annebarone.com
French Chic & Slim
Nouvelles
News and Opinion from Anne Barone to Keep You Chic & Slim — INDEX to Previous Nouvelles
image: peach colored roses
|| 13 May 2025
Good Words For Anne’s Books And A Sunscreen Reminder
Recently an email from Synthia had good words for my books and also reminded me to preach my annual sermon on sun protection for the face.
Synthia wrote:
Just purchased your new book and I'm so excited to read.
Like many others have explained to you, your books have changed my life. I was able to travel much in the last 20 years, and for the most part, keep my wardrobe and weight in check and just live a very European inspired lifestyle.
I am so grateful for you and the lessons you have taught me which I now teach the new generation; my children who are now adults. I am proud of their interest in travel, reading, food, cooking, etc...They are rarely on social media and focus on developing their minds and living a full life.
My husband and I are planning a trip to Scotland this July. I don't know what to expect but I will let you know!
Merci to Synthia for her comments on my books. Perhaps after her trip to Scotland she will report her take on Scottish chic and slim.
You may remember that about a year ago, I shared with you Synthia’s experience with a Merkel Cell Carcinoma that had developed in the area just below her eye and required rebuilding her lower eyelid after the carcinoma was removed.
A Reminder:The area just beneath the eye is particularly sensitive to sun’s harmful rays, So a good sunscreen (without any carcinogenic ingredients) and sunglasses with UVA and UVB filtering are helpful in protecting you from things that might develop there.
be chic, stay slim, live well — Anne Barone
|| 1 May 2025
Avoiding Plastics — and Tornadoes
It’s prime storm season here at Provence-sur-la-Prairie. Seemingly non-stop thunderstorms with heavy rain and, interspersed in these, the phone squawking and the message on the screen: TAKE COVER NOW. Fortunately, though funnels have been sighted, none has done substantial damage in my immediate area. But before another thunderstorm hits (or another Tornado Warning is issued), I will try to post a Nouvelles.
As I wrote in The Barone System, since the early 1970s I have tried to avoid contact with plastics as much as possible, especially in food preparation and storage. As more information becomes available, we are learning to what possible extent microplastics and nanoplastics shed from plastic items can damage our health. Recent studies have linked these pesky bits to a number of problems including heart disease, lung problems, hypertension — even weight gain.
Latest in my campaign to cut back even further on plastic exposure is replacing my old plastic coffee filter with one made of porcelain. Actually I prefer the taste of coffee made in my French press coffee pot, but since filtered coffee offers health benefits by reducing the harmful compounds that can raise our cholesterol levels I am trying to drink (mostly) filtered.
My new Melitta porcelain coffee filter is surprisingly heavy. It weighs a pound. Fine for my ceramic mugs, but I certainly would not set it on a fragile cup. It will filter 4 cups with a #4 filter. But I can still use it with my #2 filters that I used with the old plastic filter if I want to make only one or two cups. And the new porcelain filter is certainly plus chic than the long-used old plastic one.
be chic, stay slim, live well — Anne Barone
|| 10 April 2025
Choices
It’s spring here at Provence-sur-la-Prairie. The hailstorm over the weekend took its toll on the budding iris and roses — and a lot of the new leaves on the trees and shrubs. But despite the near-freeze early Sunday morning, the warmer days this week are encouraging the survivors.
One of my joys of spring is asparagus. My brother arrived this morning delivering two big bunches freshly cut from the field of a farm just outside the town where he lives. Bringing also just-laid eggs from the same farm. So omelette with asparagus is on the menu.
Recently two comments on my new book concerned choices. Nicolle in New Zealand wrote:
Congratulations on your new publication, I purchased from Kindle instantly. It was a very enjoyable read and compliments your other titles. Also I revisit your advice regularly and always read your website Nouvelle updates.
As I approach 50, the importance of exercise is made so clear, and your routine of Pilates and stretching is a good reminder for me to maintain my Tracy Anderson Method subscription as I age. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s harder not doing it. And in the end, we choose our version of hard, don’t we?
Warm regards, Nicolle
Vicki in Friday Harbor also wrote on the topic of choices. In her lengthy and interesting comments on The Barone System, she wrote:
One of the quotes I pay attention to daily is: What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change. This one from Madeleine Albright. I firmly believe that our daily choices are just that: choices.
About six months ago my favorite neighbors decided that it would be better for their children to grow up in Europe and made the choice to relocate. Their sea freight is on the ship. They depart in a few days.
One of the questions I was asked often in the early days of this website was why I did not remain in France instead of returning to the USA. The answer was family reasons. But in hindsight it appears I might have made a better choice. Oh dear!
be chic, stay slim, live well — Anne Barone
|| 31 March 2025
Reader Comments on The Barone System
Such a reward for me when a reader tells me my information has been useful. Recently I was especially rewarded by comments from Donna who has been reading my books and articles for more than 20 years. Donna wrote:
Hi Anne,
I have been reading your books and blog for over twenty years. The books changed my life by introducing me to a new way of living (the French way) which led to a better figure, better wardrobe, better work relationships (using the mystique technique) and more walking. It would take a book of my own to explain how your writings changed me fully.
I read your new book last night and was shocked by all the health information you now possess. I can tell that you have thought about and studied these issues for many years. I was very impressed and you have motivated me yet again, to become even more conscious of good eating and maintaining my health as I approach age 70.
When I look back on my weight journey over the years, I am always impressed that the factor that changed me the most was the Chic and Slim books, especially the first three. Your writings worked their magic on me as I believe your new book now has.
The other day I had a doctor's appointment. There was a 3rd year medical student with my doctor and as I was answering her intake questions, my doctor reviewed my weight graph with her. She asked me what the single most-important factor was in my weight loss journey which was slow and steady over several years. I told her it was the philosophy of Anne Barone's Chic and Slim books and found myself explaining the French Chic way of life that started it all.
Anne, I am so grateful you wrote those books. And I am so grateful to be able to start implementing the teachings of your latest one.
Thank you so much,
Donna
And, thank you, Donna for your lovely email.
Some techniques are useful for staying slim whatever your age. But each advancing stage of our lives brings new challenges to staying slim — and healthy. My aim in writing The Barone System was to give you both the techniques that helped me lose weight and stay slim 55 years, as well as those that I am finding helpful coping with the special difficulties in staying slim and healthy now that I am 80.
be chic, stay slim, live well — Anne Barone
Anne Barone's new book The Barone System is available in paperback and Kindle ebook.
|| 17 March 2025
More Italian Casual Chic
When our Chic & Slim Correspondent Kat sent the photos from Rome of Italian casual chic she had observed there, I wondered if Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister known for her stylish dressing, had also adopted the style.
Keeping an eye out for photos, I found one from which I have excerpted the suit she wore on her visit to the British prime minister at 10 Downing Street earlier this month.
Two features of Italian casual chic strike me: first the white or light beige color and second, the roominess of fit that is just short of baggy. Comfortable surely, but how on earth does anyone keep those white or beige outfits clean? Here at Provence-sur-la-Prairie last week we had two days of dust storms. Outdoors for 15 minutes and those light colored outfits would have been reddish brown.
be chic, stay slim, live well — Anne Barone
|| 13 March 2025
Italian Casual Chic
Our Chic & Slim Special Correspondent Kat has sent more comments and photos from Rome. In the previous Nouvelles I reported her comment: “The locals are almost as slim as the Parisians, and just as stylish, albeit in a different way. Nobody does casual chic as well as the Italians.”
More recently Kat has sent photos of the casual chic she has been seeing in Rome with the following comments. Kat wrote:
I couldn’t resist sending you a photo of Moschino’s window. So witty!
Directly across the street is an outlet shop, where one can buy chic clothes at a fraction of the price. I like it that the cheaper shops aren’t all bundled together in a specific part of town, and vice versa. I did briefly visit Rome’s big department store (like the French, Italians aren’t keen on department stores, preferring small boutiques) only to walk straight out again. I might just as well have been in Printemps, Galleries Lafayette or Selfridges. The brands on offer are identical.
Don’t you love the two jewellery displays? I no longer wear costume jewellery, nowadays I stick to the real stuff, and, needless to say, I don’t have much of it, but I thought those were so attractive.
Merci to Kat for the comments and great photos of Italian casual chic.
Anne Barone's new book is available in paperback and Kindle ebook.
|| 6 March 2025
Italians Eating Well & Staying Slim
Our Chic & Slim Special Correspondent Kat is in Rome. She sent comments and a photo on her observations. Kat wrote:
The first thing I saw leaving our hotel was this deli. And every trattoria and bar is packed solid with locals as well as tourists. Food and drink is everywhere. Pizza is on sale on every street corner, and is being consumed in great quantity.
