Customer Reviews

The French Diet: Why French Women Don't Get Fat

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In the wake of Mireille Guiliano's runaway best selling lifestyle memoir, "French Women Don't Get Fat," French dieting guru Michel Montignac reformats his popular "Montignac Method" for an American audience and renames it "The French Diet: The Secrets of Why French Women Don't Get Fat." His secret? Eat real food with a low average glycemic index.

Anyone familiar with Montignac's theories which were rather flagrantly adapted over ten years ago by the creators of the Sugarbusters regime and Suzanne Somers' Somersizing system and worked over to create million dollar dieting empires replete with how-to books, recipes, web sites, food products and a variety of other spin-offs including teeth whitening agents, will appreciate this compact volume that spits out the dieting principles in a minimum of pages, succinctly explains why the diet will work for life and facilitates even the most unimaginative dieter with complete menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner with accompanying recipes.

In the mid-eighties, Montignac wrote "Dine Out and Lose Weight," in sympathy for business people everywhere like himself that had gained too much weight from heavy business dinners and couldn't see a way to remain polite without the need of going up a waist size. Simply stated, he forbid the consumption of high glycemic carbohydrates with fats and proteins, explaining that the insulin release from increased blood sugar levels stores the fats ingested rather than burns them for energy. Montignac Method meals then, were either carbohydrate based or protein/fat based. Only on the maintenance phase of the diet were some lower glycemic carbohydrates allowed to ride side-car with their fattier macronutritional counterparts. Strictly forbidden on any phase were the usual suspect high-glycemic demons of sugar, white flour and other processed foods.

In "The French Diet," Montignac no longer seems caught up with adhering to his former strict dichotomy between carbs and fats. Now refreshingly, he turns his attention on the concept of GO or glycemic outcome as an explanation of the so-called French Paradox. Roughly speaking, GO takes an "average" look at the glycemic index of the entire meal, rather than its individual components. For example, eating a potato (admittedly a bad example as potatoes are forbidden on phase 1) with a high GI should be balanced with the consumption of really low glycemic, high fiber vegetables, keeping the entire GO to a level of 50 or less. For Montignac, keeping a meal at a GO level of less than 35 will result in weight loss. Anything above 50 will start packing that fat back into its favorite storage location -- your abdomen.

In addition, he throws out standard nutritional definitions categorizing carbs as either slow of fast burning, refuses to believe that caloric input and output (in the form of exercise) monitors weight loss or gain and adheres strictly to the premise that selecting foods based on their nutritional value and the effects they have on metabolism is the secret to maintaining one's weight for life. Under Montignac's plan, carbs are no longer public enemy number one and fats, the bad boys of the AHA regime are, no surprise, great if they are either omega 3 or monounsaturated fatty acids-saturated fats are used sparingly and trans fats are a no-no. As expected, proteins should be selected by origin - the best choices, of course, being fish, chicken, turkey, etc. Foods labeled as `funky'(combinations of carbs and fats like nuts and tofu) by similar food combining plans are thankfully no longer `funky' on this one.

If you thought "French Women Don't Get Fat," fun to read, but contained little dieting tenets, you will like Montignac's "The French Diet". His easy-to-understand format feeds into the American need for empiricism with just enough layman friendly science backed by hard facts and medical studies. The bottom line? Following a balanced diet of real food while tweaking the glycemic index to your best interest puts all current dietary fads to shame.

I purchased this book 4 years ago under the title "Eat Yourself Slim" after visiting my family in Canada where this book was popular. Following this diet was easy, I was never hungry, I lost weight. The best news was that as a diabetic on medication, 3 months later my diabetis was under control, no more pills and my doctor was amazed. Highly recommend it.

Mr. Montignac is the real deal. I have friends in Europe who have been eating the 'Montignac way' for years, but until this book was published in the US he was unknown to me. Four weeks ago I began following Mr. Montignac's eating plan, and I have discovered a new and wonderful way to eat. I have lost the weight I wanted to lose (8 pounds), I'm no longer addicted to sugar (I basically lived on sweets and pasta), and I'm eating plenty. I love 'The French Diet' because it includes recipes, easy to follow eating information, and the science behind the eating methods. I plan to follow the French diet forever -- it's not really a diet, but a way of life.

My husband and I have tried every diet known to man (and woman). All have had some flaw or another that made them difficult to maintain (boring, expensive, just plain hungry). This diet focuses on Glycemic Index, so many carbs and fats are acceptable. The diet is very easy to follow long term, we don't get hungry, and many of the recipes included are really good! We even eat chocolate and drink wine... regularly!!! And we have each lost about 15 pounds in the 3 months we have been following this plan. This is a great plan for long term success, and is our new way of eating. It's not an instant weight loss program, but finally one we have found that we can comfortably follow for the long term and lose weight consistently.

There are a bunch of lose weight books on the market. They talk about diet, exercise, all the same standard things that we've all been taught about for years. In this book, Mr Montignac analyzes why the French people have the lowest average body weight per capita in the Western World. As you might guess from the title, it concerns the French eating habits.

Most popular diet books will work if they are followed. Unfortunately most people either don't lose as much weight as they wish, or they quickly regain the weight lost when they go off the diet. This book, instead of pushing a regimen that probably won't be followed, presents an eating philosophy that invludes wine, chocolate, cheese, and red meat while you are losing weight.

The essense of the French Diet is glycemic index, which measures the portion of carbohydrates that are converted into sugar inside the body. The book discusses this philosophy and includes some 60 recipies. And a lot of these recipies aren't bad at all. Shrimp with Green Peppercorns, for instance, is cooked in olive oil and wine.
cooked in olive oil

This book isn't about a quick fix or fad but a lifestyle shift to better eating. It does not tell you things you absolutely cannot eat. In fact, items discounted by most diets are sometimes encouraged. The book points out that the French eat cheeses, chocolates, and other good foods but have a low obesity rate - among the lowest in the world. The book also points out that, while America has been on a fat cutting kick for nearly 15 or more years, our obesity rate is up nearly 30% in that same time. The book focus' on sensible, sound nutrition, and the way our bodies process certain foods.

This book puts much of it's focus, usually with years of reaserch backing its theories, on the glycmic index and how sugars in foods are coverted to fat and stored. It isn't just about fat. There are even handy charts ranking foods from high 100's to low. They offer GI suggestions to loose weight, and to maintence weight. The book also offers menu ideas with a recipe section in the back.

I had to disagree with one of the previous reviewers who, to me, seemed to miss the point of the book. I will add that I have been to France and tasted their food, which is full of flavor and amazing even in the smallest cafés. Here, it too often seems that we focus more on quantity and cost. Our portions are larger and the food, overall, seems less flavorful. The focus in France seems to be quality and flavor. This book - to me and others in my family who have read it - is definately worth the reasonable price.
(Lastly: In France there is a lot more walking and less driving around. Something the book doesn't spend much time on.)

I have followed the Montignac Method for over ten years because the diet works. I ordered THE FRENCH DIET from Amazon.com because I know that each new Montignac book contains something new something to make the diet even more useful to me. Here is what I picked up from the new book. How to incorporate the Glycaemic Load concept into the Glycaemic Index for fine tuning Montignac's original Gi Diet. Next I learned about the GO concept because it is a great help to handle discrepancies i.e., how to combine no so healthy carbohydrates with the healthier ones.

I think THE FRENCH DIET is Montignac's best Gi Diet book ever. It is the easiest presentation and therefore a snap to understand and follow the principles of the diet. Lastly, it also is the most precise and shortest Montignac diet book yet which is a blessing.

Ernest Hilton

The information in this book was direct & to the point in leading people to make healthy, dietary changes in one's life that are not too extreme & has been very helpful for me. I like that there are recipes included as well. This eating regimine is something one can easily do as a lifestyle change. I liked this type of diet as I don't need to focus on food or what I will be eating next as has happened with other diets.

If you are looking to dine and look like the French, I highly recommend Michel Montignac's The French Diet over the greatly hyped French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano. Monsieur Montignac's recommendations are reasonable, balanced (he recommends the Zone-like 40-30-30 carb-protein-fat method) and based on real science, i.e., eating according to the GI Index can help you lose weight and stay healthy. He permits treats like wine and chocolate now and then and does not completely rule out any food group, which I think is the key to developing a lifestyle program rather than a crash diet that will later come back to haunt you, your metabolism and your scale! On the other hand, when I read Madame Guiliano's book, I felt like she was simply tauting her own version of eating (albeit, she is French), without real scientific background, and it also seemed like during the entire book she was holding French women up on a pedestal and in so doing criticizing the rest of the world for our traditions. I own many, many health, nutrition, fitness and diet books, but eating according to the GI Index has helped me not only lose those last 20 pounds and get extremely lean, but also to keep off those pounds (which is something I was not able to do before). This book, along with The GI Diet and Living the GI Diet by Rick Gallop and Dr. Sears' A Week in the Zone (all of which utilize the idea of balance and eating with the GI Index in mind), are truly the keys to not only achieving your weight loss goals, but also true health.

This book was quite informative. I was very focused and clear.
The plan is easy. the only issue is the lists of food are not all inclusive of american foods. Overall it was a quick easy read.