Mireille Guiliano's
French Women Don't Get Fat

Review by Debra Ollivier

… or do they? Few are as well-placed as Mireille Guiliano to explore the question. Guiliano is the CEO of Clicquot, makers of Veuve Clicquot champagne, and the short version of her story goes something like this: On an educational sejour to the United States long ago, Guiliano ballooned up on a shameless Yankee diet of brownies and bagels and became an anomaly: A fat French girl. When she returned to France a year later her father took one look at her and said, “You look like a sack of potatoes.” But Guiliano met Doctor Miracle, a discreet doctor and armchair psychologist who weaned her back to Gallic slimness. His program -- rich in pleasure, savoir-faire, and age-old French secrets -- is the backbone of “French Women Don’t Get Fat.”

It’s all in the title. Why do French always seem so infuriatingly thin? Guiliano cuts to the chase: “The reason French women don’t get fat is genetic, not cultural.” In other words, French women aren’t necessarily genetically hard-wired without body fat. They learn, through cultural rituals and self-awareness, how to eat correctly. Which means that ultimately for Anglo-Saxons, the secret to shedding pounds involves shedding cultural baggage as well. The good news is that on Guiliano’s program you can say au revoir to guilt-inducing, calorie-counting, hand-wringing Puritan diets of nonfat, carb-free deprivation. The bad news is that saying goodbye to deeply engrained eating habits and mindsets requires a certain leap of faith and lots of sang froid.

Guiliano’s program is broken down into four phases: 1. The Wake up Call, 2. Recasting, 3. Stabilization, and 4. The Rest of your Life. The Wake-up Call is the proverbial coming-to-grips with reality. Its logical extension, Recasting, embraces pleasure and individual happiness as goals. One of the paradoxical principles of eating a la francaise is that pleasure is actually a key to eating wisely. Deprive yourself of culinary pleasures and you’re bound to live a life of joyless deprivation that will actually work against weight loss. But Guiliano takes this principle a step further, suggesting that robbing ourselves of the simple personal pleasures and sensual delights that abound all around us (often the plight of over-worked moms and career women) is the real problem in the weight debate. She advocates a lifetime commitment to the pursuit of personal pleasure – in moderation bien sur. “There is nothing noble in failing to discover and cultivate your pleasures,” she writes. “It will make you not only fat, but grouchy.”

Guiliano’s program involves a host of practical measures: Getting rid of the usual suspects in your cupboard. Drinking lots of water. Implementing portion control and focusing on quality not quantity, with an emphasis on long-term satisfactions rather than instant gratification. And there are of course many practical recipes -- a transformative “Magical Leek Soup” and other luscious treats like Plum Clafoutis without dough, Chocolate-Espresso Faux souffles, plus an informative side-bar on how to make real yogurt (one of Guliano’s power tools). But ultimately the strength of Guiliano’s program lies in its underlying assertion that the mind holds sway over the body and is the French woman’s “ultimate firewall against getting fat.” Exercising your mind, not your abs, will give you the self-control, self-awareness, and discretion required for slow and steady pleasure-filled weight loss.

“French Women Don’t Get Fat” peppers its good counsel with socio-cultural vignettes, reminding us that food is one of the cornerstones of civilization. Along the way, she debunks a few myths. Bread and chocolate, for example, are not demonized. Au contraire. “Pretending such pleasures don’t exist,” Guiliano writes, “or trying to eliminate them from your diet for an extended time, will probably lead to weight gain. The only long-term effect of deprivation is the yo-yo – down today, but up again before you know it.” (A self-confessed chocoholic, Guiliano dedicates several pages to the culinary history of the infamous bean.)

Naturally Guiliano has much to say about wine and champagne, describing her introduction to the latter (which turned out, prophetically, to be Veuve Clicquot) at the early age of six. And what better metaphor than champagne to underscore Guiliano’s ultimate message: Consume wisely, ritualistically, purposefully, with deep pleasure, and you’ll enjoy life and manage your weight. Guiliano should know. She’s been to the proverbial fat farm and back, and she still gets a kick out of champagne every day. With a little luck and perseverance, you can too.

Join Mireille Guiliano, February 9 in San Francisco, as she tells us why French Women Don’t Get Fat.

Debra Ollivier’s work has appeared in Salon, Harpers, Playboy, and Le Monde. She is the author of Entre Nous: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl.