Grace like the sea.

You know you’re pregnant when you roll your eyes at the ringing phone across the room and think, “I just poured myself a nice cup of chocolate chips and settled on the couch. Does anyone merit my attention right now?” That only happened once, I promise. And the cup wasn’t full. And I did pick up the call, but it turned out to be Charter Communications, so I had to reel myself in from throwing the phone straight through the window. Joe the Salesman wasn’t ready for that jelly.

That is the picture of pregnancy.

Of course, there is this other picture of pregnancy that I gaze at several times a day. It’s a 13-week-and-4-day ultrasound of the most beautiful developing baby I have ever seen. You guys, she is seriously, staggeringly beautiful. She is a picture of my wildest dreams. She is grace: a gift I didn’t earn and don’t deserve that was given to me anyway, to paraphrase Frederick Buechner. A hundred times a day, the thought crosses my mind, “How did I get this lucky? I am the wife of my favorite person, stepmom to two incredible children, and sixteen weeks pregnant with a grace baby.” Wow. Big time wow. Because when I was guiding my own life, I guided myself right into disaster. Repeatedly.

Barely two and a half years ago, I was in the throes of addiction counseling for compulsive overeating, a disorder that served as my prison warden for over 12 years. I ate little around others – excepting only my best friend, around whom I felt completely safe – but binged later in secret. I lied about how much I ate and how little self-respect I had. I was terrified of painful feelings, like loneliness and rejection, so I ate to smother them. After every binge, I felt ashamed and helpless, which often led me to anticipation of the next one. It was miserable and infuriating and dark.

Just over two years ago, my first marriage was officially ending. Confusion and heartbreak washed over me every morning, and I couldn’t find Jesus. Actually, I wouldn’t find Jesus. I didn’t really think He could help, as none of this was His problem. Everything was a mess, and I remember telling my mom I felt un-tethered, like my air hose had been cut and I was floating through space without anything to ground me.

I finally gave up. I don’t remember when, I just know that I did. There’s no sensational story of sobbing or snake handling or a contract signed in blood. All that happened is one day Jesus whispered, “Give me a try now?” And I said, “Yes, please,” and that was it. Peace. And now, having relinquished the pilot’s controls, I have been redeemed and made pure again. And there’s a life in me – both literally and figuratively – that is so joyful and so foreign that I hardly recognize it. But that’s what Jesus does. Every time, that’s what Jesus does.

My man and I have to rely on Jesus every minute of every day because we both have gigantic, ugly demons that don’t go away without a fight, even when the proverbial war has already been won. I would say all Christians are to some degree in this boat, since the Bible tells us Satan prowls like a lion, hoping and searching for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). But when I say my man and I have to fight for our freedom, I mean that my man and I have to fight for our freedom. And the worst part of it is that neither of us is perfect, or even holy. We have to borrow our victory from Jesus every single day. But most of the time, that’s what we choose to do. So in honor of our Redeemer, in honor of our testimony, in honor of the blessed-beyond-all-reason life we’ve been given, we’ve chosen to name our daughter grace like the sea. “Anna” means grace, and her middle name means “the sea.” We didn’t earn her, we don’t deserve her, but her beautiful self has been given to us for safe keeping anyway. It takes a powerful, loving, compassionate God to create something like that out of the broken, nasty selves we offered him. But that’s all we had to do. And then there he was, with all the hope and joy and trustworthy love we ever needed.

Also, happy four months of married life to my strong, sexy, incredible man. Thank God for you, my love.

Losing it.

I needed two pairs of shoes—brown sandals and white sandals—so I went to the discount shoe shop in town last Friday. While admiring our feet in the mirror, another customer and I started discussing weight loss. She’d lost 35 pounds and was back to her pre-three-children weight. I told her I’d lost 70 pounds and was smaller than I’d been in high school. We started swapping tips, and since so many people have asked me how I lost my weight, I thought I’d post my eleven most helpful ones here. I’m no guru, but these have worked for me.

1.              Participating in exercise classes. You will inevitably work harder than you would’ve on your own because of the pumping music, trained instructor, and camaraderie of the environment. I found that I especially love Zumba; I’d go even if I weren’t trying to lose weight. If there’s no class, I try to make a workout date with my friend M. That way, I’m less likely to back out or quit early. Plus, we can chat while we treadmill it up. And M is even more motivating than my iPod because we hold each other accountable to the same plan—the same increases and decreases in speed and grade at the same intervals.

