The French Don't Diet Plan

by Dr. William Clower

  As you take your time and coast into feeling satisfied after the meal, the volume of food you consume will drop, the meal becomes enjoyable again as you spend more time talking to family and friends, and you lose your fear of fats, carbs, and proteins. You become more aware of your body’s satiety signals, and understand when you should stop eating. Finally, that uncomfortable stuffed feeling will never happen again.

  But this is a process, and it takes time. If you forget your new eating behaviors and find yourself stuffed after a meal, don’t worry. Just look back and note that you ate too much too fast, and resolve to reinforce your habits at the next meal so you can stop when you’re satisfied that time. And it’s just this kind of ongoing training that instills the lifetime behaviors that produce low weight for life.

  No more dieting, no more deprivation, because you no longer need them.

  CHEAT SHEET: TAKE YOUR TIME

  Taste your food by eating small and eating slowly. Remember that any new skill starts in your head before sifting down into your hands. In other words, you’ll have to make these lessons happen on purpose, by simple practice, so they can become second nature.

  Practice makes permanent.

  Control your pace, to control your portions, to control your weight.

  Loving Your Food

  Take at least twenty minutes to eat your meal.

  Pace yourself at the table to control portions automatically.

  Enjoy meals with friends.

  Size matters! Use the rule of thumb to determine your bite size.

  If you have food in your mouth, set the food, fork, spork, spoon, cup, or bowl down, so it’s not in your hand.

  Relax. After your meal, wait for the feeling of satisfaction to catch up with you.

  The Results You’re Looking For

  IMMEDIATELY

  You’ll never be stuffed again.

  WITHIN A WEEK

  The volume of food you consume at a meal will drop.

  Meals will become enjoyable again, because you’ll spend more time talking to family and friends, and less time eating.

  WITHIN A MONTH

  You’ll learn these new habits so well that you don’t even have to think about them, and your weight loss will follow.

  Step 5

  Plan on Seconds

  Have you ever lived in a location that had some wonderful attraction, but you never managed to go until you had guests that you had to “show around”? Fortunately for us, when we lived in France we probably had three weeks during our entire stay in which we did not have visitors. So we developed some standard routes for showing them around the various sites and scenes.

  One of my favorites was the Lyon morning market, followed by a mid-morning walk up the hill to the beautiful Fourviere Cathedral. And after all that exercise, we just had to finish up by taking our guests to any of the restaurants to eat. By the time we’d stroll back to the right bank of the Saône across the Marèchal Juin bridge, the market had folded up, moved on, and the restaurant district of Presque’ile (almost an island) awaited—just one short block in and a quick dodge to the left.

  Typically, for our guests, some things were instantly recognizable: the Old World, cobblestone streets, rows of restaurants with the clatter of outdoor tables, waiters flaunting their superior air, and the aura of fabulous food all around. But the menus were another matter altogether. After getting seated and translating the dishes for them—being careful to highlight which were the “Lyonnaise specialty” internal organs—we would point out that the French typically eat in courses: an appetizer perhaps, followed by the entree, salad, dessert, cheese, and coffee.

  One very weight-conscious friend’s eyes widened at this, with her “Oh MY God” expression. “That’s going to be a ton of food!” I tried to tell her that she didn’t have to eat it all, but she assured me that yes, once it arrived on the plate, she probably did.

  Her biggest surprise was that indeed we ate for almost an hour and a half and, by the end of the meal, she didn’t feel stuffed.

  Each French course is sumptuous, but small, too. And, because you know you’ve got more rich food coming, you don’t really mind the size. After all, you’re not expected to fill up completely on the first, second, or even third course. Thus, these multi-course meals have nothing to do with how much you can “put away.” They’re all about enjoying each course as it comes out—and you can’t do that if you’re stuffed after the first one! Think of it as “serial tasting.”

  I’m going to show you how to make this everyday French habit work for you, even when you aren’t able to have a multiple-course dinner. But you should first know the two biggest issues that we have to overcome to apply these wonderful habits: confusing quantity with quality and conflating the love of food with simple gluttony.

  The Difference Between Love and Gluttony

  “The French truly love their food, and that’s why they don’t overconsume.” Doesn’t that sound wrong? I was speaking by phone with a U.S. health reporter and pointed out that the French are thin because they really love their food. She stammered, “Wait. Don’t we have horrible weight and health problems precisely because we love our food too much?”

  That view is very common, and actually represents a huge cause of our weight problems. We’ve confused the love of food with gluttony. This cultural misconception about food is laced throughout our basic behaviors. For example, when people say they love their food, they demonstrate it by eating large volumes, very quickly. Conversely, if you see someone take small bites and eat slowly, you naturally assume that they don’t really like it. Think about what this cultural assumption means for us: Love has been reduced to consumption.

  This belief is so ingrained in our subconscious that we don’t even realize what’s going on, why it’s harmful, or the impact it has on our weight problems.