And yet, the only fat people I’ve seen in my first two days here were U.K. and US tourists. The locals are almost as slim as the Parisians, and just as stylish, albeit in a different way. Nobody does casual chic as well as the Italians.
I am never tempted by the clothes on sale in France, but I could spend a fortune here!
Another thing which always strikes me when I visit the continent is how lean the police are, compared to the chubby British bobbies. Lean and mean seems to be ubiquitous, once you cross the channel, and there are LOTS more of them. Which is just fine by me.
I was not surprised by Kat’s observations about the slim Italians despite their consumption of Italian food and wine. The clue to how Italians eat all that pizza and Prosciutto di Parma and Fettuccine Alfredo and still stay slim is in the photo Kat sent of the interior of the little deli. What the shop offers for sale is REAL food.
In my new book, The Barone System, I write about the findings of Italian-born gerontologist Dr. Valter Longo and recommend his book The Longevity Diet. Not surprising that the Italian diet pays off in long healthy lives. In fact in European life expectancy, Italy comes in second at 83.72 years behind Switzerland at 83.95. A couple of months difference.
In the US where ultra-processed foods make up a high percentage of the average American diet, life expectancy at latest figures is 77.43 years. What we eat can make a difference in how long we live and our quality of life in those latter years.
be chic, stay slim, live well — Anne Barone
Anne Barone's new book is here! Available in paperback and Kindle ebook.
The Barone System in paperback—and Kindle
The Barone System is available at the links below.
|| 26 February 2025
Comment On A Comment
Last week Provence-sur-la-Prairie was enduring a Mini Texas Freeze. This week we are enjoying lovely spring. Nice compensation.
Lots of interesting comments on the new book coming in. Karen in Rosemount commented that she did not remember me writing on the website about suffering the pelvic prolapse that I discuss in the book. That was because I did not write about it there. Nor did I write on the website about my severe digestive problems, my problems with low protein, the West Nile Virus episode, why I did not gain weight during the Covid pandemic as many did, and several other matters covered in the book. This was purposeful.
First of all, I particularly dislike buying a book by a writer whose articles I have been enjoying and finding that the book is just a rehashing of the articles with little or no new material.
Just as I have always tried not to repeat in a subsequent book remedies and techniques I wrote about in a previous book, in The Barone System on staying slim and healthy despite coping with the problems of ageing I wanted to offer material that I had not written about on the website.
Secondly, in the new book, I wanted to be able to not only discuss a problem, but to explain the solution that I found for that problem. In the case of my severe digestive problems, finding a workable remedy required years of research as well as many trials of various solutions — the majority of which, I am sorry to say, did not give the results I had hoped for. But just as in my mid-20s I eventually found a solution for getting rid of my excess weight, I am happy to say that I did eventually find a solution for those severe digestive problems and for other problems plaguing me the past six years. In the new book I was able to discuss solutions for those problems too.
More comments on the comments on the new book in coming Nouvelles.
be chic, stay slim, live well — Anne Barone
|| 10 February 2025
The Barone System in paperback—and Kindle
For those of you who prefer print over ebook you can find The Barone System at the links below.
|| 5 February 2025
The Barone System: 55 Years Slim and Living Well
Fifty-five years ago I lost 55 pounds. Now, here I am at 80 and, unlike many who successfully lose weight, I have kept the pounds from returning.
Previously my focus was on how chic French women stay slim. This new book is about how I do it. Not only how I stay slim, but healthy too — despite all the challenges of natural ageing.
The Kindle version of the new book is available on Amazon. You can read a sample there.
Kindle version of The Barone System on Amazon
The Barone System is also available in paperback.
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The Barone System Print version ISBN 978-1-937066-26-0 is distributed by Ingram. With the print versions of my previous books, Ingram fed the books into the system and they appeared on the sites of various booksellers. I assume this will happen again. As soon as listings appear, I will give you the info about them on this site.
I may also do an EPUB version of The Barone System if I find there is a demand for it.
New Contact Email
During the time I was working on the new book I acquired a new email service. The old att.net contact address became inoperable. I did not post a new address because I did not have time to respond. For the moment the new contact address is baroneslim (the at symbol) pm.me
If I recieve too much spam and phishing email at the address, ProtonMail makes it easy to cancel the email address and replace it if blocking does not solve the problem.
be chic, stay slim, live well — Anne Barone
|| 26 January 2025
Imported French Bread Flour
As I have previously explained, my focus has shifted away from chic French women. (Today many of them are writing their own books about how they stay chic & slim.) Nonetheless I maintain a strong interest in French politics and culture. For that reason, I have found that The Times UK gives me a good source of such information. Far better than the two US newspapers I read regularly.
