8
THE NONDIET ANTI-AGING NUTRITIONAL FORMULA
Think of a nice garden plant. What does it need most? Try water and sunlight. As women get older, they may think they need to take lots of vitamins and supplements to feel and look good. But before you worry about diet supplements, let’s talk water and sunlight. As we get on in years, we need to pay special attention to both. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, am I getting outside and into the sun each day and not just getting sun through the light-altering glass of my office or living room window?
Want to live longer and healthier? Take a dose of sunlight each day, say, fifteen to thirty minutes. For one thing, sunlight signals skin cells to produce vitamin D, a vitamin or prohormone that many people lack as they age. Sad, as it is the least expensive medicine available to combat such concerns of old age as bone health and osteoporosis, as well as such dreads of any age as heart disease, depression, diabetes, and more.
Did you know that recent studies have shown that the aging of our eyes impacts our sleep and mental state of mind? Light—in this case the lack thereof—triggers melatonin, which has a lot of health benefits, including getting us calm and ready for sleep. Serotonin, a light-trigger hormone, gets us up in the morning with energy, alertness, and joie de vivre (I added the latter, as I doubt it has appeared in any scientific referred journal).
Rise and shine: studies have shown that bright light suppresses melatonin, so when our eyes age and absorb less light, blue wavelength in particular—oops—we lack the turn-on that gets us up and out of bed alert and in a good mood. One study showed that the stimulation we receive from light in our youth is down 50 percent by age forty-five and by seventy-five is only 17 percent. Wow. Turn on the lights. But lights don’t compete with the sun, which is so much more powerful in boosting mood, helping us feel good, giving us energy, and triggering healthy reactions in our bodies after millennia of evolution and across the entire wave spectrum.
Could the French be living longer because they are still not a car culture like America and go out each morning into the daylight to buy their baguette? Well, many still do. Daylight is as important to sleep patterns and mood and physical health as water is to life. But who in this pressured life built on year-round indoor occupations recognizes that? The correlation between light deprivation and depression is well established. And who needs to feel down?
No question, as we age (or as we rise in the business world and work long hours), we often neglect a very basic need: to get out and into the sunlight. And as we get older, we tend to live more inside, where artificial “daylight” is a thousand or many thousands of times dimmer than the outdoors, and we put ourselves at risk for poor health and unhappiness. So, we need an attitude and discipline that says, “I am going out in the daylight daily.” Tie that to a walk and a glass of water before and after your walk, and you have a remarkable formula for wellness that is often neglected.
Water is doubtless the least expensive anti-aging potion. And as we age, we can become seriously dehydrated if we do not “dose” ourselves with adequate and regular amounts of water. Water is one “medicine” where it is hard to take an overdose; it is possible, but nature has its own means of adjusting the balance.
The benefits of water are obvious. Our 100 trillion body cells (give or take a few) are—regardless of our size, shape, gender, or age—composed of mainly water. It is our number one essential element. Water passes essential nutrients throughout the body to all organs; it maintains body temperature; it removes the body’s wastes and toxins; and it maintains the skin’s moisture balance, keeping it elastic and soft (How’s that for a low-cost, anti-aging beauty cream?).
For some reason, people have a tendency not to drink enough water when they age, and our thirst centers seem not to function as well as they did when we were young. But we also create artificial barriers, such as the worry that we will have to go to the bathroom a lot. Let us not be too vain or silly. Our bladders can adjust and be trained to handle the appropriate amount of water consumed in regular intervals. And an extra trip or two to the WC as we call it in France…mon Dieu! If you need an additional motivator, consider this: the brain has one of the body’s highest concentrations of water, up to 85 percent. And if our brains become dehydrated (something we have all seen in the elderly), we become confused and disoriented.
