CULTURE. Does the culture in which you live make a difference in whether you are chic and slim, or frumpy and dumpy? Mais oui!
French culture works to keep French women slimmer, healthier, and living longer than women in the United States. American culture conspires to make and keep American women overweight. (According to government estimates, more than half the population of the United States now is classified overweight.) That excess fat American women tote around with them will increase their chances of serious health problems including breast (and other) cancers, joint problems, diabetes, and heart disease. Even if you don't care about your appearance, you might want to control your weight so you could live to see your children graduate from college.
What Makes The Difference?
What is it about the French culture that keeps French women so chic and slim? Slim despite that the bread spread of choice is superfatted goose liver, despite those luscious tartes and eclairs, gateaux and madeleines au miel, despite all that wine and champagne they sip, despite instead of working out, they spend all those hours sitting in cozy little cafes looking absolutely marvelous.
And what is it about American culture that causes an increasing percentage of the population to bulge out of their blue jeans? Despite -- what is the latest figure? -- $40 billion annually spent on weight control products and services? Shouldn't all those fat-free foods have solved the problem?
The underlying value systems of the French and the Americans differ vastly. The French, who have perfected l'art de vivre, the art of living, stress the importance of living well, living the good life. Americans, who increasingly make money and quantity of personal possessions the defining judgment of success, stress making a good living. Americans want to make lots of money so they can buy lots of stuff.
You would think this French indulgence, this goal of pleasure, all that rich French food would translate into a nation of fatties. Mais non! A mere eight percent of the French population qualifies as overweight. And I think the French keep those people hidden. A friend who made a two-week bicycle tour of France commented she passed through dozens of French towns and villages. In the whole trip she spotted only one overweight person. She was pretty sure he was an American tourist.
Living Well, Living Long
That the French can eat red meat and butter and egg yolk-rich sauces and high fat cheeses and still stay slim and maintain unexpectedly low levels of heart disease surprises Americans. What truly baffles them is that, despite all that rich French cuisine they enjoy, despite the Bordeaux and Chablis they imbibe, not to mention smoking as if they never heard of tobacco-related health problems, the French have a longer life expectancy than people in the United States. How is this?
At the time I wrote the original Chic&Slim, the oldest living person on the planet was a Frenchwoman. Jeanne Calment, of Arles in the South of France, died at age 122 not long after the publication of the book. When her friends and doctors were interviewed about her secrets of long life, they testified to Jeanne Calment's unflappability. She had, they pointed out, regularly eaten about two pounds of chocolate a week and smoked until she was 115, though she did take care to exercise. She rode her bicycle until she was 100 and continued to walk regularly even after giving up cycling. But most important, they felt, Jeanne Calment seemed to have a natural immunity to stress. More likely, she had developed early an effective means of coping with stress. One thing you so often notice about French women is that air of serenity they carry about them.
An American writer living in France, Marianne Jacobbi, observed of the French: "They know that to stay fit for life you have to do more than restrict your diet or go for the burn: You have to pamper your soul. French culture revolves around the principle that stress subtracts years from your life and pleasure prolongs it."
When the French sit around in those cafés, they aren't doing nothing. They are practicing stress therapy. Somewhere I read an estimate that the French per capita consumption of tranquilizers, antidepressants, and antianxiety drugs was only about a third of what it is in the USA.
The French prefer cafes to pills.
Les Nouveaux Puritans
When the French find Americans doing something that surprises or perplexes them, they often chalk it up to le puritanisme. On the matter of pleasure, the attitudinal gulf between the two nationalities gapes as wide as the Atlantic Ocean our early American forebears crossed to establish their religious colonies in the New World.
Those Mayflower passengers may have long lain beneath their unadorned New England tombstones, but they have left us with a Puritan legacy that, though it has undergone modification and mutation over the centuries, still colors American thinking and lifestyle. And when Americans actually do something pleasurable, the action often generates a quantity of guilt sufficiently weighty that, loaded in the cargo hold, it would have sunk the Mayflower before it sailed from its English port.
