Mireille Giuliano (1:53)

Yes.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (1:53)

You're gonna be here?

Mireille Giuliano (1:54)

I'm going to be here this afternoon.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (1:56)

You got like a book? Sign in here.

Mireille Giuliano (1:57)

Oh, I'm down there. For the museum auction weekend.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (2:01)

Oh, very cool.

Mireille Giuliano (2:01)

And lots of events.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (2:03)

Oh, we'll have to get some information and stick it up on our website for you.

Mireille Giuliano (2:05)

Okay. If we'd known that, we would have.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (2:07)

Had you come in studio tomorrow.

Mireille Giuliano (2:09)

Yeah, well, I didn't know that either. I was traveling and I'm sort of working a day at a time.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (2:13)

Hey, mirei, I'm a little confused exactly what to call your book because it's not really a diet book. Is it a wrong.

Mireille Giuliano (2:18)

No, no, it's actually the ultimate non diet book. Okay, so it's, it's a lifestyle book, really? Explain that to us because it's about, you know, I wrote it because I was a typical French girl when I was thin. And then I came to America as a student and I gained 20 pounds. And then I went back to Paris and I gained another 10 pounds and I was in this horrible vicious circle when you're heavy. And with my little frame, I was more than heavy. I was fat and I was unhappy and low self esteem and grumpy and couldn't stand see myself, couldn't look at myself. And my little family doctor put me back on track by basically, you know, teaching me, reteaching me what my mother had taught me. And so when I came to America and I've been lecturing on food and wine for the past 15 years and people see me always say, well, you're so passionate about food and wine and we see you in restaurant and you entertain a lot and how come you're not fat? And you know, I couldn't say, been there, done that, but I just gave them the French rug and said, well, French women don't get fat.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (3:27)

And why is that?

Mireille Giuliano (3:29)

Because we have a different relationship with food. We eat with our head, we fool ourselves. We eat in a very common sense way by having three meals a day and not snacking. We have smaller portions, we eat much, much, much more slowly. Actually, right now in my life, I still go back and forth to France every six weeks and I'm always stunned to see how out there we take time to eat. And when you take time to eat and you eat slowly and you chew well and you put your knife and fork down and you eat with your senses, you eat with pleasure, you eat less because your taste buds get satisfied after three bites, basically.

Interviewer (4:11)

Now Mira, you said, you know, you were raised in France and you had this lifestyle, then you came to America. I'm curious, specifically when you came to America, what made you change your routine and how did that routine change?

Mireille Giuliano (4:23)

Well, I discovered chocolate chip cookies and brownies and ice cream and eating, being able to, you know, I was living with families and being able to go to the fridge and pick whatever I wanted when I wanted and eating in front of the TV and standing up and between meals. And I probably was having seven meals a day, and most of them were bad.

Interviewer (4:49)

Now, Mire, I have seen you on Dateline before when they featured your book and got to see that program and thought it was interesting when you talked about how French women don't deprive themselves of some of these things. Like, you guys have wonderful pastries. And I mean, the French are famous for their wonderful desserts and that sort of thing. How do you, you know, have your eclairs but still not get fat?

Mireille Giuliano (5:14)

Well, first of all, I should say that, you know, and because pastry is one of my, what I call in the book, offenders, pastries in France is much less sweet than here. And the portions are about a third.

Interviewer (5:26)

A third of it.

Mireille Giuliano (5:27)

I mean, a croissant is not a croissant is not a croissant. And now we even have mini croissants. But the reason we can eat it all, in a way, and sometimes I have to be careful when I say that because, you know, some journalists would write, you can eat everything and not gain weight. Well, it's not quite that way. You can eat quality food in small portions, and then you can eat anything you want. If you want to have chocolate, you shouldn't deprive your chocolate. If you like bread, you can have a nice piece of bread with your meal. Just don't have a loaf. Or yesterday I was on a TV show and they brought the size of what people order downstairs on Broadway at a diner as a hamburger. And then they asked me what the portion would be and it would be about a third between the hamburger, the bun and the French fries. I mean, the fries was enough for a family of three.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (6:26)

Mirei, I still can't get a really good sense about what your entire book is about. I mean, obviously you're talking about some pretty basic stuff here, but obviously your book is also probably more than 100 pages. So what are you filling those pages with?

