Book Review of “Why French Women Don’t Get Fat” Our definitions of what constitutes a meal vary from culture to culture. Despite differences in food preferences, every culture uses food for more than just nourishment. Food forges and maintains human relationships. And that is how it should be. But in the modern era of fast foods, that is far from it. Yet author Mireille Guiliano of the book French Women Dont Get Fat think it should be that wayso people will not worry about getting fat at all. The book is peppered by all kinds of delicious recipes and the encouragement to enjoy and savor each moment, especially the act of eating food.
This is indeed a great no-nonsense book filled with common sense. This paper looks into this book by Guiliano and comments on why it is such a hit to women. It explores the context where most women are coming from when it comes to obesity and eating habits. Today, many humans have sweet and salty foods readily available, and our natural affinity for them causes us to eat far more than we need. Half of all sugar used in American sweetens soda pop, which has no nutritional value. This book makes us consider once more than taste sensation can also be altered by eating substances that enhance or inhibit another taste.
It also wakes up readers to the fact that taste accounts for a very small part of overall flavor. Smell plays a much bigger role, giving us the infinite variations of flavor that the four tastes of sweet, salty, sour and bitter cannot detect. Cane sugar, maple sugar, and honey all have the same sweet taste; only the aroma varies. Smell is more sensitive than taste. Texture and temperature also contribute to flavor. The book reminds people that we have seemingly limitless possibilities of edibles, compared to other creatures. Expanding and enjoying the sense of taste requires breaking out of the phobia most of us have regarding food: unfamiliar equals bad. Many people grimace instantly when a new food is describes or presented, even though they have no idea what it really tastes like. Don an attitude of curiosity, exploration, and open-mindedness, and have fun experimenting with ones sense of taste.
This book is a non-diet book where people are encourage to lead healthy and enjoyable lifestyle. She reveals that she is not a physician, nor a nutritionist or psychologist and much of what she writes in the book is retelling her own journey toward a healthy and slender body. This immediately glues the readers to what she has to say. There are already a lot of diet books and a steps to be thin and in but this seems to be the one that, if maintained, can carry one to a long life of slenderness and healthy life. The fact that she has counseled numerous people on staying healthy and slim attests to the credibility of her writing. She puts in good suggestions, clear and concise advices plus some sample healthy recipes. One great offshoot of the book is the way one is encouraged to develop to a different level, ones sense of taste and way of living. She gives sensible advices and readers are able to relate with her especially that part when she mentions, No exaggeration, my business requires me to eat in restaurants about three hundred times a year (tough job, I know, but someone has to do it).
I’ve been at it for twenty years, never without a glass of wine or Champagne at my side (business is business).
These are full meals: no single course of frisee salad and sparkling water for me. Yet I repeat: I am not overweight or unhealthy. This book aims to explain how I do it and, more important, how you can, too. By learning and practicing the way French women traditionally think and act in relation to food and life, you too can do what might seem impossible. What’s the secret? After that paragraph, one is gravitated to finish the book in one sitting. So whats the secret, one surmises? One just cant wait and leafs through the pages, searching for the secret.
How in the world is she able to do that? Maybe its her body constitution, one will justify. But as one reads and munches the nuggets of wisdom she has acquired along the way, one just knows that there is something more than one secret. It is something that she practices so well. Something that may be ingrained in her so much that it has become second nature. She mentions statistics 65% of Americans are overweight, and that the bestsellers are always the diet books. For Guiliano , though, there need not be any diet.
She maintains that most diet books are based on radical programs. And when one diets, one almost is bound to slip out of the Zone. Early on she cannot help but state it in no unequivocal terms banish the diet books. Instead, You don’t need an ideology or a technology, you need what French women have: a balanced and time-tested relation to food and life. Finally, the coup de grace against these extreme programs is their general lack of attention to the individuality of our metabolisms. Written mostly by men, they rarely acknowledge that the physiology of women is profoundly different. And a woman’s metabolism changes over time: a woman of twenty-five with some weight to lose faces a different challenge from that of a fifty-year-old. As a starter, she says that French women do not discuss dieting with other people and most especially with strangers just like what most women do when placed altogether in one environment where they can talk freely.
She contends that French women talk about their families, good living, culture, philosophy and food, but not about depravation of food. Ah.. thats one secret out there. These French women do not emphasize the negative. They are positive-attitude people, in all sense of the word. They talks about good food, wine, fine dining and many others but not the topic on dieting.
One senses that this is almost a taboo subject. Most French women like to dine and just eat well, without considering the calories. It seems almost natural to them to stop eating when needed. Somehow in analyzing Guilianos style of eating well and not gaining additional pounds, we somehow sense that there is the element of both the mind working so effectively that it has affected the body in the process. I think it really begins in the mind. That is where all these begin such that it already becomes a habit. French women have made it a habit to eat just enough good food any time they fancy.
What an ideal world. And Guiliano does it so naturally in her book. She also advices against employing nutritionists who charge too much for making out a menu which is easily done by any one as long as she does what is advised in the book. She mentions four phases in her effective system which is not only realistic but also easy to follow. These are 1) wake-up call making an inventory of ones meals 2) recasting- which is an introduction to the French school of portions and diversity of nourishment 3) stabilization where everything one wants to eat is reintegrated in proper measure 4) the rest of your life which simply means one has achieved his targeted weight and will just maintain that for the rest of his life. The value which she mentions such as that of avoiding negative thinking uplifts one as she journeys to her new slimmer body.
Since negative thinking feeds upon itself, it can be difficult to break the cycle. In fact, many people with a negative outlook feel more comfortable when an obstacle turns up, because that not only reinforces the habit, but they can use the obstacle as an excuse for not achieving their desired goal. And the author does not encourage whining or complaining or being discouraged. It is the misery loves company phenomenonunhappy people look for someone to whom to complain, and then feel better for the support and sharing. When complaining becomes a way of life, the cycle is again difficult to break. Somehow, the attitudes and emotions actually change the chemistry in our brain to make us function more or less effectively.
In the end, the author says that we may still encounter problems in becoming slim for the rest of our life. The difference between dealing with them successfully is summed up in one wordattitude. The key to success in all these is a positive , constructive response. If one sees his problems as challenges and stepping-stones, then one can find possibilities in ones problems and deal with them productively. The author lives what she teaches and that is all there is to it. There is a need for a powerful focus in this program and system of weight loss and the French women just has the answers to that.
It is a matter of looking at their lifestyle and follow it before breaking it. You either follow the authors footsteps and be slender and healthy or just go on with how one has been accustomed to and remain fat, unhealthy and literally toxic..