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"  Some women say that as the thrill of monogamy wanes and their partner&amp;#039;s spare tire waxes, they start fantasizing during sex that their spouse is someone else. My husband is now, with the passing of the great Paul Newman, The Hottest Man Alive as far as I&amp;#039;m concerned. But late one night a few weeks ago as I nestled against THMA, my afterglow was dimmed by a disturbing realization: I&amp;#039;d been imagining that I was someone else. And this was not the first time. Skulking off to the bathroom, I flicked on the eco-friendly (but appearance-hostile) fluorescent lights: Bags hung under my darkcircled eyes and weird bumps were erupting on my forehead. I was 20 pounds overweight, my unwashed hair was scraped into a clump on top of my head, and I was wearing a remarkably unflattering combination of a nursing top and maternity leggings (my 24-hour wardrobe since my daughter&amp;#039;s birth in July).  It wasn&amp;#039;t exactly news to me that I&amp;#039;d lost the thread\u2014I&amp;#039;d recognized for a while that I was becoming unrecognizable\u2014but I&amp;#039;d fallen into an odd torpor that prevented action. Which is funny, because I don&amp;#039;t usually tend toward depression. When the chips are down, I&amp;#039;m more the berserker rage or hyperventilating anxiety type. I always say, Why sit at home feeling sad when you can walk over to a fancy boutique and get into a senseless screaming match with a salesperson over some throw pillows, and then go back home feeling sheepish but also, oddly, better? Not that I&amp;#039;ve actually ever done that...but Todd, the store manager, if you&amp;#039;re reading this, your return policy sucks as bad as your attitude! Anyway, I didn&amp;#039;t think this was a true clinical depression. It was more that after years of big projects\u2014graduate school, finding a job, snagging a boyfriend, getting married, buying a home, having kids, and juggling work with it all\u2014I was lost and exhausted on every level: physical, psychological, and spiritual. Okay, it&amp;#039;s time to bring sexy back, I told the greasy, gray apparition in the mirror. If my life were a movie or even a crappy TV show (Extreme Makeover: Rachael Edition), this is the point at which a team of producers, munchkins, or gay men would whisk me off in an Escalade and make over my life in a peppy montage of Pilates, salad-eating, hair-curling, and closet-cleaning. But as I am a writer, and not even a bestselling one, I knew I&amp;#039;d be doing this the old-fashioned way: with a self-help book. Flipping through the latest offerings, I was drawn to The Source, by Woodson Merrell, MD, chairman of the department of integrative medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. I wrote a story about Merrell years ago, back when integrative medicine was just starting out, and liked him because he&amp;#039;s not an extremist. He recognizes that some alternative methods do work and that the mind plays a powerful role in our health, but he thinks antibiotics and immunization play a pretty important role, too.  His book, which is subtitled Unleash Your Natural Energy, Power Up Your Health, and Feel 10 Years Younger, asks you to gut-renovate six areas: your stress response, your diet, the toxins you use (anything from alcohol to carpet glue), your exercise regimen (or lack thereof), your sleep habits, and your social and spiritual life (or lack thereof). The idea is to get everything running optimally and, thus, be filled with the vitality of a lass a decade younger. The book claims you can complete this overhaul in three weeks and six steps\u2014but it took me six weeks, and whoever counted the steps should review their math skills: I tallied more than 100 steps, ranging in difficulty from taking a nap to planning a vacation and cooking organic wheat- and dairy-free menus from scratch every day. I&amp;#039;ll be honest: Initially I was most interested in shedding pounds. Although The Source is not presented as a weight-loss plan per se, but as a strategy to eliminate potential toxins and allergens from your diet, the book jacket does promise &amp;quot;ideal weight.&amp;quot; Ideally, I wanted to weigh what I did on my wedding day, but I&amp;#039;d settle for buttoning up my fat jeans. The regimen is pretty standard for the detox genre that has become fashionable of late: Merrell asks you to give up alcohol, coffee, red meat, processed foods, wheat, cow&amp;#039;s milk, and simple carbs like sugar, potatoes, and white rice. And what you do eat\u2014fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, chicken, fish, whole grains\u2014should be organically farmed. The reasons he gives for such abstemious behavior range from the widely accepted (red and processed meat consumption is linked to cancer risk, and caffeine and alcohol interfere with sleep) to the somewhat murky (hidden low-level allergies to wheat and dairy cause digestive problems and malaise\u2014a claim even Merrell admits is difficult to prove). I lost 10 pounds in the first two weeks and five more slowly over the next month. I&amp;#039;m a terrible dieter\u2014I usually give up by lunchtime on the first day\u2014but The Source was easy to follow because I didn&amp;#039;t have to calculate grams of protein or calories. I ate as much as I wanted, as long as it wasn&amp;#039;t tainted by the verboten foods. Merrell also advocates eating every few hours\u2014advice I&amp;#039;d heard (and ignored) a million times. Now I actually tried it and found that I did make better food choices (and felt better) since I was never famished. I even discovered some small pleasures on the plan: Greek yogurt (the one cow&amp;#039;s milk product you&amp;#039;re allowed because it&amp;#039;s so good for gut health), which tastes like tangy whipped cream; Merrell&amp;#039;s frozen berry and soy milk breakfast shake (I was skeptical of the flaxseed oil he asks you to put in it for its omega-3 fatty acids, but I swear you can&amp;#039;t taste it); and an odd but addictive fruit dessert called &amp;quot;Coco-nutty Banana.