Puritan Thinking
To the Puritan way of thinking, anything that brings pleasure is bad. Discomfort and sacrifice are good. The more uncomfortable and unpleasant something is, the better the Puritans think it is for us. Having failed to stamp out sex, and no longer convincing the majority of Americans that card playing, seeing movies, wearing makeup, and dancing are the road to damnation, American Puritanism has undergone an evolution. Nouveaux Puritans no longer preach against pleasure for moral or religious reasons, now they have drawn up a whole new list of no-nos on the principle that such things are bad for our health. Eating takes the brunt of their attack. The Nouveaux Puritans don't want anyone to eat anything that tastes good without paying a price. And they certainly don't want us to lose weight and stay slim unless we suffer a rigid regime of tasteless, unappetizing food. They would prefer, I think, that we endure hunger pains at least six hours a day in order to stay slim and healthy.
As you can imagine, Nouveaux Puritans don't think much of Anne Barone's French-inspired Chic&Slim philosophy. I witnessed an excellent demonstration of this Nouveau Puritan attitude at a book signing. Among the Chic&Slim promotional materials was that phrase I often use: The French eat chocolate, cheese, and pastry and still stay slim. And you can too. This phrase so infuriated one man who read it that he demanded that I take down the poster. "It's a lie," he bellowed at me, his finger shaking at the offending words.
Well, it wasn't a lie. Standing there in front of him, I was living, breathing proof that you could eat chocolate, cheese, and pastry and still stay slim. But I learned years ago it wastes breath to argue with a fanatic. So I remained cool and diplomatic. (Though I actually thought the man was a bad combination of rude and loony.) Eventually he ran out of steam and went on his way. About 15 minutes later, he was back.
Losing Weight Nouveau Puritan Style
This Nouveau Puritan was now telling me how to lose weight. He sounded like Dr. Dean Ornish in a really strict mood. Limit fats to 10 percent of daily calories, no red meat, no butter, no this, no that. So much exercise per day. You know the drill.
Did he actually follow this program he was outlining? Well, no. He was 50, maybe more, pounds overweight, with his big belly bulging out his Hawaiian shirt. And there I was, the 55-year-old Ms. Chocolate, Cheese & Pastry in her size 6 straight skirt, beginning to become a little annoyed with this character. I have certainly never denied myself the joys of chocolate, nor good cheese, nor good pastry, especially good French pastry, during my more than three decades of slimness. I ate plenty of all three during my weight loss.
In fact, during the shedding of the last 25 pounds, I was eating five to seven-course French dinners several nights a week. These dinners were usually accompanied by one or two wines and after dinner-liqueur. Meals that usually began around nine p.m. and sometimes were not over until midnight. (So much for that theory that any food eaten after eight p.m. instantly becomes fat.)
I am sure I never convinced that Nouveau Puritan at the book signing that anything less than deprivation and denial would bring him a healthy weight. As upset as he became over my little poster, I certainly hope this man never visits France. If he encounters a whole country of those ultra-chic, ultra-slim French women eating their foie gras, sipping their Beaujolais and spreading their Camembert, he is really going to be upset. . . .
Slim Not Matter Where You Live
Without a doubt, women living in France have an easier time staying slim than women who live in many other countries, particularly women who live in the United States. The USA is surely the most difficult location in the world for maintaining a normal weight.
Women in France have the advantage of living in a culture that makes staying slim easily possible.
On the other hand, American culture makes maintaining a normal weight enormously difficult.
At this point, if you are on your way to the nearest French Consulate to apply for a long-term visa, that is not necessary. With the information in this book, you can achieve that French state of chic and slim no matter where you live. So read on.
Now that you have a background on culture, you need to understand how French women and their effort in l'art de femme, their art of being women, is crucial in their efforts to stay chic and slim. -- Excerpt from Chapter 1 Chic & Slim ENCORE: More About How French Women Dress Chic Stay Slim -- and How You Can Too! ? 2000 Anne Barone All Rights Reserved
If you would like to know more about how French culture makes it easier for French women to stay chic and slim, you can read more in Chic & Slim ENCORE: More About How French Women Dress Chic Stay Slim -- and How You Can Too!
You will also learn how five other important factors work for French women -- and can work for you -- to keep you chic and slim.
how those Chic French women eat all that rich food and still stay Slim -- and You can too!
