French Women Don't Get Fat
by Mireille Guiliano
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Book Reviews of French Women Don't Get Fat
Book Review: The Secrets of Eating For Pleasure
Summary: 5 Stars
Changing your gastrominal point of view, insists the author, will enhance your life and pare down your size. Americans may find Ms. Guiliano's first book annoying and self-promoting of the French culture. But, hey, if they have a secret and are willing to share, why not let them dish?
Mireille Guiliano clearly underlines that when eating there are no extremes necessary. First and foremost binge dieting leads to binge eating. Then binge exercising leads to binge couch sessions. Walking more and drinking more water, however, are both key to enabling oneself to eliminating extremes.
It's an easier resolution to follow, she insists, than going to the gym three times per week. And this adhearing to no extremes takes less time out of your day. When one considers all this delivery of common sense, Americans in general will agree that this advice is a no-brainer. The bottom line is to keep all things in moderation. Easier said than done? Actually, it's easier done.
Etiquette encourages not just the hostess but the human being to consider others and their needs. It's about taking your eyes off yourself and focusing on the rest of the human race around you. Much like etiquette encourages one to cater to others and appreciate manners and style, "French Women Don't Get Fat" directs the reader to enjoy the pleasures of life and not short change yourself. If you love chocolate, don't eat a plastic Snickers Bar. Instead get one truffle and savor it.
Savor life's little pleasures. One example is an heirloom tomato when picked at its peak of ripeness. They are so sweet they resemble a strawberry rather than a beefsteak tomato, which when compared to its contemporary, tastes like water.
Enjoying little treasures and savoring them allows a person to look forward to the event. This vision and excitement fights boredom. And boredom, we have all found, has the potential to lead to over eating, over sitting and generally going backwards in our efforts to live a healthier, more productive lifestyle. No boredom has the potential to getting out in the world, thinking ahead, considering others, not just your own needs.
An underlying theme of "French Women Don't Get Fat" is to leave positive lasting impressions with people you come into contact with. This encourages freedom of thought, poise and posture. Posture is a sure-fire way to help you feel better and you are going to look taller when you aren't slouching. It's also a way to bring more oxygen into your system which leads to positive effects.
"French Women Don't Get Fat" goes so far beyond weight issues. It's about life lived at it's fullest and well worth the read.
Book Review: Even Americans can lose weight and enjoy ourselves as the French do.
Summary: 5 Stars
Instead of deprivation or weird food restrictions (no bread, no fat, no meat), why not simply eat what you love in smaller quantities?
Author Mireille Guiliano is a French businesswoman who works for my favorite Champagne, Veuve Clicquot, and as the President and CEO of US based Clicquot, Inc., (now a division of LVMH) managed to greatly increase Veuve Clicquot's American marketshare. She is not a nutritionist, a chef, a dietician, or a health professional. She is a French woman who has managed to lose and maintain her weight and has helped many of her friends and co-workers do the same.
Guiliano loves to eat, loves her wine and champagne, and also understands the French paradox of generally healthier hearts and smaller waistlines in a country where alcohol and cheese are a way of life.
Let's face reality, we are generally less healthy in the US. We drink more soda and flavored drinks, more fruit juices, and less water. We prefer hard liquor mixed with soft drinks and juices to wine.
We eat out more, eat more fast food, eat more fried food, eat larger portions, eat on the run, and tend to focus on single course meals (pasta, meat, salad). We exercise less (even basic walking), relax less, enjoy ourselves less. And we wonder why we have obesity and health problems!
In researching for this review I needless to say read many other reviews of the book and found people's responses, and particularly their defensiveness, quite interesting. One reviewer states, "Having watched the Dateline special on this book and scanning it for an hour in the bookstore.. I am surprised that it is getting such glorious reviews. Watching the author actually made my skin crawl a little. She spoke as if the way to lose weight was so simple and we all need this book because we are obviously not very bright." Oh no! We might actually have to discipline ourselves?
Guiliano believes, and I have to agree, that even in America we can lose weight and enjoy ourselves as the French do. We can control what we eat, how we eat, and what we do. Long walks, lots of water, a wide variety of foods on the plate, wine and champagne with meals, chocolate on occasion. Eat lots of fruit, lots of vegetables, good dark chocolate, good wine, new flavors, smaller portions but more things!
She even has a French Women Don't Get Fat website with support groups, recipes, videos, and advice. Changing our way of life is the only way to save our lives and this book, written in a lovely conversational tone that inspires action, is a great way to start. See you later, I have some chocolate to eat.
