Ask Astrid: How Do the French Stay Lean and Healthy?

First of all, obesity is a problem all over the world, including in France.

I remember in high school eating doughnuts every day – fresh, still warm – my favorites were the ones with cream inside! Yum. So good! But I also walked two miles to school every day! I went dancing every Friday, played sports and participated in 60 km, midnight hikes every year.

Fresh out of college, I ate pasta most nights and I was lucky if I could add some cheese to it. Fresh organic fruits and vegetables are ridiculously expensive in Paris. I preferred keeping my money for trips around Europe.

When you’re young, you think you can do anything. You don’t count your calories unless someone tells you to. There’s always time for counting – when the dealings done, right! As a parent, I hear others complain their kids grew up on pancakes and fries. Salad, or even broccoli? Yuck! Should we panic?

Today, there’s a big problem: vitamins are non-natural pills in a box. Certain rice sold in China, I heard, contains plastic. Minerals and organic substances are being regulated and even forbidden. The DNA of mothers has changed due to chemical changes from our dietary changes. It’s scary! We are still flesh and blood, still mammals that need natural elements to survive. For anyone who dissected bread in class knows there is no sugar in bread, and yet we eat sugared bread. We have bodies with joints and muscles, but we are stuck in cubicles all day not using them at all. The evolution of matter does not change as fast as our habits do. So the body and mind react, telling us this is not OK, telling us this doesn’t work. Our bodies cannot compete with the level of stress we put on them.

In this day and age, it’s impossible for us to go backward in time, to start working out as we did when we had to sow our own beans in the earth, sweat it out under the sun to harvest. But we can exercise and become more active.

Healthier people always seem to be running around. Many French people run around Paris to catch the next train home. They run to get to work on time or run to catch the next movie. They’ve introduced free bikes in the city that you can grab, ride and park. They’ve put up no-car zones and on Sundays, they shut down the streets so people can roller skate on them.

The answer to this one is simple: If you exercise more and eat healthier and leaner, you’re more likely to be healthier and leaner yourself.