French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure

224 Pages·2007·0.96 MB·English

by  Mireille Guiliano

CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Readers’ Comments
Title Page
Epigraph
Ouverture
1. Vive l’Amérique: The Beginning … I Am Overweight
2. La Fille Prodigue: Return of the Prodigal Daughter
3. Short-term Recasting: The First Three Months
4. The Tales of the Three Cs
Entr’acte: Manger bien et juste: Stabilization and Eating for Life
5. Il Faut des Rites
6. The Seasons and the Seasonings
7. More Recipes That Will Fool You
8. Liquid Assets
9. Bread and Chocolate
10. Moving Like a French Woman
11. States of Desire
12. Life Stages
12 bis The Plan for Life
Appendix: New Recipes
Index
Copyright
About the Author
Mireille Guiliano is French, brought up in Alsace-Lorraine and Provence and
educated at the Sorbonne. She first went to America as an exchange student and
returned permanently to the United States early in her professional career. She is
President and CEO of Clicquot, Inc., whose headquarters are in New York, and a
director of Champagne Veuve Clicquot in Reims. Married to an American, she
lives most of the year in New York and also in Paris. Among her favourite
pastimes are breakfast, lunch and dinner.
www.mireilleguiliano.com
READERS’ COMMENTS
Dear Mireille,
I have just read your book, and I could not put it down! I am a working mother
of two small girls and have very little time for anything! I want to teach my
daughters to appreciate food and enjoy the experience. Thank you very much for
your words of wisdom and for the courage and determination that you must have
to have succeeded in the workplace. I am encouraged and heartened by your life
experiences and am striving to emulate your philosophy. My husband was so
surprised to find the table laid and napkins out for a three course dinner after
putting the children to bed! After eating the ‘French Way’ I have lost 3lbs this
weekend – Hurrah! Long may this continue.
Kind regards,
Sharon, Berkshire Dear Mireille,
I loved reading your book. I will definitely heed your advice to drink a lot more
water and increase my exercise by parking further from the office each day. I
love champagne and dark chocolate and feel confident now that I can enjoy them
for the rest of my life. Thank you for strengthening my resolve.
With kind regards,
Carol, West Sussex Madame Guiliano,
J’ai lu votre livre, que mon mari m’a acheté. Votre philosophic est très solide, et
je voudrais suivre votre conseil quand nous partirons d’Irlande pour vivre en
France bientôt, près de Montmorillon.
Merci pour le plaisir de lire votre livre,
Beatrice, County Wicklow, Ireland Dear Mireille,
I read your book French Women Don’t Get Fat whilst on holiday in Portugal last
week. It is the first time I have read a book from front to back in a long time.
Your book has helped me to think differently about what I am eating and you
have definitely become my mentor. Greek yoghurt was enjoyed this morning for
breakfast, followed by banana – my next objective is the champagne with lunch.
What a treat!
Thank you so much,
Kind regards,
Sheila, Kent Dear Mireille,
I bought your book a week ago. I am thoroughly enjoying reading it as it is the
best book I have ever read on weight loss. It is charming and funny. Thank you
for writing such an inspiring book!
Merci beaucoup!
Maria, London Dear Mme Guiliano,
I have never written to an author before but felt compelled to write to you as I
am really enjoying your book French Women Don’t Get Fat … As well as being
a good read it is a book to ‘dip into’ from time to time – I will treasure it and
keep it as a reference for years to come.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
Elizabeth, Kent
Mireille Guiliano
F W
RENCH OMEN
D G F
ON’T ET AT
What is more important than the meal? Doesn’t the least observant
[wo]man-about-town look upon the implementation and ritual progress
of a meal as a liturgical prescription? Isn’t all of civilization apparent
in these careful preparations, which consecrate the spirit’s triumph
over a raging appetite?
—Paul Valéry
OUVERTURE
Whatever the state of relations between France and the rest of the world—and
we have our ups and downs—we should not lose sight of the singular
achievements of French civilization. Until now, I humbly submit, one glorious
triumph has remained largely unacknowledged, yet it’s a basic and familiar
anthropological truth: French women don’t get fat.
I am no physician, physiologist, psychologist, nutritionist, or any manner of “-
ist” who helps or studies people professionally. I was, however, born and raised