&amp;quot; At the same time, I was halfheartedly trying to follow the rest of the plan. For exercise, Merrell only requires you walk 20 to 30 minutes a day and do 30 crunches and 20 pushups (if you&amp;#039;re already doing more, keep at it). For sleep, he asks that you try to conk out by 10 p.m. two or three nights a week since getting to sleep before midnight purportedly aids in cell repair and regeneration. To detox, Merrell recommends you use a water filter to screen out heavy metals and chlorine; reduce toxic chemicals in your home, like those in cleaning fluids and certain plastics; watch the mercury you get from fish; and avoid alcohol. I found all of these pretty easy to comply with. My friends\u2014embroiled with husbands, kids, and hectic work schedules\u2014never want to go out anymore so I&amp;#039;m usually in bed by 10. As Merrell himself proclaims, &amp;quot;Nontoxic is chic,&amp;quot; and I&amp;#039;d already jumped on the eco-conscious consumer bandwagon. My mattresses are organic, my shower curtain chemical-free, and my couch &amp;quot;green.&amp;quot; I stopped eating sushi after The New York Times did an expos\u00E9 on the high levels of mercury in my favorite spicy tuna rolls. I hadn&amp;#039;t been drinking much alcohol because I was breast-feeding (and since I never go out), and I quit caffeine years ago. In fact, listing all the things I&amp;#039;d already given up got me thinking: If, as Diana Vreeland said, &amp;quot;elegance is refusal,&amp;quot; I should have been the chicest woman in Manhattan even before I started The Source. And yet I&amp;#039;d been an elastic-waistbanded mess. There&amp;#039;s a one-day juice fast on the plan\u2014to &amp;quot;clean the slate&amp;quot; and give your metabolism a rest. It sounds so positive, all that digestive relaxation, but I started to feel angry about everything I was denying myself. I&amp;#039;m talking Todd-won&amp;#039;t-take-the-pillows-back rage. That evening, after my husband ate dinner by himself and listened to me rant for an hour about the disorganization of our sock drawers, he took my hands, turned his devastating good looks and piercing blue eyes on me, and begged me to go off the plan, eat something solid, and have a drink. I refused, inelegantly, and went to bed alone, hungry, and mad. A few days later, a friend and I were talking about her crush on her yoga instructor and speculating why he hadn&amp;#039;t made a move on her. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s all about self-denial,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;He doesn&amp;#039;t even use toothpaste because he says it&amp;#039;s bad for you.&amp;quot; I wrinkled my nose. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry, honey,&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;but that&amp;#039;s just not sexy.&amp;quot; And then it dawned on me: Maybe my lack of vim and vigor wasn&amp;#039;t due to a life of excess but a life of penury. Instead of subtracting pleasures, maybe I needed to add a few back in. But I was torn\u2014I was looking really good in my fat jeans, and my mother told me that, in fact, I did look 10 years younger. I was afraid that if I started quaffing champagne and eating cheese again, I&amp;#039;d turn back into a catatonic Oompa-Loompa. But if all I did with my pretty little self was cook quinoa, indulge in some self-pity, and go to bed before dark, what was the point?  I&amp;#039;d been steadily ignoring two of the tines in The Source &amp;#039;s six-pronged plan\u2014stress reduction, and spiritual and social development. These were actually the fun parts: Take a yoga class! Buy tickets to a play! See friends! I&amp;#039;d dismissed these steps as useless piffle, a waste of time, but before throwing in the towel, I decided to give peace and love a chance.  Merrell advocates breathing exercises, meditation, yoga, tai chi, and massage, among other things, to help manage stress. I tried all that, but most illuminating for me was his journaling exercise: Every night for a week, I made a &amp;quot;stress log&amp;quot; of my day&amp;#039;s most anxiety-inducing moments. Then, the next week, I made a &amp;quot;laugh log&amp;quot; of the best moments. In the stress logs, it became clear I was trying to do too much by myself, which resulted in anger and frustration. The laugh logs were ghastly: Many days were 100 percent mirthless. Clearly, I hadn&amp;#039;t just lost my mojo\u2014I&amp;#039;d lost my sense of humor. So I did something radical: I hired some help with housekeeping and babysitting. I thought doing everything myself made me more virtuous, more connected to my life in some sort of Zen Montessori way, but it only made me nasty, resentful, and closed off from everyone.  Freed from the steamy confines of the laundry room, I finally was able to tackle the last leg of The Source&amp;#039;s journey: making connections to something greater than myself. Merrell strongly encourages spiritual or religious endeavors, but for the atheists and agnostics among us, there&amp;#039;s always nature, art, music, your loved ones, and your community. I used to go to museums all the time, see plays, go to concerts, throw dinner parties, follow fashion, take far-flung trips. I used to speak French. All this had dwindled at some point. I had lost interest in the world, and the world, in turn, had lost interest in me. We were estranged. So I made a few tentative overtures. I volunteered at my food co-op. I decided it was time to stay up late once in a while, have some wine, see friends, go on dates with my husband. He got me a little drunk one night and sweet-talked me into packing up the kids and tagging along with him on a last-minute business trip to Stockholm. One night, with the whole family tucked into a candlelit table in a quaint Swedish restaurant, I noticed a fifty-something Ingrid Bergman-ish blond staring at us. I apologized, thinking my kids were disturbing her more stately family dinner. But she shook her head: &amp;quot;Oh no, I was just thinking how romantic you look! A beautiful young family, out together. I remember those days,&amp;quot; she said, smiling wistfully at her own husband and teenage children. &amp;quot;So romantic.&amp;quot; I laughed and raised a skeptical eyebrow, but then I tried looking at the four of us through her eyes. It was a pretty picture: handsome father, adorable babies\u2014and maybe I wasn&amp;#039;t so bad either. And, yes, how romantic that we were all on this adventure together. And suddenly I felt sure there wasn&amp;#039;t anywhere else, or anyone else, I&amp;#039;d rather be. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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