But how much water is sufficient? What’s the proper “dose”? The general rule of thumb is 8 glasses a day, or about 64 ounces (1.9 liters), which jibes with the Mayo Clinic and the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations for women. As I wrote earlier, I make sure to have one glass of water before I go to bed and another glass first thing in the morning before I eat breakfast. I certainly drink some water in the late morning, late afternoon, and before dinner, partly not to fall into the trap of eating something or overeating because I think my body is saying it is hungry when it is really thirsty. But we aren’t all the same size and don’t have the same daily routines. I know what you are again thinking…trips to the WC, especially at night. Katie Couric asked me that on national TV when she was the host of the Today Show. As I told her, you would be surprised how much you can train your muscles and expand and accustom your bladder. It is just conditioning, then routine. Not a problem for most people. You get used to it.
Here are some caveats: bigger body, bigger dosage, but 80 percent of your daily water needs to come from pure water (with or preferably without bubbles). Coffee and alcohol not only don’t count, but as diuretics, they call for increasing the dosage. So does exercise. If you exercise for a half hour and break a sweat, drink an additional eight-ounce glass afterward. Get an hour-long massage? Add another eight ounces. On a long airplane flight? Double up. In short, pay attention to your body’s needs.
Another measure of the right dosage is one-half ounce a day for every pound of body weight (in metrics, the rule is kilos divided by thirty equals liters required). But again, ballpark, and use some common sense. If it is very hot and dry and you are perspiring, up the dosage. Ditto if you find you are getting muscle cramps.
Water is our daily and vital elimination agent, so if your urine is not very pale, that’s a signal that you are not drinking enough water. Permit me to put in a plug here for the French weekend leek detox, which I described in French Women Don’t Get Fat as a jump start to losing a few pounds and ridding oneself of those natural and artificial by-products of our twenty-first-century bodies. It is good for you. Eat the leeks for lunch and drink the soup. In that book, I talked about a twenty-four-to forty-eight-hour cleansing. In the “you can’t get enough of a good thing” category, I read about a Hollywood-style two to three weeks of diet detox. It seems to me there’s a nutritional balance disaster waiting to happen.
Water flushes one’s daily excesses and wastes, which is essential to good health. So in a broad sense it removes toxins. Rule #1 again: drink your daily water. Periodically a forced detox using a diuretic, such as leek broth, is desirable for cleansing and rebalancing oneself. It is time-tested, and we surely have more artificial and other toxins to purge than ever before.
EXPANDING THE ANTI-AGING FORMULA: THE PAINTER’S PALETTE
Okay, sun and water are two of the ingredients of the anti-diet, anti-aging formula. Add moderate but regular exercise (covered in a previous chapter), and now add proper nutrition and portion size to the formula. If you are forty-plus and are not following a good pattern…hello, time to change for your own sake!
Mirror, mirror, how many colors am I eating a day? Colors? Yes. If you are consistently eating monochromatic meals, especially in brown tones, you are probably depriving your body of essential nutrients. Thinking colors is an easy trick—at least for me—to ensure a balanced diet.
My personal rule is three colors on a plate and at least five colors a day. How’s that for a formula?
Think fruits and vegetables, fish, meat, and poultry. Think carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Think water and wine and tea and coffee. Think chocolate. Think textures from soup, perhaps with croûtons, to ice cream, perhaps with nuts, to cereal to fish to red meat. Think variety and nonboring intake. Think a diet where nothing is restricted but everything is encouraged in moderation. At least three colors on a plate and five colors a day generally ensure a healthy variety of nutrients, fiber, and a ratio of carbohydrates, proteins, and fat.
In a world with too many people not eating enough fruits and vegetables, veggie and fruit smoothies are helping some people add (and drink) color—green, orange, red, for example—and balanced nutrients to a daily diet. Juicers and juice stores are a relatively recent growing phenomenon in America. Of course, eating the fruits and vegetables as fruits and vegetables is nature’s best way of getting a quota or higher quota of vital nutrients.
Many government and health agencies publish recommended diet components, including variations of the “food pyramid.” There are easily twenty-five versions of this from respected organizations, perhaps the two best known come from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). No two are completely in sync, and all lag behind current diet and health research findings.
