Effortless perfection means exercise without trying

One thing that helps make we Frenchwomen impossibly and effortlessly perfect is our tendency to walk or take the stairs where practical.  Just like Mireille Guiliano, I cannot understand the American tendency to drive to the gym and put oneself through endless pain and then eat like a pig, thereby making the time in the gym wasted.

I completely share Mireille's disdain for the American idea of "no pain no gain".  A French woman's aim in life is to have as much pleasure as possible.  A French woman, in her effortless perfection, gains great pleasure from delicious morsels of food, savouring every bite.  Given the famous restaurant scene with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal in Katz's Delicatessen in Nuu Yawk in "When Harry met Sally", even American women should know very well that it is possible to gain pleasure from food to the extent that one emits strange moans and groans!  I make similar noises when I consume a piece of chocolate that is 85% cocoa or higher!  For this reason, I tend to consume the 85%-plus varieties of chocolate only when I am alone, so as to save attracting attention!

The fundamental rule of losing weight is that the calories that enter our body must be fewer in number than the calories leaving our system.  With this in mind, there are only two ways to achieve this negative balance of calories: - exercise more or eat less.  A Frenchwoman knows that the latter is by far the most effective strategy.

When it comes to exercise, there are two points that a Frenchwoman knows.

Firstly, if one eats like a pig, then it is necessary to do ever more exercise to look like an impossibly perfect Frenchwoman.  A Frenchwoman loves being active, but she knows that she will hate active pursuits if she has to do them just to stay thin.  Therefore, what a Frenchwoman does is eat foods of the highest quality in the daintiest quantities so that exercise she does do tends to be for pleasure only.  As I say, a Frenchwoman goes out of her way to make sure she has as much pleasure as possible.

Secondly, the exception to that rule is passive exercise.  A Frenchwoman will try and fit as much exercise as possible into her normal routine.  When I lived in London when I was building up my career in the fashion magazine industry, I got tired of all the disapproving stares I got from overweight colleagues when I walked distances they would take public transport for or when I took the stairs in situations when they would take the lift!  Stupid people!  If they paid attention to the things a Frenchwoman just instinctively knows, they wouldn't be so fat!  This article concentrates on passive exercise.

When I receive American guests in Marseille who arrive via the train station (train travel is a bit "ye olde worlde" for them until they see how sophisticated we French are in this area), if they don't insist on taking a taxi to the Vieux Port for me to introduce them to the various cafés selling pastis, they will at the very least insist on taking the metro!  As for me personally, I have never used the metro (which has been in operation since 1977) and I don't plan to.  It is not that I dislike trains in any way (though I generally think the idea of a rubber-tyre metro is bonkers), but the distances covered by the metro are a long way within distances I would walk.  Ditto the tram system.  Maybe the metro and tram systems were built just for the tourists?

I also like to introduce people to the Calanques.  I like to walk all the way to the Calanques around les Goudes sometimes, but if someone is staying in Marseille only briefly, the walk there and back can take out a big chunk of the time.  This is where "Le vélo" comes in: - this is Marseille's equivalent of Boris Bikes and its arrival in 2007 pre-dates Boris Bikes by a long time.  There is something very French about riding a bike (and wearing a stripey jumper and a beret and having some onions in a string over one's shoulder, MDR).  Not surprisingly, as although Karl Drais (a German) invented the Laufmaschine (powered by the rider using a walking motion), Pierre Michaux, Pierre Lallement and the Olivier brothers invented what seems to be the first example of what we know of as a bicycle, given that it was pedal-driven, in the 1860s.  Also, the Michaux company was the first to mass-produce what was then known as the velocipede.  Anyway, I digress.  American visitors tend to want to take a taxi to see the Calanques, but I find that rather silly.  One would have to be super-unfit to take a taxi in preference to a bike to get there.

Granted, I tend to take the TGV when I travel to Paris, as the journey is almost 750km, which is a little impractical for walking.  Also, London-Paris is around 450km, but one is not allowed to walk inside the Channel Tunnel, MDR.

I also can't understand why unfit American guests who visit my home insist on taking the "ellllllevadorrrrrrrrrrrr".  They tend to be puffed out after the first floor.  I have sometimes made the mistake of asking American guests to help me carry shopping home on the way back from the station and up to my penthouse flat: - these people are used to doing this by car.  I love to share with people the delights of the pine smell in hot weather on the hill on which Notre Dame de la Garde, but if someone is that unfit, they aren't going to keep up with me and Americans don't know how to appreciate simple pleasures in life anyway.

Americans like to look disapprovingly at me when I say that I refuse to set foot in a gym, but they don't realise how fit French women are on account of exercise built into their routine such as walking and using the stairs.  In their stupidity, they pay huge sums of money to get an effect that we French women get for free.  American and British women should look to our example of seeking maximum pleasure in all we do: - training ourselves to be full on as little food as possible so that we can afford to only set out to do vigorous pursuits when they give us pleasure.