Mireille Giuliano (6:39)

Oh, it's also, you know, it's a memoir and it has a lot of anecdotes about. About produce. Because when I grew up and still now, I mean, a lot of French women go to markets, you know, at least once or twice a week. And we like fresh food. We like to cook. I have a lot of recipes in the book, simple recipes. Because I wanted to encourage young people to cook. Because another difference is that I've noticed for many American women, cooking is a chore. And for us is a. We cook because we like to prepare something for the people we love, whether it's our spouse or children or family or friends. And so I wanted to make easy. And so I talk a lot about produce, and I'm amazed that a lot of Americans have not discovered some basic produce, like my favorite, which is a leek. And I talk about a magical leek soup that is like a vegetarian weekend broth with vegetables and a nice way to detox you because it's a mild diuretic. And I think Americans are discovering because it's from the onion family, but it's much milder and sweeter and nuttier, and people who taste it love it. So I'm hoping to make people discover how to cook vegetable, how to like vegetables. A lot of people think they don't like vegetable. It's because they don't know what to do with it.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (8:03)

So what I'm hearing here is like, if you're talking about fruits and vegetables, smaller portions, slowing down. Slowing down.

Mireille Giuliano (8:10)

Slowing down is probably the most important thing because, well, first of all, it's for people to become more aware of. You see, the difference between France and the US is like, we have 300 years of ritual and gastronomy culture. So we have a great respect for food and we pay much more attention to what we put into our body. And I would like to help, you know, people here to realize that a lot of the food they eat is really, really bad food. It's preserved, it has a lot of chemicals in it, and it's over salted and over sweetened. It makes them eat more. And once you become aware of what you eat, and that's why keeping a journal is a very nice little way to do, to start. Because a lot of women write me and say, my God, I didn't realize what I was eating every day. It's crazy. And. And that's the first step. But then you really have to eat with your senses. And to do that, you need to take 20 minutes. Now, I'm not saying you can do it three times a day and seven days a week, but start on the weekend, start a couple of days for dinner if you can, and you will see the difference when you sit down and you eat slowly, which means in a relaxed fashion, you will eat less. You see people eat on the go and multitasking, and in that situation, you are stressed. So when you're stressed, you tend to eat more to start with and you don't pay any attention. Have you ever watched people in the airport eating in those fast food places between they catch a plane, sure. You don't see a sign of pleasure on their face. It makes me so sad to see that this relationship with food has to change. I mean, there's a difference between eating for living and living for eating. Food is something very, you know, it's one of our basic three basic needs with love and security. And we have to respect the food we eat. We have to eat it with respect. And we also have to know what our body can take. And that's why my book does not like a diet book. Give you one size fits all, you know, do this, do that, don't eat this, don't eat that. All I'm saying is that, listen, if you eat good food, you can eat everything. But try to as a base, assume that most of us, because in our life today, you know, we are not like our parents and grandparents, working hard in the field, in a mine or walking a lot. Most of us, we sit, you know, whether it's in the office, in the car, in the subway, in a bus, and we don't need all that food. So assume that you eat probably between 10 and 30% more of what you really need and start reducing, you know, slowly. Don't hit your body with, you know, from six slices of bread to zero.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (10:59)

Right.

Mireille Giuliano (11:00)

Go from six to five. Because if you do that, which the diets tell you to do, and of course, if you do that, you're going to lose a lot of weight fast.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (11:06)

But then what if what Mire is saying here makes sense to you? Pick up the book. It's called why French Women Don't Get Fat. And you can pick it up just about anywhere. I got all the information on Amazon.com yesterday also. Mire, thanks a lot for joining us. Thank you and have a great time in Atlanta when you get here, too.

Mireille Giuliano (11:24)

I will. I love the South.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (11:25)

All right, bye bye.

Mireille Giuliano (11:26)

Bye bye.

Radio Host (11:27)

Hey.

Show Host (The Birch Show) (11:27)

The Birch Show.

Radio Host (11:31)

Say what you want about AI, but it's here. And it's helping businesses get more done in a day.

Interviewer (11:36)

Wix's website builder is infused with AI.

Radio Host (11:39)

So you can stay ahead. Create a beautiful, functional website just by describing your idea. Track how your site appears in AI search results, create custom images on demand, or launch an entire campaign in a matter of minutes. WIX gives you AI wherever you need it. Try it now for free@wix.com.