The USDA’s food pyramid was introduced in 1992 but was significantly revised in 2005, and traded in for a plate in 2011, with fruits and vegetables taking up half the plate and grains and protein making up the other half, with vegetables and grains each dominating their respective halves.
Virtually all the food guidelines concentrate on these food groups: vegetables, fruits (including nuts), oils, dairy, and meat and beans.
But to give fish its due, we are better off thinking along the WHO’s percentage lines of a balanced daily diet, consisting of 10 to 15 percent protein; 15 to 30 percent fat (most of the good kind); and 55 to 75 percent carbohydrates. For me, postmenopause, I think 30-20-50 (protein-fat-carbohydrates) is closer to the mark, but not over a meal or a day, but rather over a two-day period.
It is not so simple or easy to follow a nutritional formula or maintain balance; if it were, I would not need to write this sentence. People don’t always understand the distinctions, and our bodies don’t process some foods the same way, or in the same fashion at different times of day. Let’s remember that age changes our nutritional needs, our digestive functions, and our metabolism, so ratios and formulas do not always fit precisely, and what works at one stage does not always work as well at the next. But it is important to respect basic guidelines and adjust from there. The French are not big into counting calories, but they do pay a lot of attention to nutrients and their quality and do derive more of their nutrients from fruits and vegetables than, for example, Americans. Me, too. And, of course, they eat their daily bread. At least in 2012, 85 percent did, and it was a prime source of their complex carbohydrates and fiber.
For me, this is clear: Eat with your head. Eat breakfast, three meals a day, or four smaller ones if you must, but the key is each should include carbs/proteins/fat…always. If you must snack, opt for a yogurt with a few slices of fruit, or a sliver of cheese with a whole wheat cracker. Past age forty-five, decrease meat intake, portions, and opt for quality over quantity. The junk food one eats when growing up does some heavy damage after thirty, so reserve chips and cupcakes and the like for indulgences. Ditto with wine: one glass a day gives you all the benefits. Understand portion size. Think of your fist as a portion, which is the common size and notion in France.
DELIVER US OUR DAILY BREAD OCCASIONALLY
It was a French man, a foodie philosopher in the nineteenth century named Brillat Savarin, who first said, “We are what we eat.” And it becomes truer and truer as we age.
Mirror, mirror, am I eating three meals a day? Am I skipping one meal and bingeing on another? Do I know what I am putting in my body? Am I snacking between meals? Am I eating when I am not hungry? Am I eating balanced, nutritious meals? Do I have “offenders” (foods that I OD on or that are not good for me)? Is what I eat adapted to my age and lifestyle?
As I grow older, I know that the more I learn, the more I know how much I don’t know. I appreciate that it takes a lifetime for most of us to build our knowledge database and mental monitor when it comes to eating healthy and with pleasure. Ideally, it would be great to begin learning early with a great mother who knows about food, nutrition, cooking, and the effects of the bad food, including junk food, too much sugar and salt coming from processed food (and all that take-out food), as well as eating too much in restaurants. My Parisian friend Guillemette is trying to be such a mother to her young daughter, who does not eat processed food and started to learn to cook at age three. But not all of us are so lucky, so we must use our heads.
Restaurants, whether fast-food chains or fine restaurants, are border-zone dangerous. Chefs are not great masters at balance or nutrition and are notorious for extremes in salt and sugar, even when they use quality ingredients. It’s the nature of the beast. You would think a preventive regimen would be mandatory in health and nutrition courses each term in cooking schools and medical schools! France is fast waking up to this.
I had to go back to childhood to remember why I am not a fan of snacks (besides the fact that when I eat three meals a day, I don’t need one). Indeed, it was my mother who taught my brother and me, with subtleness, to avoid them. She’d say something like “You just had lunch,” or “We are going to have dinner soon,” or “Have a glass of water” and distract us from our nagging. It worked. While snacking was not really an option, the French sometimes take a small fourth meal called goûter, an occasional taste of something in the afternoon. We kids were granted this small bite after a long bike ride or some activity. Not a daily milk-and-cookies moment or a British afternoon tea, but an occasional nutritional pick-me-up, which I saw my parents partake of only on a holiday or weekend when we had visitors.
