Claire Conger

When Mireille Guiliano visited the United States as an exchange student, she got fat. Returning to her native France, she was so chubby that her father exclaimed she looked like a sack of potatoes—devastating to a teenager. Her book French Women Don’t Get Fat tells us how this happened and how she returned to her slim French self.

Ms Guiliano’s exchange family indoctrinated her into the American ethos of More More More, which includes driving around in cars and snacking excessively on all things sweet. The girl came home so enamored with pastries that her mother had to intervene.

Here’s a synopsis of her advice.

1) Walk everywhere and take the stairs not the elevator. (It seems there are fewer cars and fewer elevators in France than in the U.S.)

2) Drink a lot of water and make it room temperature. Ms Guiliano speculates that Americans don’t drink enough water because we refrigerate it. (Personally, I like my water cool, and for me, room temperature is often too warm.)

3) Eat plain yogurt with active cultures. You may add honey at first to get used to it, then go plain.

4) Eat just enough to feel satisfied but not enough to feel full. Try a little bit of everything. If you’ve eaten so much that you’re not hungry for dessert, you’ve eaten too much. She doesn’t skip dessert.

5) Eat for pleasure. Make your dining environment delightful with flowers and linens. Don’t clutter your enjoyment with the newspaper or the TV.

6) Drink one or two glasses of wine or champagne a day, no more, with food. Ms Guiliano thinks our American wine-as-a-cocktail is dangerous and distasteful. (As a marketing manager for a champagne company, she learned how to pretend she’s drinking without actually drinking!)

7) Once a month or so, take a weekend off from eating and cleanse your body with Magical Leak Soup.

Ms Guiliano reads the audio book herself, in English, and her French accent lends interest and credibility to the narrative.