Michel Le Not-So-Grand*
Or: How to Lose Weight in France.
It sort of just sneaks up on you. Those five pounds over the Holiday season; a little bit more over a birthday weekend perhaps; a few more during the COVID lockdown.
You hardly notice a thing until one afternoon your South Philly father looks behind you and declares, “Your ass is getting big, kid. When was the last time you weighed yourself?” while at the same time, your Midwestern stepmother is trying to get you to eat another slice from a Dollar Tree version of Viennetta and all you can think to say for yourself is:
"You asked me earlier why I need therapy? Well it’s because of stuff like this right here”.
Then the television volume is raised and no one says a word for the rest of the canasta game and the subsequent pasta dinner is nothing less than a carbohydrate minefield.
And there you are months (or years in my case) later, with the elastic marks from your boxer briefs still deeply imprinted around your middle, having to lift each foot up to its opposing knee in order to tie your shoes because bending over to do so has somewhere along the line become an uncomfortable endeavor and you think to yourself, “The next time I have a physical, I’m wearing loafers” and reject the idea of buying larger briefs outright because that would somehow indicate acceptance of your current condition and when you’re dressed again, your new doctor suggests you should lose about 40 lbs and all you can think to say to him is:
“But I’m going to France for 5 weeks!”
Then he heaves a little sigh and tells you “In that case, I’ll call the pharmacy and tell them you need two months worth of statins.
And that, as they say, is that. Or is it because three days later, you find yourself in Paris, eating a plate of steak frites at a British-themed restaurant you originally thought was Egyptian because you were so exhausted you may have been hallucinating.
How, I worried, was I going to fit into my already-snug Levis at the end of several weeks worth of French meals?
(And how, Dear Reader, has the narrative of this piece suddenly gone from 2nd person singular to 1st without any warning?)
To this American eater, French cuisine has always been represented by things like butter-rich croissants and disappointing coffee for breakfast, steak frites or something of equal heft for dinner, and pâtisseries and pâtés and wine at any time of day or night they happen to present themselves. Weight gain was never a problem in my younger days— French calories never translated to English pounds, you might say. But those days are sadly behind me. As is my own, extra-ample derrière, as my late father so lovingly pointed out.
This trip was going to be different, I thought. Until, of course, I was treated to a rather fanciful blow out of a dinner by my friend Erika at my namesake restaurant, Le Procope. At least I was sensible enough to order the scallops. I feigned surprise when they arrived at the table served over an incredibly rich risotto.
So far, so not-so-good, I worried as I stood naked in the shower after returning to my hotel, grateful the full length mirror which hung on the inside of the bathroom door had completely fogged over.
“I’ll do better when I get to Chinon” was the lie I repeated to myself until I finally fell asleep.
You can probably see where this is going.
My friend Jamie, the owner of the marvelous hotel at which I am currently staying, picked me up at the train station, allowed me enough time to drop my bags off in my room, then chauffeured me to a home/garden/grocery superstore the size of multiple airplane hangars where I was overwhelmed by a combination of sleeplessness and awe at the sheer volume and selection of food I encountered. Cheese counter, fish counter, meat counter— so many counters that I lost count.
Hours before my flight to Paris, my friend Shannon dragged me to a suburban Costco telling me that this was my last opportunity to experience American excess for several weeks when what she as an introvert really wanted was someone to help her navigate an overwhelming space and help push the shopping cart. I found myself surprised at how completely wrong she was as I wandered around that cavernous expanse of French excés Jamie had taken me to, mostly to help her (another introvert) push the shopping cart.
The next morning, I found myself confronted with a very French breakfast, only with better coffee: The sideboard piled with fruit salad, pots of yogurt, local goat cheese. Pork rillettes and walnuts still in their shell. At the table, a glass of local apple juice; a copper pot of aforementioned coffee and another of hot milk; and a very large basket of bread, which includes a croissant, a thick slice of toasted brioche, a hunk of baguette, and some other bread variety that my brain has mercifully blocked from my memory. I was initially surprised by the incredible volume of French breadstuffs afforded me until I remembered something:
The jams.
Jamie is famous in certain circles for her fantastic confitures.
Every morning, a selection of anywhere from 8 to 10 or 12 (I lose count easily) different types of jam are on offer and, for the first few days, I admit to having gone a bit jam mad. But when I found my pants tightening again, I simply had to speak up. It was agreed that I would do away with the croissant and memory-blocked bread and keep the baguette and brioche because they were best for jam-spreading. And, since I knew I had a month-long stay, I could take my time sampling them one or two at a time.
