Get body beautiful in the Maldives

Model Saffron Aldridge checked herself into a five-star tropical boot camp to recharge her body and mind.

Last year's growing sense of gloom was hard to escape and in the short days of winter it was tempting to stay home scoffing plates of food while the world fell apart outside. My motivation to keep fit hit an all-time low and, at 41, I had become as lazy as my teenage son. Things had become so bad that I could no longer pull my jeans up over my knees.

Most of the time, I consider myself a healthy person. I do yoga and the odd run and mostly eat well, yet none of this counted for much at my first appointment with Darina, the nutritionist at Reehti Rah in the Maldives.

We had discussed my eating habits and lifestyle for an hour, and she made it clear that I had been getting it all wrong - missing lunch to then fill up on a Starbucks hot chocolate at 4pm was not clever. Then Darina got out the scales and I realised that I had work to do.

Reethi Rah is a beautiful island resort where I went to recover from my overindulgence and weeks of feeling sluggish and lazy. The Maldives are popular with divers, but Reethi Rah offered me exactly what I needed: peace, quiet, health and fitness programmes, yoga, meditation and swimming pools to lounge around.

Darina told me that I needed to eat three meals a day, with healthy snacks in between to keep hunger pangs at bay. That was easy - there are three restaurants serving mouth-watering, nutritionally balanced meals. They are even calorie-counted on the menus. My favourite was Tapasake, serving the freshest sushi I had yet tasted.

The treatments keep you in the right frame of mind for a detox. At the resort's award-winning spa I tried a Balinese massage with hot stones and followed that up with an appointment with Coco, the residential yoga teacher. I found her positive attitude and warm smile contagious; my worries faded away.

I have done many yoga classes in the past 15 years, but under Coco I learnt a new style, Kundalini. This yoga is focused on personal transformation and revitalising your body.

Through deep-breathing techniques, combined with meditation and music, you attempt to shift the “negative energy” in your mind and body. It worked for me. I left the class feeling refreshed and clear-minded.

After a week of scrubs, facials, cycling, meditation, massages and Coco's yoga classes I left Reethi Rah with much more than just a new diet. I had a new outlook. Several weeks on I look and feel a whole lot happier.

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