Book Review: French Women Don't Get Fat (aka: why we called them Freedom Fries)

So I bought the paperback version of Mireille Guiliano's bestseller, French Women Don't Get Fat.

I had been wanting to read it for the past few years because I thought the title was great and so I read it last week. She states that there is no magic to weight loss, which I already knew. The secret to weight loss is that there is no secret. You have to burn off more calories than you take in. It's that simple. And it's that hard.

Where I took umbrage with her was the broad paintbrush with which she paints Americans. Yes, we eat portion sizes that are too big. Yes, we don't get enough exercise. We all know that our country has an obscene rate of obesity. But some of the recommendations are a little much for me and only resulted on me feeling a little offended on behalf of the entire US.

First, she recommends starting your "recasting", as she calls it with a 48 hour journey into her "magical leek soup". Here is the recipe"
-2 lbs of leeks
-water

That's it. No potatoes, no cream, no salt, no yummy pieces of bacon? What? So you drink a cup of the leek water every 2-3 hours and you can drink "as much water as you want". Are you kidding me? I would rather have a colonic. Well, not really, but you get my point. For a diversion, she suggests you can drizzle a 1/2 cup of the boiled leek carcass with some lemon juice as a "treat".

Her other recommendation is to shop for groceries every day rather than every few weeks. Show me someone who has time to do that and I will say that person either a) doesn't have kids, or b) has an armory of nannies and personal assistants and lives in a New York City or Paris. I can barely deal with the morons who use the self scanning lane once a month as it is. You want me to go there every day? You would end up seeing me on the six o'clock evening news.

She also states that she has a glass of Champagne daily and loves to eat chocolate. If I were the CEO of Veuve Clicquot, I would drink Champagne and good chocolate every day too. And I would weigh 300 lbs. I think all of the ketones from her starving herself on leek water are making her kooky. Now I need to find a book along the lines of, Italian Women and the Pasta That Loves Them (fictional title). Now that is a book I could enjoy!