Breakfast should be the most important meal of the day at any age. Once people know why they need breakfast and the problems that can happen later when they compensate for not having it, change becomes easier. At home, Mom would prepare our simple breakfast way before we were up—going out to get fresh bread or baking on the weekend—and it was not a rush moment, though both she and my father had jobs. We would sit down to eat the typical French breakfast of those days, which may not have been the very best nutritionally, but surely had the inclusion of carbs/protein/fat: a slice of toast with a sliver of butter, a bit of jam, and coffee with milk. My parents had the same breakfast with an extra slice or two of bread. That was pretty much it during the week, but in those days, we kids had a midmorning glass of milk at school to sustain us till lunch, the main meal of the day.
My breakfast changed a lot when I started working in America. First, I needed the sustained energy, but also I discovered all sorts of good breakfast choices—including eggs—which we never had at the start of the day in France. Then I read and learned about all the options. At thirty I made some big changes in the way I ate, and again fine-tuned them at forty, fifty, and sixty.
For me, the daily bowl of cereal in my thirties gave place to a varied breakfast: basically yogurt for Monday, eggs for Tuesday, whole wheat toast and cheese with a half grapefruit for Wednesday, oatmeal for Thursday, and so on. Variety was key. Today, I have made more changes and savor my magical breakfast (yogurt with flaxseed oil, lemon juice, honey, and ground unsweetened whole wheat cereal with walnuts, as detailed in The French Women Don’t Get Fat Cookbook) at least every other day, and certainly always if I have a meeting, lecture, yoga class, or anything besides my morning of writing, when I know that lunch will be at a regular time. I am still learning to eat slowly and breathe deeply—a constant challenge, as is simply and gently dealing with my limits and adapting to them.
Don’t skip a meal, as you will risk lacking vitamins and minerals. If you really don’t have the time to lunch or want to reduce your overall food intake, just have something with protein and a minimum of carbs and fat, such as a yogurt. Or what about a soup, generally a source of many good things including fiber? My aunt (Tante Berthe) used to say that warm soup feels like velvet in the stomach.
When dealing with holiday meals, beware the danger of confusing sensations of hunger with sensations of satiety. The risk is losing your inhibition and eating way more than normal, thus deregulating your system. Avoid the four-pound bonus at the year-end holiday. Indulge, but eat with your head and compensate over a few days. Again, put pleasure first; if something sounds or looks too good to resist, go ahead, take a deep breath, and forget guilt or anxiety, but be aware of your sensations of hunger/satiety. You don’t have to overeat to enjoy. Sometimes just a few bites will satisfy your mental and physical hunger. Adding the pleasure factor and not denying yourself, but practicing moderation and balance, is a sure way to lose weight or at least to not gain any. For motivation, just imagine starting the new year at your normal weight or less. At moments of eating doubt, try to drink big glasses of sparkling water without too much salt in them (happily, big names such as San Pellegrino and Perrier have zero salt but some calcium)…and drink slowly.
FIVE POUNDS, FIVE POUNDS: THE BIG ALERT
When I was a high school exchange student outside Boston, I was introduced to the American Broadway musical. I particularly remember a satiric Elvis Presley–inspired show, Bye Bye Birdie. There is one song, “What Did I Ever See in Him?” that begins with a doleful, slow recitation of the words Eight Years…eight years. I can still hear it playing in my head except it has been transformed to Five pounds…five pounds. It is a wake-up call. Menopause often is blamed for five or ten of those pounds.