Recently an article The Times UK reported that Americans have discovered that to make French bread that looks and tastes like bread they ate in France requires French flour. 1,383 tons were imported into the USA in 2024 despite the fact that French flour costs up to nine times that of flour sold in US supermarkets. $40 for a 5 pound bag is common. No doubt the price will rise further if the threatened tariffs kick in.
Another reason Americans are willing to pay this premium price is that they can digest bread made from this imported French flour better. This is because good quality French bread flour has less gluten.
The Times UK quotes the president of France’s Confederation of Bakers who explains that American farmers grow varieties of wheat with a high gluten content because those flours are better suited for industrial processing. With less gluten you get a softer, better tasting bread.
Another thing that Americans who are attempting to bake a more authentic French bread have found is that the water used in making the bread is also important. Chlorinated tap water does not work well. But that seems to be true for any type of bread you bake. I always use water filterred in my Brita countertop water filter pitcher.
Book Update
I had hoped to have both the print and ebook versions of the new book available by the end of last week. But the project remains in the state of “Everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong.” Next week it appears more unanticipated problems will cause further delay. This happens too in weight loss. Just as I can’t seem to get the new book published, some people can’t loose those last 10 pounds to reach a healthy weight. But for weight loss as for book publishing, we must persevere.
be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone
|| 15 January 2025
Do Proper Exercise Clothes Encourage Regular Exercise?
Remember Susan Powter? She was the perpetually angry 1990s diet and exercise guru who screamed “It’s fat that makes you fat!”
Of course, my French-inspired system of losing weight and staying slim differed on many points from Susan Powter’s. But there was one piece of her weight control advice that I thought a really good idea.
For women who did not exercise and were having difficultly beginning a program, Susan Powter advised proper exercise clothes that were comfortable and attractive. The idea was that if you looked good exercising, you would be more likely to stick with an exercise program. It's an idea.
New book
As for the new book, it is finished and the digital files for the print edition are at the printers. The files passed technical validation. I am awaiting a proof copy. But I am considering some changes that would delay a week or so the print edition’s publication. I am trying to decide.
Once I had sent the print version files to the printers, I was ready to start work on the ebook versions. What a shock to discover how much had changed in the ebook preparation world since I last produced one. The system that I used for the ebook versions of my other books no longer work.
Medical advice for delaying cognitive decline is learning something new. Suggestions are for learning a foreign language or a musical instrument. I suppose learning how to create digital files for an ebook should work as well.
be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone
|| 1 January 2025
Happy New Year !
So here we are on the first day of 2025. Looking back over 2024, for me it was not one of my better years. Health problems. Difficulties with the new book. Failure to finish the book by my intended August deadline. Ceiling leaks. More ceiling leaks. Electrical problems. Raccoon problems. Five days out of ten, there was a catastrophe du jour.
My grandmother would have said that the reason my year did not go well was that I neglected to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day 2024. I grew up in a family that believed that you had to eat those dark-centered legumes on the first day of the new year for good luck. Otherwise your year would not go well.
So I am trying to start a better year. For lunch I sautéed onions and celery with some venison jerky my son gave me, added a can of black-eyed peas and simmered the mixture until the flavors blended. Tasty with corn bread.
Another of my grandmother’s New Year’s convictions was that you must be careful about your activities on the first day of the year because “what you do on New Year’s Day you will do all year long.”
So today I have refrained from doing any work on the new book. I have spent about ten times longer working on this project than I planned, I certainly DO NOT want to work on it every day of 2025. The interior pages are ready. I have almost completed the book cover. I want this much-interrupted endeavor finished and off to the printer. SOON.
I hope your new year is beginning well. Wishing you all good things in 2025.
be chic, stay slim, be healthy — Anne Barone
|| 25 December 2024
My Christmas Good Deed
Joyeuses Fêtes / Happy Holidays
Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas
As background, I have a problem with the local postal service delivering other people's mail to my house. Since I think that at the prices we pay for postage means delivering mail to the correct address is the post office’s responsibility, I usually send misdelivvered mail back to them to try again.
