The French Women Diet

Everyone somehow knew but never acknowledged it until Mireille Guiliano pointed out that Frenchwomen love to eat and drink yet they don't actually get fat. The French culture knows how to enjoy their food while staying healthily slim. Even Frenchwomen did not notice that they are and remain slender until Mireille came to America to study as an exchange student and underwent the all-American transformation -- fatness. A French family doctor reintroduced her to the truly French secrets of gastronomy and the indigenous French understanding of food and drink and their own unique view and approach to life itself. Miss Guiliano talks about this French paradox in her book "French Women Don't Get Fat" -- her journey to getting back in shape.

So what is really wrong about the American diet, eating habits and eating mind? Not deprivation or guilt but functionally learning to hastily get the most from things you actually enjoy. Beyond the recipes she shared, the true secrets are not actually secrets but the virtues of the interesting French culture when it comes to food and drink consumption. For them, eating and drinking should not be accompanied by guilt and deprivation or avoidance of the food you love but with common sense. The freshness that Mireille emphasized is inherent in the French approach to cooking and consumption, not only in the ingredients. This French ingredient is the foundation of variety and balance. When all three are present as the tripod upon which the true French diet should stand, pleasure is the inevitable result -- the sensual joys in cooking and in eating -- and, as a matter of course, satisfaction. This equation may be reversed with pleasure as the foundation and freshness as the result and things will still turn out great. The glue that holds this equation together is love -- love for self, for your loved ones, for your guests to whom you share what you cook and all of you pursue pleasure together in such a manner that the result is more than the sum of its parts.

Miss Guiliano's insight into American eating is the habit of eating to fill the stomach with the mind away from the fact of eating. American's do not care about the quality of food only how they taste and look. Because of these American indulgence results to packing foods into the numb stomach. On the other hand, eating for French people should be accompanied with undivided attention and slow enjoyment of maximized quality of food and drink. Indulgence for French people is in pleasure and quality, not the quantity of food.

When we eat to maximize pleasure for life and living we eat at peak performance and not to achieve peak performance in whatever physical activity or profession we spend the rest of the day. Excessive concern for fat-free and calorie-free diet only weakens the body's capacity to deal with fat and calories in the body. The body knows how to deal with everything related to the body but if we hamper it work with unnecessary and unrealistic beliefs and concepts about eating and dieting, then the results can be rather tragic, especially with all the obesity related health risks that follow.