Feeling a bit 'bouboum', Patsey Murphy goes to meet the author of 'French Women Don't Get Fat' to see if she can deconstruct the French paradox for once and for all.
Mireille Guiliano has just learned she is to appear on Oprah, and Time and Newsweek magazines are beckoning. It would appear that freedom fry-loving Americans are not so anti-French after all. "They love us, really," she says with Gallic certainty, having sold 300,000 copies so far. "Who agrees with their government all the time? Nobody. Ironically, the French are the last to publish my book and now three publishers are fighting over it. They are so cautious, buf! They waited to see how it would go elsewhere."
French Women Don't Get Fat is a curious mix of memoir, anecdote and advice, with the odd recipe thrown in. It addresses the inevitable observation we all make after lugging our super-sized selves around Paris for a weekend. How, in the midst of all those chocolatiers, pâtisseries and pyramids of foie gras do they walk the boulevards thin as whippets? Furthermore, is it possible for the non-Gaul to adopt a similar regime if you haven't been brainwashed from birth?
"But of course! Anyone can do it," she says. "You don't have to do it all at once and you don't have to deprive yourself of anything. Equilibrium must be cultivated slowly; overcoming inertia is the hardest part of changing your habits."
As with most diet books these days, its author insists it is not a diet book. Instead it is a strategy: "Since French women do not live by bread alone - much less high protein - I present a philosophy you can make your own." This is a dig at the South Beach/Atkins brigade, of course: "Bacon without bread? Utterly dégueulasse!"
She lives in New York, where she is CEO of Clicquot Inc - hence her oft-expressed belief in the merits of drinking champagne (but only one glass a day). She divides her time between the US, France and Britain so her book draws on comparisons between the three cultures. "French women typically think about good things to eat. Other women typically worry about bad things to eat."
Portion control is her mantra. She even recommends weighing your food initially, which verges on the obsessive in my book, but it is certainly one way to give yourself a jolt about how little you actually need to eat. You also might baulk at her suggestions that one square of chocolate, perhaps three times a week, is sufficient; that if one has six almonds one day you might try to have three the next time. "Ah, yes, " she laughs. "Even my friends say to me, c'est un peu sévère, non?"
But sévère equals soignée, it must be said.
As someone whose job requires that she eat out most working days with a glass of champagne in hand, she is a size 4 or 6, well-coiffed, classically dressed with smart accessories. "French women know one can go far with a great haircut, champagne and perfume," she claims somewhat inevitably, and you just know that her hair appointments are booked for the rest of the year - on both sides of the Atlantic.
She is clearly well versed in the skills of marketing and international business travel. "Of course I never eat airplane food; I just drink water to stay hydrated. Planes are the one place where no one can get to me these days so I enjoy the break and usually read or sleep." She carries a few morsels - soy nuts, for example - ugh - in case of delays.
Walking everywhere and drinking copious amounts of water all day long are central to the regime. Natural yoghurt is a daily must, and her recipe for leek soup is used either to kick-start a 48-hour detox or compensate for over-indulgence. "I love soups, especially in the winter." For a Valentine's supper, she recommends scallops seared in butter or oil with a dash of wine. "Remember: half a dozen oysters are only 60 - 70 calories."
Children can be cajoled into eating well, she says, if they are involved in the process of shopping and preparation from an early age, and kept away from sugary foods - including fruit juices. "Sodas are poison but so are all these fruit juices! Dilute them!"
Her memoir reveals much of the essence of la vie Française: the routines unbroken for generations, the discipline, the rigour, the preoccupations, the obsession with time. It is as far away from our come-all-ye, flahoolach way of life as you can get, but fascinating for all that. And there are some good linguistic gems along the way, such as "bouboum" (dumpy) or the use of chocolate as a verb: "Je déprime, donc je chocolate" ( "When I'm down, I chocolate").
"French women do stray but they always come back, believing there are only detours and no dead ends. If you can manage to adopt even a fraction of the French attitude to food and life, managing weight will cease to be a terror, an obsession, a miserable stop-go affair, and reveal its true nature as part of the art of living."
She drinks perhaps a bubble from her glass of champagne before heading off to the airport in rainy, rush-hour traffic. I, of course, down mine like a drain, and teeter off home, pondering the notion of making Miracle Leek Soup.
French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano is published by Chatto & Windus, €16.99