French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano (2005)

In France, we don’t talk about “diets”, certainly not with strangers. Mainly, we spend our social time talking about what we enjoy: feelings, family, hobbies, philosophy, politics, culture, and yes, food, especially food (but never diets).

The book’s title may lead one to believe that this is a diet book. I would however, describe it as a stylish book of tips for living a balanced, healthy, happy life.

“French Women Don’t Get Fat” gently tells us that those pounds we would like to (permanently!) banish are bound to obstinately stay unless we get our acts right. Guiliano shares with her readers what French women have known for ages - that we all need to take time to smell the flowers, live in the now, stress less, and make time for the people in our lives. She emphasizes that French women abide by the tenets of living to work and not working to live, being gentle with one’s self, and savoring the sweetness and the beauty of what life offers.

Guiliano says that French women:

1. Think about good things to eat. Other women typically worry about bad things to eat.
2. Eat smaller portions of more things. Elsewhere, women eat larger portions of more things
3. Eat more vegetables.
4. Eat a lot more fruit.
5. Love bread and would never consider a life without carbs.
6. Don’t eat “fat-free” or “sugar-free” or anything artificially stripped of natural flavor. They go for the real thing in moderation.
7. Love chocolate, especially the dark, slightly bitter, silky stuff with nutty aroma.
8. Eat with all five senses, allowing less to seem like more.
9. Balance their food, drink, and movement on a week-by-week basis.
10. Believe in the three Ps: planning, preparation, pleasure.
11. Do stray, but they always come back, believing there are only detours and no dead ends.
12. Don’t often weigh themselves, preferring to keep track with their hands, eyes, and clothes: “zipper syndrome”.
13. Eat three meals a day.
14. Don’t snack all the time.
15. Never let themselves be hungry.
16. Never let themselves feel stuffed.
17. Train their taste buds, and those of their young, at an early age.
18. Honor mealtime rituals and never eat standing up or on the run. Or in front of the TV.
19. Don’t watch much TV.
20. Eat and serve what is in season, for maximum flavor and value, and know availability does not equal quality.
21. Love to discover new flavors and are always experimenting with herbs, spices, and citrus juices to make a familiar dish seem new.
22. Eschew extreme temperatures in what they consume, and enjoy fruits and vegetables bursting with flavor at room temperature, at which they prefer their water, too.
23. Don’t care for hard liquor or spirits.
24. Do enjoy in regularly, but with meals, and only a glass (or maybe two).
25. Get a kick from champagne, as aperitif or with food, and don’t need a special occasion to open a bottle.
26. Drink water all day long.
27. Choose their own indulgences and compensations. They understand that little things count, both additions and subtractions, and that as an adult, everyone is the keeper of her own equilibrium.
28. Enjoy going to market.
29. Plan meals in advance and think in terms of menus (a list of little dishes) even at home.
30. Think dining in is as sexy as dining out.
31. Love to entertain at home.
32. Care enormously about the presentation of food. It matters to them how you look at it.
33. Walk everywhere they can.
34. Take the stairs whenever possible.
35. Will dress to take out the garbage (you never know).
36. Are stubborn individuals and don’t follow mass movements.
37. Adore fashion.
38. Know one can go far with a great haircut, a bottle of champagne, and a divine perfume.
39. Know l’amour fait maigrir (love is slimming).
40. Avoid anything that demands too much effort for little pleasure.
41. Love to sit in a café and do nothing but enjoy the moment.
42. Love to laugh.
43. Eat for pleasure.
44. Don’t diet.
45. Don’t get fat.

The book has a wonderful bonus. It contains French recipes that look simple and fun to prepare. Wolfgang Puck (although not a Frenchman), has succinctly put it, “live, love, and eat!”

Bonjour, Happiness! (Secrets to Finding Your Joie de Vivre) by Jamie Cat Callan (2011)

“Everything you do in life has the potential to add to your happiness, your joie de vivre. You can grab a cup of coffee and take it out and drink it while you’re driving or walking down the street, talking on your cell phone,not really paying any attention to the world around you, and not really enjoying your cup of coffee, or you can buy your coffee, sit down and drink it from a real china cup. Find a great place to sit when you have a good view of passersby. Rather than multi-tasking, why not be present to the moment and do one thing at a time?”

In Callan’s newest book, she reveals that she is a typical American woman “who often feels that she is not smart enough, not rich enough, not organized enough, not accomplished enough, and definitely not young enough.”

Taking cue from her grandmother who was very French and who she thinks was someone who had mastered the art of living beautifully; she embarks on a research project that would help her unlock the secret to finding one’s joie de vivre. She applied to the Virginia Center for a Creative Arts fellowship which enabled her to live and work in Auvillar, a little village in the Southwest of France.

After interviewing, shopping, dining, and cooking with French women from all walks of life, Callan shares some lessons she’s learned from the French:

1. Stop and focus. Be present in simple and familiar activities such as grocery shopping, gardening, cooking, sitting in a park, having a picnic, enjoying a bath, or even doing housework.
2. Be in the moment and be willing to change your plans when something unique and wonderful comes into your life.
3. Break the connection between spending and money and happiness.
4. Resist chasing after happiness and give happiness a chance to sneak up on you.
5. Be creative with less.
6. Dance.
7. Revive and realize some of your old dreams.
8. Tend to the gifts that nature has given you
9. Challenge yourself and break out of the familiar.
10. Appreciate the mystery that is here and now.
11. Work to live, don’t live to work.
12. Walk.
13. Protect your privacy.
14. Add in your repertoire a few tried and tested dishes.
15. Sit down with your family at least once a week to a real meal.
16. Keep the dining room table free of clutter.
17. Practice the art of “less is more”.
18. Learn to occasionally just shrug your shoulders and say, “that’s life!”
19. Open your eyes and notice all the beauty in your world.
20. Ask yourself where you might have gone overboard in one direction or another in your life.
21. Love your body as it is right now.
22. Enjoy your food.
23. Become involved in your community.
24. Develop conversational skills by asking questions.
25. Think romantic thoughts.
26. Wear good lingerie all the time.
27. Dress up.
28. Truly give to yourself.
29. Consider making a commitment to someone else.
30. Create a rhythm and pattern in your life.

Reading “Bonjour, Happiness” is akin to eating the French macaron. First comes the visual delight in beholding this pretty concoction, followed by the satisfaction of taking the first bite, and then the overpowering saccharine sweetness. On the whole, however, a delectable little pleasure.