Mustang Girl: June 2008

Monday, June 30, 2008

French Women Don't Get Fat

Testimonials from a Europe girl:

"I came out of the states a size 14, and after living in France for two months – I came back a size 6!"

How do the French manage to eat fatty foods such as foie gras and buttery croissants but have a lower rate of heart disease and live longer than most people in developed countries?

Part of the reason is because they eat small amounts of everything - The French don't deny themselves anything but they are masters at portion control. Another one is to cut out processed foods - Most French regard them with disdain and choose healthier fresh foods that also tend to be lower in calories. Another important one is to eat slowly - The French way is to take ages over a meal and savour each mouthful. This stops overindulgence, because the sensation of fullness has time to develop.

One good element to the French diet is endorsing alcohol. Drink lots of wine! They drink with nearly every meal. The reason why this helps is because the damage of 'bad' fat is offset by the anticoagulants and antioxidants in wine. Wine keeps the circulatory system in good repair, and thus keeps the whole body younger. Research shows that women who prefer wine in moderation live a healthier lifestyle than others who drink other alcoholic drinks.

A few other things you might want to incorporate into your diet are chocolate, cheese, and potatoes. 17 million French people eat chocolate every day. For good health, eat the darkest chocolate you can. Taken sparingly and as needed, it is beneficial and not fattening. Say oui to brie! It has 160 calories per 50g serving compared with 206 in Cheddar. Camembert is better still with 149 calories per 50g. And potatoes are filled with nutrients, and if we would speak of calories, an average-sized potato has only a fourth of the calories found in an equal portion of rice or pasta. The potato has practically all of the vitamins you will ever need. And it is the most versatile vegetable, marrying well with anything. It only becomes an 'offender' when deep-fried.

The biggest trick to eating like a healthy, slender French woman is portion control. You can eat whatever you want - indulge your taste buds and deny yourself nothing - as long as you exercise portion control. It's more of an art than a discipline - what's needed is a bit of self-deception. The biggest trick I use to control the amount of food I eat is what I call the 50 per cent solution. It’s easy – just cut every meal you would normally have in half. For example, if you get a meal of four slices of pizza, only eat two.

From the French woman's point of view, exercise is never a compensation for eating; eating is what we do to fuel an active body. Yes, we should all be more active, but 'hitting the gym' to work off that chocolate bar or heavy lunch is backward thinking. It can have the reverse effect of making you a gym addict as well as an overeater. Gyms are fine if you like that sort of thing, but what you really need to do to stay fit and slim by way of exercise is not all that elaborate. You just need to get your heart rate up several times a week for about 30 minutes. We should all do resistance training. Light free weights can be used almost anywhere. Your body, too, can be its own resistance machine: basic push-ups, sit-ups, and lunges are excellent and pretty comprehensive. If you move in order to eat, rather than eat in order to move, you are in effect running yourself into the ground. The French woman's lifestyle is an active one, but it requires that you learn to adjust your intake to support a normal and healthy level of exertion.

Carolyn Denton, a Twin Cities nutritionist talks about the best selling diet book, “French Women Don’t Get Fat” by Mireille Guiliano. Quote: "The idea of being able to eat is a breath of fresh air," said Carolyn -"We've come out of a decade where fat was the enemy. Now carbohydrates are the enemy," Denton said. "Instinctively, people know that's not true. The body needs fats. It needs carbohydrates. When I say, `Sure, you can have butter,' people are just shocked." So in closing, eat whatever the hell you want! - just in moderation.