in France; and with two good eyes I’ve been observing the French for a lifetime.
Plus I eat a lot. One can find exceptions, as with any rule, but overwhelmingly,
French women do as I do: they eat as they like and don’t get fat. Pourquoi?
Over the past decade, other nations have made valuable progress in
understanding the French capacity for getting away with murder vis-à-vis food
and drink. The cautious acknowledgement of a “French Paradox,” for example,
has sent countless heart patients and wellness enthusiasts sprinting to the wine
store for bottles of red. But otherwise, the wisdom of the French way of eating
and living, and in particular the uncanny power of French women to stay svelte,
remains little understood, much less exploited. With myself as living proof, I
have successfully advised dozens of women over the years, including some who
have come to work for me at Clicquot, Inc., in New York City. I’ve also
addressed thousands on aspects of this subject in talks. I’ve been teased by
friends and business associates: “When will you write zee book?” Well, le jour
est arrivé!
Could it be Nature alone? Could the slow wheel of evolution have had time
enough to create a discrete gene pool of slender women? J’en doute. No, French
women have a system, their trucs—a collection of well-honed tricks. Though I
was born into it, living happily as a child and even a teenager by what my
maman taught me, at a moment in my adolescence the wheels came off. In
America as an exchange student, I suffered a catastrophe that I was totally
unprepared for: an almost ten-kilo catastrophe. It sent me into a wilderness from
which I had to find my way back. Fortunately, I had help: a family physician
whom I still call Dr. Miracle. He led me to rediscover my hereditary French
gastronomic wisdom and to recover my former shape.
I have now lived and worked in America most of my life. I moved here a few
years after university and worked as a UN translator, then for the French
government, promoting French food and wine. I married an American and
eventually found my way to corporate life. In 1984, I took the leap that has let
me live in two cultures ever since. The venerable Champagne House of Veuve
Clicquot, founded in 1772, boldly opened a US subsidiary to handle the
importation and marketing of Champagne Veuve Clicquot and other fine wines.
As the first employee, I immediately became the highest-ranking woman on staff
since Madame Clicquot, who died in 1866. Today I am a CEO and director of
Champagne Veuve Clicquot, part of the luxury-goods group LVMH.
All the while, I’ve continued to practise what most French women do without
a second thought. And the dangers I have faced for years now are well above
average. No exaggeration, my business requires me to eat in restaurants about
three hundred times a year (tough job, I know, but someone has to do it). I’ve
been at it for twenty years, never without a glass of wine or champagne at my
side (business is business). These are full meals: no single course of frisée salad
and sparkling water for me. Yet I repeat: I am not overweight or unhealthy. This
book aims to explain how I do it and, more important, how you can, too. By
learning and practising the way French women traditionally think and act in
relation to food and life, you too can do what might seem impossible. What’s the
secret? First, a word about what it’s not.
So many of us do double duty, working harder inside and outside the home
than most men will ever know. On top of it, we must find a way to stay healthy
as we try to maintain an appearance that pleases us. But let’s face it: more than
half of us cannot maintain a stable, healthy weight even with all the self-inflicted
deprivation we can muster. More and more people in the developed world are
overweight (65 per cent of America, for example, is deemed overweight;
according to recent UK government figures, 20 per cent of British women, and
25 per cent of men, are obese), and the fastest-selling books are diet books, most
of them now written like biochemistry manuals. No matter how many of these
books appear, there are always ten more on the way. Could dietary technology
really be progressing as fast as the marketing? Anyway, the demand persists.
Why? Why don’t the million-copy wonders put a definitive end to our woes?
Simply put, the answer is “unsustainable extremism.”
Most diet books are based on radical programmes. Apart from a brief Jacobin
interlude in the eighteenth century, extremism has never been the French way.
Other cultures, however, taking their lead from America, gravitate towards