  By contrast, the French don’t think of loving food as an exercise in ravenous consumption. They don’t even have an expression similar to “pig out.” Rather, for them it’s more about the sensual experience of enjoying delicious food. They treat their love of food like any healthy relationship. In essence, all of the things that make the food wonderful have the French diner’s attention when they’re eating, rather than the TV, the traffic situation, or the computer screen.

  For our part, if we were to love a person like we “love” our food, we’d call that a disturbed relationship. If you just had to have a person, but hated yourself for that behavior every bit as much as we feel guilty for wanting wonderful foods, we’d send you to counseling. If you had to be around them, but treated them as an incidental bother or errand less important than reruns, phone calls, and schedules, we’d realize that eventually someone’s going to get hurt.

  In any relationship, the confusion between love and consumption is corrosive.

  Confusing Quantity with Quality

  For thirty-nine cents extra, fast-food restaurants and all-you-can-eat buffets tell us we can have twice the volume of food and a bucket of soda to wash it back with. This marvelous marketing ploy works because our beliefs have been conditioned to two-dimensional mathematics. Volume equals value. Quantity equals quality. And it’s not just food. This idea appears in all our choices—from homes to Hummers—that conflate worth with size.

  A while back, a commercial for a hamburger company featured a kid holding a burger. You could see that he was very excited about this sandwich and was getting ready to lay into it. When he started eating, the film sped up. Zip zip zip, he’s done. Then he inhaled with a smile on his face and let out a noisy satisfied exhale.

  Marketers spend millions of dollars to figure out what you believe so they can give it to you attached to their wrapper and icon. They gave you this kind of commercial on purpose. Why? Because loving your food, for us, means that you eat it big, and eat it fast.

  When these equations are applied to dinner, normally healthful foods become unhealthful, because most people believe that healthful foods and unhealthful foods
are different items. But the confusion between love and gluttony, quantity and quality, makes this completely untrue. We’ve got to understand this most basic principle.

  Here’s a simple example. If your doctor gave you a prescription and told you that one pill per day was going to make you feel better, would you take the whole bottle because you wanted to feel really good? Of course not. Even though a little is good for you, several times the dose of the very same pill can kill you. The beneficial nature of the medicine is not just about that bottle of pills, but also how you consume them. If someone dies of an overdose, it’s not because of the medicine, it’s because they abused the medicine.

  The same principle is just as valid for foods and beverages. Wine and butter are perfect examples: One to two glasses of wine per day is very good for your heart, but one to two bottles per day is terrible for your liver. Butter has vitamins A and E, as well as selenium, which are very good for you, but if you eat a bucket of butter, it will choke your arteries.

  Thus, food and drink are not the enemy. Overconsumption is. That’s because there’s nothing you cannot kill yourself with by simply having too much of it. This central issue has been the single greatest contributor to our weight and health problems as we’ve cycled through low-fat and low-carb diets. All through these fads, everyone has assumed that, if you just control the molecules, you can eat more and more of the food.

  This is a complete fallacy—even when the food’s low-fat! Danish researcher Jeppe Matthiessen summarized this point straight from his research: “Larger portion sizes of foods low in fat… could be important factors in maintaining a high energy intake, causing overconsumption and enhancing the prevalence of obesity in the population. In light of this development, portion size ought to take central place in dietary guidelines and public campaigns.”

  You do the math. Low-fat products plus high volume eating equals overconsumption, overweight, and obesity.

  Luckily, there is a simple rule you can use to control your eating volume so that wonderful real foods such as chocolate, wine, butter, and eggs remain as healthful as they’ve always been. Love your food. This simple lesson explains the paradox that the French can eat high-fat and high-carb foods every day and yet don’t have our weight and health problems. They keep their foods healthful by having better relationships with them. Here’s how to love your food again:

  To love your food, really, means to spend more time with it, not less. When I’m traveling on tour, I’m consistently approached by people who tell me that they or some member of their family lingers longest with their food and they’re the skinniest ones in the bunch. And they’re thin for all the reasons we’ve said. Eating at a relaxed pace just means you spend more time with less food overall.

  To love your food, really, means judging it by your palate, not your wallet. It’s about the visual appeal, the aromas that fill your home, and the flavor and savor you get bite by delicious bite. Food is not good because its size approximates that of your head or because you paid only ninety-nine cents for it. In fact, “value” foods are cheap only because they’re made with cheap materials.

  To love your food, really, means actually tasting it. Why be a mindless eater? Use all your senses so you can appreciate what you have. With smaller bites, you’re more apt to notice the flavors, aromas, and texture, thereby enjoying it more and eating less in the process.

  So love your food again! That’s what this entire approach is all about.