Women generally gain about four to fifteen pounds (two to seven kilos) between the ages of forty and fifty-five. It doesn’t happen overnight, of course, but gradually, though five pounds gained while on vacation or during the holidays and not lost can fast-track the gain. And it is easy to blame untamed menopausal emotions and missed sleep (from hot flashes) for eating chocolate or chips or afternoon snacking. It is well established that being overweight correlates to poor health and a shortened life. So, adapting the right food and lifestyle balance is an imperative to living healthier and longer.
Too many women don’t realize the “five pounds alert.” That’s when it is essential to react and take the following action: for the next two to three weeks, decrease sugar and fat at the two main meals, have leaner meals than usual with veggies and two fruits a day, and try to do without wine during the week and just a glass during the weekend. It’s a no-stress, minor-deprivation way to get back to normal. After five pounds and no action, you’ll keep gaining, believe me; and it will become harder and take longer to rectify, so don’t let that scale tip to the double-digit gain. As my Parisian friend Céline said to me, “After fifty, just looking in a pastry window could make you gain a pound or two!” I know exactly what she means, and I think it is true the world over.
For me this happened when visiting my family in eastern France back when I was a student or working in Paris. My mom would try to make all the dishes I liked during my stay (a survival kit of sorts!) and talk about those she did not make. Or later in life, after long travel periods with too much entertainment and hotel meals, I would also overindulge. When this kind of thing happens, I do my magical breakfast for five days that week, and for my lunch and dinner have fish or meat, two veggies, and a piece of fruit. No bread, wine, or sweets for much of the week is perfectly no stress, as I get my carbs from the honey at breakfast and the fruit at lunch and dinner. That’s all. (Well, almost; for me, I have one or two squares of dark chocolate once or twice a week as a reward and to appease any thoughts of cravings. It is easy to stop at two, if you savor each fully.)
My other slim-down trick is to “eat like a baby.” My favorite formula is to cook vegetables, like carrots: In a small saucepan, heat ½ teaspoon butter till it melts, then add 1 cup sliced carrots and cover with water. Cook till soft, then mash, add a few tablespoons of fresh orange juice, season to taste, and add 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and add ¼ cup quinoa and half a teaspoon of a spice like curry or turmeric. Cook for 15 minutes, till the quinoa is soft. Sprinkle with your favorite herb (parsley for me). Veggies make food less calorie dense per serving, and this dish will fill you up. I find it the perfect lunch if I will be dining out that evening, or I like to have it for dinner when lunch is the main meal of the day. You can try it with squash, cauliflower, or any veggies you like. I like colors: red and green are tops. A teaspoon of crushed nuts can add texture and nutrients.
The main point is that you won’t be hungry. Illusions work. Use and abuse them.
The other tricks are what we call anti-gonflette (anti-swelling), as many women get these pouches, unlike men’s brioches (potbellies), but just as unattractive. Gonflée for a French woman is that unattractive state of getting fat unevenly in the waist area and a feeling of losing one’s waist, thus abolishing belts, which is one of our favorite accessories, and having the whole belly area feel like being five months pregnant…or having a few Michelin tires between the breasts and the lower abdomen. Need I say more? Not seductive. In spite of all the excuses (like aging!), the fact is that weight gain is directly linked with what one eats, and overeating often comes from stress (which slows down transit). Stress provokes cortisol, the hormone that stimulates insulin, which in turn encourages stocking fats. In addition, when stressed, one eats faster, thus without sufficient chewing while consuming big mouthfuls, and at the same time swallowing air.
At fifty or sixty, there can be a lessening of stress for some at work (providing the economy cooperates), but there still are plenty of stressful situations that pile it on: the major stressors include the loss of a spouse, friend, or parent; an illness; or a big move to another house or state or country. Being stressed is not conducive to making changes, including what and how you eat. But instead of overeating as a reaction to stress, force yourself to turn to some other quick and diverting stress-busters. You know the usual suspects—perhaps pampering yourself with a good haircut or a massage, buying more shoes or clothes, taking in a movie with friends, or whatever gives you pleasure. But when it comes to eating, start making changes slowly and treat Monday as a page-turner, eating light (which does not mean eating “lite” food, which may have artificial and chemical ingredients, something I don’t approve of) by skipping the bread and eating broiled fish with steamed veggies, while rewarding yourself with the fresh olive oil and lemon drizzled on them and lots of fresh herbs, which will easily compensate for other fatter ways of cooking. Enjoy a fruit by cutting it and eating it slowly. If this frustrates you, it’s not a solution, but it’s worth trying, as I feel it puts you in touch with what real food tastes like and helps you focus on the moment and relax. It’s my take on a meditative meal. And you have heard this advice: get away from your desk or your computer when eating. The computer, fruits, and salads don’t mix, a lesson many folks have not learned. Very un-French. I am also taken aback when I see people talking on the phone while eating a meal. Not much pleasure and satisfaction there.
What I am preaching is portion control of two kinds: one is what is on the plate; one is the portion (read size and shape) of your body. You have a reasonable amount of control over both. And controlling both adds good years to your life.
I am definitely against the fast fad diets that the French call régime express, as I see mostly negatives in them…except maybe the fast loss, but that does not stay long enough. It’s proven that 80 to 85 percent of those who follow fad diets gain more back within five years. (That may seem like a long time, but it doesn’t happen all in year four. Regained weight accumulates, and for many it is all back within twelve months.) Worse: their nutritional imbalance is scary and they hurt both the body and the morale. After fifty, it is imperative to go slowly to avoid muscular meltdown and bone demineralization. Crash and unbalanced diets can rob our bones and muscles of the very nutrients they need to keep our bodies sound. Use common sense. A main reason French (and some Italian) women don’t get fat is that being gourmet and loving to cook are two great assets to losing weight or maintaining one’s shape. It’s not pure luck that French gastronomy is now part of the Patrimoine de l’humanité de l’Unesco.
Diets are addictive. Most women don’t think about it or realize that the path of the first diet leads to more diets, and eventually you are addicted in the sense that you are always on a diet (how boring) or are seasonally on a plan to lose weight. Women acquire a voice that makes them feel guilty when eating, and so they take no pleasure from food when they eat. Like taking up tobacco, alcohol, or drugs, most women who start dieting never stop. Their lives are a series of unhappy episodes ranging from deprivation (while on the diet) to overeating (when off and bingeing to compensate), which slowly but surely destroys precious metabolism. You should not feel guilty enjoying food, one of life’s pleasures. The only nondiet diet is a lifestyle.
Diets are not limited to gimmicks like eating only grapefruit, or eating only proteins or no carbs, or the thousand variations on the same theme that make the news on television shows and the media and lure a hoard of women into trying yet another way to lose weight fast no matter their age. Diets sometimes include all that powder stuff, the prepared meals, and/or products tied to the diet to make you spend more and feel like you are eating well. They often make you replace food with whatever product they offer that is enticing—some of it much worse than the most fattening of foods you would normally eat.
Today, even though you can have a doctor, author, or coach on the Internet help you lose those pounds, the myth and lies continue. You are simply following the same program as anybody on the fabricated diet, though it may be subtly packaged to make it sound like it is “individualized”; and your questions are answered for a fee by an office of so-called professionals, whom you have never met and who give you some basic answers you can probably find anywhere. That said, knowledge is powerful, and we can use a coach we know and trust or a partner to encourage, advise, accompany, and focus us along the way to eating well with pleasure.
The problem with the so-called popular diets is:
1. They don’t work.
2. The weight is lost too fast (that’s actually the hook to get you on it), as fast is the key word. Your body will never accept this and will get revenge and make you pay dearly for it, either by craving food and regaining lost weight quickly or by breaking your body down from the lack of essential nutrients so that you feel lousy.
3. You won’t realize for a while the destruction diets wreak on your metabolism (make the analogy to a car, where instead of using oil you use water). Your sleep patterns can be affected, and your pulse and blood pressure can take a harmful turn as well. Lack of some essential nutrients can impact the performance of a number of key organs.
4. And depending on the type and frequency of diets, you may get really sick and have all kinds of problems, even with your brain; as well as anemia, problems with your digestive organs, infections, fatigue, and even some cancers or other serious diseases that are more probable with a weak immune system.
5. Diets are addictive and make you lose basic food values, such as enjoying eating and sharing meals that contribute to a healthy body and mind.
6. Diets tend to be “one size fits all” (please don’t believe those who say they are highly “individualized,” as they are not), and that is probably the major mistake, as each of us is different genetically, physically, and psychologically, not to mention the other essential lifestyle issues from location to profession, eating habits, emotional state, temperament, and all that is included in the bien dans sa peau concept.
Women are especially the victims of diet trauma, as our culture calls for siren bodies…and many listen to the quickest tale and promise of the easiest path.
Clearly, many of us can eat whatever we want in our teens, twenties, and even thirties, if we are lucky. Then there comes the time when we need to face an aging metabolism that no longer responds to the toxins and excesses we are feeding it: our bodies start to cry for a break (read a recharged healthy lifestyle).
MEET MARIE-LAURE
My friend Marie-Laure was never typical of French women who don’t get fat; she had been on one diet or another since her late twenties, when she got married and gained ten pounds in the first year. Over the years, and as her weight grew, she fluctuated with losing it all (for a few months), only to gain it back (for the greater part of the year). At fifty-four, she reached an all-time high (menopause and a couple of personal challenges did not help), with thirty-five pounds gained over less than three years (one would say sloughing toward obesity at the limit of overweight, in spite of her tall figure.) She tried one more diet, this one by a famous French doctor who has been all the rage for a few years (the diet mainly appealing to French men who get fat), and in her case it turned out to be the final diet failure and signal that her body gave her before it was too late.
She ended up losing a bit more than thirty-five pounds, not only doing the prescribed diet but religiously buying all the products recommended. Yet within less than a year, all the weight was back and more. Out of desperation, she went to a source thermale or medical spa, and after her medical exam, the worried doctor asked her, “How much did you lose on this last program?” She replied, “Twenty-two hundred euros.” The doctor couldn’t help laughing, and to my friend’s upset face he said, “Actually, we should cry.”
The good news is that Marie-Laure’s last big diet failure was a breakthrough milestone for her, and she changed her lifestyle to the commonsense one so many French women apply—in her case with the help of two stays at the spa and a truly individualized program overseen by a doctor and a nutritionist. She stopped “dieting” and embraced food in a new lifestyle approach. If you need help like Marie-Laure, and can afford it, do get it. It took her two years to get back to a normal weight, and she is still working on the maintenance. Now in her late fifties, she says she has never felt better, cooks at least five days a week, and has added pole walking and dance to her movement routine to great effect. Her appearance makes her “look” actually less than her real weight…she built up her muscles and is filled with energy and feels happy. To reconcile her feelings about food, she had to do quite a bit of writing down what she ate and her feelings about what she ate. She’s never been so attractive and seductive and looking forward to happy times. So here is a trilogy: food/movement/know thyself. Again, these are important elements in my life and also in the lives of French women who don’t get fat (and perhaps do not want or need facelifts).
Marie-Laure says she has one big regret: that she didn’t change her approach to food sooner, at, say, age forty (a good age to start or restart), rather than keep trying quick-fix weight-loss diets for years. Prevention is always a good thing. We all know by now what we are going to face, more or less, at menopause, so I’d give a big yes! to sitting down in your forties and assessing your eating habits. Learning to cook, or growing your cooking skills and dealing with decreased portions are all natural and logical things to do before your body gives you the big signal as in a new and enlarged clothes size.
THE WALTZ THROUGH THE DECADES
One of women’s biggest delusions seems to be that we can keep eating throughout our lives the way we did when we were young. The truth is a simple but nonnegotiable no, we can’t. I know that I cannot eat or drink the way I could in my twenties and thirties, though sometimes my head forgets that.
