In America, you look at food as bad and guilty. In France, we love food and we enjoy food; food is pleasure.

French women love bread and would never consider a life without carbs.

When I grew up in France, I was a normal size. And then I came to the United States and I gained 20 pounds.

The real reason French women don't get fat is not genetic, but cultural, and if the French subjected themselves to the American extremes of eating and dieting, the obesity problem in France would be much worse than what has struck America.

French women love to shop and prepare food. They love to talk about what they have bought and made. It's a deeply natural love, but one that is erased in many other cultures. Most French women learn it from their mothers, some from their fathers. But if your parents aren't French, you can still learn it yourself.

If you believe you can shed pounds quickly by force of will and deprivation, you will in all likelihood not only regain the ones you lost, but add a few more besides.

In #‎ France we have a saying, 'Joie de Vivre,' which actually doesn't exist in the English language. It means looking at your life as something that is to be taken with great pleasure and enjoy it.