic lemonade. Your poolmate, a balding man in his 50s, introduces himself. La Costa tones up such famous figures as Rod Steiger, Ambassador John Lodge, NBC President Julian Goodman. Gore Vidal, Kirk Douglas, Senator Jacob Javits, Sandy Koufax, President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz of Mexico--and you end up in the stew with a paint salesman from Poughkeepsie. "They really pamper you," he says, as a gentleman technician dries his back. "It's just one joy after another."

There is no joy in the gym. It looks more beguiling and comfortable than your living room--indirect lighting, wall-to-wall carpeting, floor-length mirrors--but right away you begin to hurt. "Hear that grinding noise?" says your chesty instructor, as he leads you through some neck rotations. "You're breaking down calcium deposits." During the pelvic lift, he explains: "This is good . . . one and two and lift . . . for hypo-kinetic tension . . . and two and hyperventilate. Bet you can't kick your butt," he says, kicking his butt. He is right.

BLOOD TINGLING. While you recuperate in the sauna bath, a gentleman technician sprinkles the heated rocks with Russian pine oil and "a dash of eucalyptus for the inhalation." Then it's on to the Swiss shower, a kind of liquefied Iron Maiden. You stand surrounded by a firing squad of nozzles and whooosh!--needle-like jetsprays of chilling water riddle you from 16 different directions. "That," says a gentleman technician, helping you into a gold terry-cloth toga, "ought to get the old blood circulating."

Tingling like a tuning fork, you are then led into a shadowy room, wrapped in a sheet and stretched out on a padded table. Momentarily, you fear an autopsy. Instead a willowy brunette massages your brow with peachmeal skin cleanser. As your cuticles soften inside pink infraray booties and mittens, she applies a "mint masque" that hardens on your face like plaster. In the soft turquoise light, you barely feel your scalp simmering in hot oil. The strains of piped-in violins grow distant. "Reeelax," purrs the brunette, daubing turtle oil on your eyelids. "Let yourself gooo . . ." BODY BASTING. You are awakened in time for a class in "aquathenics," exercises performed in a swimming pool in the Plaza del Sol. Class ends with you and four other naked men running a race through the chest-high water. Hyperventilating like crazy, you are rescued by a masseur who rubs you down with avocado, almond and sesame oil.

Amply basted, you are sent to bake in the Herbal Wrap Room, a darkened chamber with a flickering brick fireplace. As you climb onto a bed, you are rolled like a tortilla into sheets soaked in a steaming brew of "21 exotic Oriental herbs." When done to a spicy turn, you plop into a hydrother-apeutic bath frothing with sesquicar-bonates, lithium chloride, magnesium sulfate, hexachlorophene--everything, presumably, but cyclamates. BELLY BUDGETING. More appetizing recipes are offered in the spa's dietetic dining room. There guests bend over their menus like accountants, busily subtracting a prune whip (40 calories) here and adding a rutabaga julienne (36) there. "Spoof champagne" is served from big icy bottles with popping corks. As your dinner companions chat about "bulging adipose tissue" and "draining metabolic pools," it's reassuring to discover that you are only sipping carbonated water with grape flavoring. Afterward, resisting an urge to drink the finger bowl, you wait like an addict for a "people bag" with a tiny apple inside --a fix for those late-night withdrawal pangs.

In discotheque class the next day, you try to do the temptation walk to the belting rhythms of Jr. Walker and the All Stars playing Pucker Up Buttercup. "Let everything bounce!" cries our instructress, a blonde Viking in pink tights who bounces without even trying. You bounce some more when, bypassing the triple-dip chrome barbells, you are harnessed to a rig called the wood roller massaging machine. Your reaction is immediate: "T-t-u-r-n-n i-t-t o-f-f-f!" BACK WALKING. All is calm in yoga class. "Sink deeply into the floor," whispers our guru, demonstrating the corpse position. "Float away." Class ends, but next to you, Herb Zimmerman, a Wall Street broker, is still floating. "I see a little creek," he mutters. "Trickling water. I'm actually there." Later, you and Herb are actually in a karate class taught by a black belt instructor. Wisely, as you hear your calcium deposits breaking down again, Herb suggests dropping out before you both qualify for the black truss.

And so it goes--for three days, at $72 per day. For every yang there's a yin --the sybaritic pleasure of a pedicure is naturally followed by the sweet agony of a 102-lb. Japanese girl walking on your back, massaging each vertebra with her toes. There is the Siesta Room, where you lie under artificial stars winking in a midnight-blue ceiling. But there is also the Orthion, a space-age torture rack that rolls, vibrates, heats up and stretches you in two directions at once. The end result: minus 5 Ibs. "Nice going, champ!" says Director Hutton as he pastes two gold stars on your report card. "You just can't beat La Costa. It's a special world all its own."

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