Book Review: Haven't Read It Yet
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes it's true, I haven't read the book yet, but I have read the opening pages available on Amazon and am purchasing it on kindle today. I'm commenting here on some of the reviews and sharing my recent experience with weight loss after traveling in France and England for a month and a half during May and June 2010. I also lost weight during my travels abroad. Like another reviewer I ate a huge english breakfast everyday when in England and I had a little joke that I never passed a bakery or fish and chip shop that I didn't like! (And stop in!) Aside from loving the, "What can I get you love?", I truly enjoyed the delicate fried fish! (I usually passed on the chips.) And I found English bakeries just as delicious as the French ones, with fresh, buttery, melt in your mouth pasteries. In France I ate loads of fresh crusty bread and croissants DAILY! And when I say LOADS, I mean it. One day I bought a whole package of croissants (about 8 of them) and ate all of them before nightfall. Everyday I bought cheese as well. Sometimes I'd find a park to sit in and enjoy my meal, or I'd just eat a huge piece of bread while I was driving down the highway. I did a lot of driving through the french and english countrysides, and did some walking through cities like Edinburgh and London, but I can't say I did a lot of walking anywhere. In spite of all the eating I did, I lost about 10 lbs. during my trip, and a lot of it was in my waist and hips. I've wondered about this a lot. I was trying to lose weight for a year before I went traveling and couldn't, although I went to Weight Watcher's, went to the gym, and even had a round (15 sessions) with a personal trainer. Before I left on my trip I was on a gluten free diet for about 3 months. I did feel better, but the weight still wasn't coming off. I just couldn't get down more than a pound or two and if I did, it would come right back. With all the gluten in the breads and pastries I ate over in Europe, it's odd that I felt so good and lost weight. I do think that maybe there's something about what goes into our food here that might be causing some bloating, or something that makes it harder to lose weight. Maybe some pesticides used during the growing process, some food engineering process, some processing ingredients, I don't know, but there has to be something. I'd love to know if people who grow their own vegetable gardens have the same problems with weight gain, bloating, etc.
Getting back to the issue at hand, I can't wait to read the book and add my REAL review! Thanks to everyone for all sharing your experiences and thoughts.
Book Review: Great Recipes
Summary: 3 Stars
I picked this book up thinking it was a novel ... and was delighted to see it was a foodie book (I must admit they're my favorite especially if there's recipes included). The first half of the book went great ... I found myself nodding in agreement and while I don't necessarily believe in starting off a cleansing diet with leeks but I do agree that we need to be more active, pro-active and drink lots of water and get more sleep. It boils down to common-sense really. Twinkies and Doritos do add up over the years ... something I've discovered in the past few years.
So this book didn't show anything new under the sun. Maybe it does for other readers, but not for this one. If you're a serious foodie, I would suggest reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," which goes into more details about food, politics and more (and includes some really yummy recipes) or read any of Michael Pollan's books. This book is fluff in comparison, though it does have some good recipes that I cannot wait to try.
Other reviewers here have complained about how condescending the author's writing style is ... and how she seemed to look down at us "slovenly Americans" (my words, not hers) ... and I finally did get that sense after awhile, especially when she's scornful of the people living in her apartment building who were exhausted during the great blackout a couple of summers ago ... they were exhausted just after climbing a few flights of stairs. Yes, it may be true, but stop with being so surprised every few seconds ... we Americans are not stupid. We know when we're being talked down to. And this book is rather patronizing for someone who claims to be half-American.
Not only that, the French are not the only country in the world that have good recipes. They're just more vocal about it than the other countries in the world.
If you can ignore all that, this book can be quite fun to read especially the lavish descriptions of meals and wine. This book can be fun to read about Paris and the French countryside (though I do not believe that all French women are perfectly slim ...) ... and like I mentioned before, the recipes look simple enough to follow and delicious enough to try. So if you can ignore the author's smug tone, then you'll have a fun book to read!
1/9/10
Book Review: A Common Sense Approach to Eating
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought this book out of curiosity: I wondered what the rage was all about. What was it that this French woman writes that changes the way American women view and eat food? What I found is this... there isn't much to learn from Guiliano's book that you cannot think of on your own if you've ever paid attention to what goes into your body. Eating natural, non-processed foods (from the perimeter of the grocery store or if you're lucky the Farmer's Market) that do not have an ingredient label attached is what we should be eating. It, in my opinion, isn't some big reveal. We should have to be taught to choose an apple over a bag of potato chips, but many of us don't, unfortunately and it's lead to an epidemic in obesity.
Guiliano writes common sense: eat fresh, organic foods, mostly fruits and veggies in smaller portions. Drink loads of water. She adds blips and blurbs about enjoying life, savoring the moment of everything as if it is some top secret piece of information. Anyone, could have written this book, but since it's written by a French woman, it seems that American women revere this as some sort of sacred text. Perhaps, I'm one of the lucky ones; I grew up with a vegetable garden in the back yard. However, if Guiliano's book is what it takes to get you to be healthy, so be it.
I didn't do the "diet", and when I read the magic soup business, I nearly shelved the book. I disagree with the entire "recasting" section. And the magic leek soup weekend is bogus, in my opinion. Guiliano contradicts herself by writing later that "French women never get hungry". If one is not to get hungry, how can you drink leek broth for 48 hours and not get hungry?
I will say that there are some wonderful and very easy to make recipes in the book that I've tried and have incorporated into my day-to-day life. And, I've changed my view of champagne. Why do we have to wait for a special occasion? Drink up!
If you're looking for an easy read, and a different way to approach food then I say buy the book. What can it hurt? You may learn a thing or two, or you may just realized that this could be a marketing ploy targeted at American women because we're so gullible when it comes to weight loss.