Almost daily, I make my way with Jamie into the center of town to do a bit of food foraging for dinner at the boulangerie, boucherie, fromagerie and a few other -eries in the morning or later in the afternoon because practically everyone stops what they’re doing from 12:30 until 3pm. The wandering from shop to shop sets my heart a-flutter with the variety and quality of victuals on offer. And hopefully burns off the old backside a bit as we plot to fatten it up again in the evening.
But the thing that’s really starting to make a difference in regard to both my now-loosening Levis and my foggy writer brain— the thing that really gets my heart pounding— is the daily ass-kicking walk my dear hostess has persuaded me to take with her.
Down the street past the surprisingly modern-for-a-15th Century-town library, up 150-something uneven, weed-choked, crumbling steps, past the ruins of the ancient chapel of St. Radegonde, the holy Frankish queen and self-mortifier, up past the long-abandoned troglodyte homes where an old guerilla gardener is currently busy planting irises and cabbages, down along where the resident artists have taken down the locally famous rainbow paintbrush from their gate because that symbol of God’s promise has been appropriated by homosexuals 45 years ago but they only somehow realized it just now, down treacherously steep cobbled streets into the town, down to the river Vienne, along the embankment past the statue of Rabelais and through the park where the older men play pétanque (or is it boules?), through the allée of trees finally spreading their leaves, round by the train station, past the plum(?) tree nearly choked to death by hyperactive wisteria, and up and around until we finally arrive back at the hotel, where we retreat to our rooms to collapse and perhaps obsess a little over our respective Substacks until we meet again to make dinner— a meal for which we are honestly and deservedly hungry.
We eat pâté en croûte, but only on occasion when the meal is a cobbled together assemblage of items bought at the various stores that end in -erie. And when we make dinner, it’s sometimes falafel wraps, or a vegetable soup left to gently simmer all afternoon (making sure to temporarily turn off the burner so Jamie isn’t thinking the hotel is burning down while we’re away on our walk), or a rather successful salad of poached chicken and haricots verts, lettuces, goat cheese, and toasted hazelnuts drizzled with Emily Nunn’s Anchovy Lemon Vinaigrette, the recipe of which you’ll have to be a paid subscriber to get. Whatever we make, it’s simple. Not for any philosophical or aesthetic reason, but because Jamie and her husband Jean-Pierre are knackered from running a hotel all day and me because I’m just knackered generally. It’s a welcome change from my pre-antidepressant days of shoving handfuls of cold pasta directly into my mouth over the pot I couldn’t be assed to heat. Now, I sit down at a table. Now, I use utensils and napkins. Now, I wear pants.
And also now, I can put on the pair of khaki shorts I brought along without having to suck in my stomach, thanks to a few minor adjustments and a bit of exercise, and the gentle prodding of a friend who has been kind enough and generous enough to invite me to France and give me a safe and comfortable space to start my writing life again. Just because she likes me and what I do. And, of course, because she’s a g-d damned, glorious mensch.
I hope I’m able to take the habits I’ve fallen into here in Chinon (a ridiculously charming town situated in the heart of The Garden of France) back home to San Francisco (an equally picturesque but increasingly less charming town in the heart of the fertile Bay Area of California).
The afternoon walks will need to turn into morning ones, where my natural, Neanderthal tendency to sweat will be tempered by morning fog. The boulangeries and pâtisseries are fewer and farther between at home, but that’s just as well because I’ll really have to work at getting to them. I will eat simply and well (which I am professionally trained to do, I have to remind myself).
More importantly, I will continue to wear pants when I sit down to those simple, well-prepared dinners.
And one day, perhaps in a month or two if I’m extra good, I’ll take a pair of pants I keep folded on the shelf in my hall closet— the shelf of trousers from my thinner days— and will put them on, walk over to my file cabinet, where the blue velvet-covered box sits in which half of my father’s ashes reside and ask as I turn around to show him my backside, “Happy now?”
Then maybe I’ll open the door of my armoire, look at myself in the un-fogged full length mirror and ask myself the same question.
And maybe, for the first time in years, I will answer “Yes.”
* If you do not know who Michel Legrand is, please look him up because he wrote the score of my favorite French Gene Kelly film, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, which is both very groovy and very weird.
I'm so enjoying your descriptions of Chinon. I think the fresh walnuts were my favorite part of the breakfast spread--next to Jamie's jams. Sometimes a change of scenery/country/habit is just what we need to jolt us out of complacency. I'm hoping to take off the weight I put on over winter when I head back to Italy. Our town is hilly and our house is at the top, so while it's an easy walk down to the café, market, and shops, it's a steep climb back up. We still can't figure out whether buying this place was a good or bad move...
Making that much pain funny is a true literary gift.