  PEOPLE ON THE PATH

  Dear Will,

  I started this way of eating on May 15, 2004. I have lost twenty-five pounds since then, steadily, and I still seem to be losing. I cannot emphasize enough how much food has become a complete nonissue. Well, in a way. I don’t have a constant sense of shame in my thoughts and behaviors in relation to food. It’s like that emotional baggage just dropped away. I can’t remember the last time I thought, “Oh, my God, I shouldn’t eat this. I’m going to get fat. I’m too fat already. Yada, yada, yada.” I just eat what I want and don’t give it a second thought. No chemicals though. That’s the only thought I give it.

  In another way, it’s become a guilt-free, delicious focus. I use whole milk, butter, cheese, olive oil, veggies, fruits, homemade bread, chocolate, all these things that are “sinful.” I’m enjoying cooking not only as a creative outlet, but as a serious addition to my health.

  Not only has my eating changed, but my SPENDING has changed. I’m not buying that fake garbage at the grocery store anymore. In fact, besides toilet paper and soap, my local farmers’ market gets ALL of my money. So I guess I’m happy about what you’re doing, I support you, and if there’s anything that I can do to help, please let me know.

  Sincerely,

  Julie B.

  Curing Portion Distortion

  Put food in front of a goldfish and it’ll eat it. Put a lot of food in front of a goldfish, and it’ll eat it all. In fact, it’ll eat until it hurts itself.

  And yet, are we so different?

  More goldfish die every year of overfeeding than of any other cause.

  Obesity now closes in on tobacco as the number one preventable cause of death.

  Why do we eat too much? It sounds obvious, but one biggie-size reason is because (like goldfish) we just don’t know when to stop. Unfortunately, if there’s food in front of us, we’ll swim on over and gulp it down until it’s gone.

  Portions are too large, so people eat too much. But aside from the fact that eating too much nets you too many calories at the plate, worse is that this extra food has no bearing whatsoever on how much you’re going to eat at the next meal! When Dr. Tanja Kral gave test subjects larger portions at one meal, she and her Penn State colleagues found that “subjects did not compensate for the additional intake by eating less at the subsequent meal. The findings indicate that large portions of foods … facilitate the overconsumption of energy.” In other words, a big lunch doesn’t mean you’ll have a small dinner. It just means you’ll have too much to eat!

  For all these reasons, we must retrain our minds to think completely differently about our servings. If you want to eat healthy again, you must eat small and cure your portion distortion. The prior step covered the strategies we can use for forks and fingers, but there’s plenty more work to be done at the plate as well.

  Smaller Plates

  “Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake”: This is the title of the 2005 research by obesity scientist Dr. Brian Wansink and his colleagues, who performed a clever study. They compared how much soup two groups of subjects consumed until they were full. The first group ate from normal-size bowls. The second group ate from modified bowls that slowly, imperceptibly, refilled themselves.

  Both groups ate until the soup was finally gone, but the “bottomless bowlers” ate a whopping 73 percent more than the others. The interesting part of this tale is that the participants who ate so much more didn’t even notice. Incredibly, writes Dr. Wansink, “they did not believe they had consumed more, nor did they perceive themselves as more sated than those eating from normal bowls.”

  Eating was not based on the sensation of fullness, and subjects stopped spooning in the soup only when they saw that their bowls were finally empty. This is a prime example for the lesson we stress throughout this book. Your subjective sensations of hunger do not necessarily mirror your physiological need for food. Again, from Dr. Wansink: “It seems that people use their eyes to count calories and not their stomachs.” In this case, subjects had eaten all they needed, but the power of the visual stimulus (soup still left in the bowl) overrode any other signals, and they just kept eating.

  Thus, eating more does not make you more satisfied. It just makes you eat more.

  Portion Control and the Mind-Body Connection

  Physiologically, your body has a variety of sensors to clue you in that you’re hungry for a certain amount of food. But that need for food must reach consciousness for you to be aware of it (aka your feeling of hunge
r). And the translation between your body’s need and your mind’s interpretation of that need is definitely not direct.

  In other words, your mind amplifies your body’s signal. You may feel ravenous, like you could literally eat everything on the menu, but that’s not actually true. Your mind overestimates what your body needs. This translation error makes all kinds of biological sense. The safest possible survival strategy would be to generate an urgency far in excess of the actual need. This would make sure you got out there to score enough food to prevent any chance of starvation. If you’re Joe Hunter-Gatherer, this is a smart solution.

  But today, our modern overabundance is not appropriate for our instincts anymore. Welcome to weight problems. The solution is to compensate for the urges that have now become out of place. Because your mind overestimates your body’s needs, we should underestimate our urges. That way we’ll hit it just about right.

  This portion control solution begins with scaling down the size of the plate itself. Use medium-size plates instead of large ones. The hardest part of this will be when family celebrations come around and you’re used to serving everyone on platters. But remember, especially when you begin on this lifestyle, the amount in front of you determines the amount you will eat.

  Understanding that basic fact is exactly how you begin to regain control over your food and weight. It starts with a decision on your part to order small and serve small. That way, you get to decide if you overeat or not. Start small and you’ll end small. This is easy!