The misdelivered card Christmas Eve that caused me some consternation had stamped in the upper left corner of the envelope that it was Inmate Correspondence from a distant Texas county jail. On the back flap of the envelope was the inmate’s last name, an address indicating the cellblock, cell number, and name of the jail. (I found this very depressing.) Even more depressing was the card was addressed to two boys. Obviously a Christmas card from a parent who was in jail. I quickly realized I would have to hand deliver this card, else the boys would not receive it by Christmas.
The problem was the boys’ address was in an area that is somewhat rough. And households that have a family member in jail are sometimes ones that do not appreciate the approach of strangers. Plus they sometimes have dogs that also do not like the approach of strangers.
Before I set out I put my Medicare card in my jeans pocket along with a photo ID in case some mishap befell me and I had to go to the Emergency Room. Also, of course, I pocketed my phone.
The battery in my car was dead beyond jumpstarting so I had to walk. It was misting rain when I set out. When I got within a few houses of the address, I was relieved to see that the area had undergone some restoration since I had last seen it. I made as quick and quiet a delivery to the mailbox as I could, and thankfully, returned home without arousing objection from either animal or human. Nor without slipping and falling on the wet sidewalks.
And the boys had their card in time for Christmas.
Wishing you comfort and joy — Anne Barone
|| 11 December 2024
Does all the stuff we do to our faces make a difference?
Speaking for myself, it does.
I was not purposely running a test. But since for the past couple of months because I was trying to devote every available second I could to working on the new book — and because I was having several health problems: a cough that still has not gone away, an eye infection, ear problems — and because in addition to not feeling well, I thought some of the products I regularly used for skin care were possibly causing irritation or slowing the healing of my health problems, for all practical purposes I stopped doing more than cleaning my face night and morning and applying minimal makeup. Some days I did not even put on eyeliner — without which I look, as my grandmother would say, “like dead warmed over.”
The peels, the retinol, the DMAE serum that works against sagging, the night eye firming serum, the Frownie patches and such, all this I dispensed with. And it didn’t take long before I began seeing wrinkles. Wrinkles! Plus sags.
Oh, dear. I was looking AGED!
So the answer to the question: “Does all the stuff we do to our faces make a difference?” is that on my face it definitely does. And as soon as I finish the book cover and get this book off to the printers, it is back to my regular skin care routine.
Now it is back to work on the book cover.
be chic, be slim — Anne Barone
|| 28 November 2024
Happy Thanksgiving 2024
Recently I shared information about a German butcher making and selling a raccoon sausage.
Since today is Thanksgiving, I will share with you that in 1926, Mississippi supporters of the then-president Calvin Coolidge sent him a live raccoon for the White House Thanksgiving dinner. But the Coolidges were Northerners, both born in Vermont, and preferred turkey for Thanksgiving. So First Lady Grace Coolidge named the raccoon Rebecca and made it a family pet.
We are accustomed to the annual ritual of the presidential pardon of the Thanksgiving turkey. But 98 years ago, the US president pardoned the raccoon. And ate the turkey.
Happy Thanksgiving — Anne Barone
|| 7 November 2024
The Sausage Solution
If I am not totally rid of raccoons, I seem to have the situation under control. Though I have not yet opened the garage door this morning to look inside. But I have only seen one raccoon this past week. That’s a good sign. Susan in Hamilton sent a clipping about some poor woman in Washington state who one day woke up to find almost a hundred raccoons on her property. Nightmare.
In the meantime, our Chic & Slim Special Correspondent Kat sent a link to an article in The Times UK that reported on a solution one German butcher had found for the overpopulation of raccoons in his country: raccoon sausage. And I believe he also makes a sort of paté.
When I asked my son who hunts if anyone hunted raccoons for food in the USA, he said generally not because especially in the eastern part of the country there is much rabies in the raccoon population. (Germany, like most of Europe and the UK, has been rabies-free for a number of years.)
The Times UK requires a subscription (or a friend who emails a link) to read articles. But if you have a subscription, you can read the raccoon sausage article.
Yahoo News (no subscription required but a plague of advertisements. Use an ad blocker) offers an article on the raccoon sausage with a video.
Much thanks to Susan and Kat for the information.
This wretched time change. My struggle to adjust my body clock seems particularly difficult this year. As a consequence I am unusually grumpy. Ask the cat. It usually takes about two weeks for my body clock reset and those are not a pleasant interlude. When so many doctors report stress to body and brain from the time change, why do we continue with this madness?
be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone