Following “French Women Don’t Get Fat” author Mireille Guiliano’s advice for 10 days.

Picture, if you will, a bakery in the ninth arrondissment that sells the most perfect pain au chocolat. It’s 9:30 in the morning and I stagger in wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt with a hole somewhere near my navel, a hoodie, and moccasins. It’s an outfit that I would—and have—worn around Brooklyn while doing similar errands. But here, surrounded by the kind of soignée French girls who remain thin despite breakfasting on pastries and who wear towering ankle boots and mini-dresses to work, I feel dumpy and out of place. Since I’m spending the rest of the fall in Paris, I realize I could use some remedial lessons on how to be more French.

Fortunately, Mireille Guiliano has built a franchise around having the answer. Her first book on dieting, French Women Don’t Get Fat, was published in 2005 and was such a success that it came out in 42 foreign editions and is now being turned into a romantic comedy starring Hilary Swank. She followed it up in 2006 with a book on style, French Women for All Seasons, and her latest book, out this week, covers business: Women, Work & the Art of Savoir Faire. I decided to try out the advice from these three tomes in Paris—what better place to test out her wisdom!—for 10 days. I hope to emerge after my experiment more chic, stylish, and aloof—three qualities I see as essentially French.

I started with French Women Don’t Get Fat. The key to Guiliano’s diet is rather simplistic: We should eat things that are high quality, but in small amounts. She is prone to some ridiculous extremes, like the famed leek diet. As Guiliano tells it, she was once an exchange student in the United States who succumbed to the allure of brownies and packed on the pounds, just like the rest of us American McDonald’s enthusiasts. Her father told her she looked like a sack of potatoes, and her mother sent her to the family doctor. Dr. Miracle, as he is known in the book, prescribed a “magical” leek soup.

Guiliano encourages any wannabe Frenchwoman to kick off with this detox, so, after a final scoop of caramel fleur de sel ice cream, I begin the cleanse on a Monday morning. I boil a kilo of leeks in water. This will be all that I get to eat and drink for two days. Leeks, Guiliano writes merrily, will be an “adventure for most palates,” and suggests we jot down our “impressions of flavor and fragrance.” I would have written down my feelings if I had had the energy to set pen to paper. Instead, I took three naps the first day of the detox, during which I dreamt of werewolves and Nicolas Cage. By lunch of the second day, I swore I would never enjoy a leek again. By 2 p.m., I sent several e-mails to friends predicting my death. By 3 p.m., I ate my allotted real dinner—four ounces of fish, two steamed vegetables, and an apple.

I ended up losing a kilo or two—I’ve now gone fully metric, thanks to Mireille—but I’m sure the salad I ate the next day, which was heavy on the lardons, goat cheese, and fried potatoes, and light on the vegetables, probably reversed any lasting effects. But no need to worry, says Guiliano: “French women do stray, but they always come back, believing there are only detours and no dead ends.”

It’s easy to blithely follow detours when you’re tipsy, and Guiliano is a big advocate for drinking—as long as it’s Champagne. Guiliano is the former CEO of Veuve Clicquot, and her books can be read as long-form advertisements for the brand. But despite my cynicism I take her advice—“When in doubt, drink Champagne”—and order a bottle at a bar with a friend. It’s all quite fun and festive until the next day, when my hangover is such that I’m unable to leave my couch.

Tags: catherine deneuve, french women don’t get fat, french women for all seasons, mireille guiliano, women, work & the art of savoir faire

Marisa Meltzer 's next book, Girl Power, will be published in February.

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