For most of us, fifty is the age where we reassess how we live and eat, but it is even better to take measures to change our eating and exercise habits early on—small and intelligent ones that still allow for plenty of pleasures. We know and learn to juggle a few self-management issues.
Women in their forties should prepare themselves for menopause and the changes in metabolism the second half of their lives will bring.
Here’s my wining-and-dining log: In my forties, I reduced meat consumption to no more than twice a week, and as a result increased my consumption of fish, which has become more widely available as fresh, nonfrozen. I appreciate that not everyone has easy access to fresh fish, but I always have had fish stores or fishmongers at hand in France and America, and I see them increasingly available wherever my travels take me. And while I was always a big fruit and vegetable consumer, with the advent of more farmers’ markets in America, I was able to increase my intake of locally grown seasonal fruits and vegetables.
I used to joke in my professional days working at Veuve Clicquot that it was a tough job, but someone had to drink all that champagne. In my forties, however, I could no longer tolerate champagne or other wines with both lunch and dinner, so I picked my battle: lunch was better, but more often than not my evening guests were more important, so I waited till dinner to drink, but carefully watched my intake, doing the old trick, which is to pretend to drink but merely sip…so when the restaurant staff comes around your glass is still too full for a refill. This is a good and easy technique, as your guests or hosts will most likely not notice. I have practiced the technique successfully hundreds of times. For some women in their forties, cutting out alcohol all together around menopause is in order and comes with no effort simply because drinking makes them feel ill.
By my fifties, I appreciated that I could no longer tolerate wine well at all, and gone were the days when I could share a bottle of wine with my husband or a friend over happy hour and dinner. Reduce became the key word. Three glasses on some days became two or one, and I had wine at only one meal (again, I entertained in restaurants for business reasons in those days, so was always obliged to have a glass of champagne. I cut back sharply at that time, and today don’t have any wine obligations at all. On the contrary, wine is not a writer’s friend). At home, my husband and I adopted the “half bottle with dinner” rule. We’d open a bottle, decant half of it into a half bottle, cork it, and set it aside for another night. Sharing a half bottle with our dinner seemed the right and healthy amount. And wine in moderation, as we have come to know, is healthy and anti-aging. But I practice consuming wine only when I am consuming food.
My food intake in my fifties remained balanced, though with my travel experiences and greater availability in markets, I added to the variety of what I ate. Embracing new foods and dishes is fun. However, the big change was in my attention to portion control. I had to watch my offenders: bread and dessert. There was a time when I could enjoy these in abundance…but not in my fifties. The food and wine challenge is at its hardest when we are out with friends, or at holidays, or when we are on vacation. At times, during vacation or prolonged visits from relatives or friends, I’d notice the differences and how mixing white and red wine, for example, was no longer a good option for me. On the rare occasion when a fancy meal meant that possible combination, I’d just pick one and felt much better. And for the first time in my life, I learned to split a dessert! One for two.
The sixties are more telling and less forgiving, I have found. We just don’t need to eat the way our developed and commercial world seemingly wants us to, and we all know that most of us eat 10 to 30 percent more than what we need anyway. My portions are now smaller, and at restaurants I’ve learned to say “No dessert” without a pang of regret. Sometimes I order two appetizers rather than a large main course. I can live without drinking wine for a week or more with no problem, particularly if I am alone or with someone who does not drink either. Perhaps the most noticeable change since I “retired” from corporate life and responsibilities, and have much more control of my time and meals, is that I eat more vegetables than ever. I can live on steamed vegetables.
Last week, I had lunch in Paris with my friend Jeanine, age eighty. Single, a breast cancer survivor, she is, as always, slim and energetic, and something of a role model. She literally eats like a bird, that is, if birds liked soup. Every day she takes an hour-long walk (it helps to live in Paris). Whenever I see her, I feel like I am taking a refresher course on healthy habits for those of advanced years.