De Richeville, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology, maintains that weight is directly connected to emotional well-being. “Fat buildup is a form of protection,” she says. “Liberating the circulation enhances metabolic activity and triggers weight loss.” De Richeville scrutinized me as I lay nearly naked on a table. “You have a blockage in your solar plexus,” she decreed, kneading me like putty. “Do you ever cry, allow yourself to just let go? Stress, anger, upset—it all ends up in the stomach.” And here I thought it was all the frites and Bordeaux.
After 50 minutes of head-to-toe ministrations, I felt woozy but refreshed. And I could swear my stomach was flatter. This was probably wishful thinking—for optimal results, De Richeville recommends at least five sessions. She plans to open a Remodelage atelier in New York, but I couldn’t wait for that. After my trip, I became determined to lose the bacchanalia-related bulges. Diet, exercise, exorcism—nothing worked. I was about to resign myself to a life of Lycra when a friend tipped me off to the Manhattan-based body whisperer Jeannel Astarita.
“Having curves isn’t a bad thing,” says Astarita, a former interior designer. “It’s about creating the best proportions.” She does this with a highly customized cocktail of the latest contouring technology, like CoolSculpting, a fat-freezing procedure that is the mack daddy of noninvasive fat removal, and BTL Vanquish ME (which destroys fat cells over broad areas via carefully controlled heat). She also sprinkles in BTL Exilis Elite (a radio frequency treatment designed to reduce fat and tighten skin), ZWave Pro (a small “acoustic shock therapy” device that helps flush out dead fat cells), and Futura Fit (a machine that aims to tone muscles with ultrasound energy and electrical current). And like a lot of people in the business, she’s intrigued by SculpSure, a new fat-melting laser that’s being touted as a game changer.
