How to Get Skinny Like a French Woman

I like to swing through the health section of Barnes and Noble every so often just to get an idea of what's going on in the industry. Is it ok to eat carbs again? Will bacon still clog my arteries or should I eat pineapple exclusively? Or maybe there's a special drink I can inject straight into my blood stream to kill all the fat cells? Wait! What about the cellulite accumulating on my back side--can a fiber diet cure that? And apparently cooking food is the wrong thing to do. Raw is the way to go. Raw veggies, raw fruit. Raw hide. I could spend days in that diet section, which seems to run for miles, and which fascinates me more than the literature section ever could. I am not proud of this.

My body and I go way back. To birth, actually. Back then my body was amazing, all soft and fleshy, full of dimples and rolls. Though I have no recollection of what people said to me as an infant, I imagine people looked into my crib and called me healthy. "A regular Renaissance baby," they might have said as they held their fingers out to me and said, "Coochie coochie coo." They probably giggled when I snatched their fingers and stuck them in my mouth. Little did they know that I thought they were French fries.  

But then I got older and the cherubic look didn't look so cute anymore. When I went to dances, no one danced with me except for the boys with greasy hair who mumbled insults while we shuffled in circles to Lionel Richie songs, my arms rigid to keep them at a distance. After every dance I would go home and rummage through the refrigerator for an enormous slice of leftover dessert. Then I'd retreat to my bedroom to watch Saturday Night Live on my old black and white TV while I shoveled gooey spoonfuls of food into my mouth. The food made me forget how ignored I had felt all night long. With each bite the memory of the greasy boys with their sharp body odor and sweaty hands faded.

And then one night the desserts didn't make me feel better. They made me want to cry. So I read a few diet books and declared war on food. I became a strict vegetarian and stopped eating meat, fat and dairy. To replace my occasional morning bowl of Cap'n Crunch (which was my favorite even though it scratched up the roof of my mouth until it was raw and bloody--a small sacrifice in my opinion) I began eating copious amounts of fruit, bran muffins, and a few salads here and there. I remember one particularly silly self-righteous moment when my brother-in-law brought over a pizza for dinner. I sat in the corner crunching on a salad of iceberg lettuce scantily clad in fat-free dressing, denouncing the delectable cheese oozing from each slice, informing everyone of the evils of dairy, how it would clog your system until your insides would require a roto rooter. But my best moment, the one I play over in my head on a regular basis, was when the Oreos came out for dessert. "Do you know how many fat grams are in each one of those?" I asked my family, smug in my newfound will power.

My brother-in-law just stared at me. "Nope," he said, "and I don't care." He popped a cookie in his mouth. "Yuumm," he said with a big smile, black Oreo dust clinging to his lips. I continued to eat my salad with gusto, trying to convince myself that my meal tasted better than those cookies that I used to eat by the dozen.  

For the next twenty years I ate like this, occasionally falling off the bandwagon only to crawl my way back on.    

And then I came upon this little gem of a book by Mireille Guiliano about how to eat like a French woman. I was in Barnes and Noble, making my way to the diet section when the illustration caught my eye. There on the cover a smartly dressed woman pulled a little cart full of food with one hand, and walked a little poodle at the end of a skinny leash with the other. The woman was skinny. Not anorexic, but svelte. Trés chic, as the French would say. And the book told me it would teach me how to eat for pleasure. 

Eat for pleasure? I didn't know it was possible. I thumbed through the book, nodding in agreement with everything I read. And then I did something I hardly ever do. I bought it right then and there.

Guiliano writes this diet book as a narrative, describing her year in America as an exchange student, during which she gained a ton of weight. Once she came back to France, her mother called the family doctor, who taught Guiliano how to rid herself of bad American habits (eating chocolate chip cookies and brownies by the handful, for one) and return to her inner French woman. As I believe that I have an inner French woman too (perhaps my mother found me in a French orphanage?), I eagerly followed "Dr. Miracle's" advice. It worked. I made friends with some foods I had sworn off so long ago, I had forgotten what they tasted like. I began to cook with full-fat ingredients, which, hello! taste so much better than their fat-free counterparts that I eat less of them. (Who knew?)  I found that I could eat desserts, just not at midnight in front of the tv. Perhaps most importantly, Guiliano taught me to eat food only if it is delicious, not simply within arm's reach. 

While I don't always follow Guiliano's rules exactly, when I do, my body looks and feels better. And my inner French woman feels trés chic, even in overalls.   

Comments

[Susan Hayward]

Jana: Wouldn't it be great if there a magazine called Healthy and Happy, all about loving your body, featuring un-photoshopped models?

I like local and in season as well, although it seems easier to do that in a warm climate. Your growing season is longer than ours, you lucky duck!

[Susan Hayward]

Thank you Susan. Most days I feel like a bumbling idiot, so these things you tell me help me to get out of bed in the morning even when I want to hide there all day.

[Susan Sudol]

I love your writing. You are a breath of fresh air! You have it all: talent, beauty, and brains!

[Jana]

I don't do deprivation very well. I far prefer eating sensibly (esp local and in season) and keeping active. I won't grace the cover of any fashion magazines, but I'm healthy and happy.