'I would lick the juices from pans.' The true story behind Netflix's Wellmania.

In the premiere episode of Netflix's Wellmania, Australian food critic Liv Healy (Celeste Barber) faints in the US Consulate's Office.

Her Green Card is revoked and she has to spend the next few weeks trying to get 'healthy' so she can return to New York City and become a judge on a reality TV cooking competition.

Throughout the eight-episode first season, Liv must say goodbye to her 'live fast, die young' attitude and finally face the traumatic incident from her past that she's been burying beneath her bad habits.

The series is loosely based on Brigid Delaney's 2017 memoir, Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search for Wellness.

Watch the trailer for Netflix's Wellmania. Story continues below.  

At a particularly 'unhealthy' point in her life, journalist Delaney received an email from her editor asking her whether she wanted to try then-serving Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's fast and write about it.

The fast, the editor explained, would cost the publication several thousands of dollars and would involve Delaney eating nothing for weeks, while drinking a 'concoction of Chinese herbs'.

She immediately said yes. 

"My twenties had well and truly finished, but the brakes hadn't been put on. So, I was still going out a lot with the same kind of energy as in my twenties. So, late nights, but then getting up in the morning was a lot harder," she explained to Mia Freedman on No Filter in 2017.

"I just felt completely depleted," she continued. "I didn't quite hit [rock bottom] but I could see the bottom." 

"I wasn't sick, but I wasn't well. And I think that can be a really common feeling, of feeling suboptimum, lethargic, greasy parlour, dead eyes, cold sores - so that was the kind of level I was bobbing around in."

Delaney left New York City and flew back to Bondi. She had a big night out the night before she started the fast and then turned up to the fasting clinic, hungover with a large latte in her hand. The clinic weighed her and handed her some Chinese herbs - the only thing she would consume for the next two weeks. 

"What you're paying for is for the absence to be enforced," she said on No Filter. "I would go to this fasting clinic every day. I would be weighed, I would have acupuncture, and I'd have this very rough massage, it was a massage on my organs." 

LISTEN: Brigid Delaney tried the 101-day detox diet so you don't have to. Story continues below. 

Delaney said the hardest part of the 14 days was the loneliness. 

"When you take away meals, you take away a whole lot of life that is really essential, so socialising, enjoyment of food, ritual, the way that our time is organised - it's often organised around meals," she explained. 

She missed eating and the sensation of chewing so she found ways to "cheat". 

"I used to get my housemate's food when she wasn't looking and I would chew it and spit it in the bin just so I could have that sensation in my mouth," she said on the podcast. "I would lick the juices from pans." 

A few days into the fast, Delaney felt exhausted and had no energy. And she started to notice other sensations in her body. 

"I had a lot of strange sensations, including chest pains, which were most likely my body eating my heart muscle," she said. 

After she filed her story, Delaney decided to explore other 'wellness trends'. Like group therapy. And Bikram yoga. And colonics. The result was her laugh-out-loud, searingly honest memoir, Wellmania.

The new Netflix series is based on Delaney's memoir, but it takes things up a notch, turning it into a hilarious family drama packed with clever observations about the wellness industry and the way we treat our bodies.

Wellmania is currently streaming on Netflix.

Feature image: Netflix.