2.              Investing in music. On days that I can’t get to the gym, I’m much likelier to take a walk or go for a jog if I have music I want to listen to. Plus, I have some playlists set up that push me hard and then let me rest for a few strides, so the tempo of the songs forces me to do interval training without me really having to think about it when I’m on the track.

3.              Brushing my teeth. My kryptonite is desserts and sodas. I’ve learned, however, that if I brush my teeth when a sweet craving hits, I won’t hit the Oreo cabinet. If I did, they wouldn’t taste right. The sodas, however…I’ll let you know when I get that habit kicked. Which might never happen. Sweet Moses, I love soda.

4.              Buying flavored coffee. I am at a slight advantage in the coffee department because 1) I don’t like coffee drinks, like cappuccinos and sweet lattes, and 2) I don’t take sugar in my coffee. So specialty coffees are a workable substitute for dessert: they’re calorie-free (except for my nondairy creamer), and they have the flavor twist of chocolate-raspberry truffle, vanilla biscotti, cinnamon hazelnut, and so on. Delicious and cozy.

5.              Following Weight Watchers. I love this plan. It helps me with portion control, doesn’t force me to eat anything I don’t want, and is 100% customizable to my preferences and needs. I never feel deprived or hungry or stuffed to the brim with vegetables.

6.              Cutting myself some slack. I started losing weight in August 2010. I lost 70 pounds in one year. Last September, life became really tough, and I simply couldn’t focus on weight loss. So I took five months off. I exercised some, watched what I ate some, and maintained my new weight within five to ten pounds. In March some of my stress cleared, so I refocused on weight loss. I’m nearly at my August 2011 weight again, and I have no reason to stop there. Instead of berating myself for the weight-loss vacation, I’m proud that I was able to keep from gaining much. That is unlike the old Amie. But I have learned to cut myself slack in other ways. For example, if I’m in an exercise class that causes me to work so hard I get nauseated, then I slow down. I don’t get frustrated or embarrassed. If I need a weight-loss free day, I take one. The journey through the last 30 pounds might take longer than I’d like, but that’s okay. The harder I work to get it off, the less likely I will be to put it back on.

7.              Buying higher heels and smaller-sized clothes that I love. After a 70-pound loss, I discovered how sexy I feel in high heels. So now I own a few that I acquired over several months from the discount shoe store. I feel confident when I look in the mirror and see the sculpted calves and lifted derrière that the heels bring out. And little is more motivating than getting a clearance-rack top at Kohl’s for $5 that makes me feel skinny. Buying a cheap something that’s one size down and then fitting into it in a few weeks breeds success quickly.

8.              Reading Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth. It’s impossible to laud this book enough. Roth is spot-on when it comes to explaining the mental processes and frustrations of chronic dieting. I literally sat amazed, devouring some of the chapters at lightning speed and thinking, How does she know stuff I’ve never let out of my brain?! I highly recommend the book for anyone who’s frustrated with his/her eating habits, particularly if your habits include obsessive dieting or (like mine) emotional eating. NOTE: The book has almost nothing to do with God, and its revelations are certainly not gynocentric in nature.

9.              Finding light but delicious versions of my favorite foods. Hungry Girl (http://www.hungry-girl.com) is an excellent resource for stuff like this. My roommate and I absolutely love her low-cal brownies, and they’re so simple to make. Open a can of pumpkin, pour the whole thing into a package of devil’s food cake mix, stir, and scoop into muffin cups. Bake at 350^o for however long the package suggests, and you end up with luxurious, velvety chocolate cupcakes. They honest-to-God do not taste a bit like low-cal brownies. Finding recipes like this keeps lighter food interesting; I don’t have to eat cottage cheese and celery all day long. I still eat foods I enjoy and just watch how much I consume.

10.           Keeping the goal in mind. I’m losing weight for reasons more important than my appearance. Diabetes runs in my mom’s side of the family. The diminished fertility brought on by PCOS is compounded by obesity. Those two health factors are much more on my mind than appearance…although certainly that is important to me, too. When I’m stressed and I want to eat a whole cake, I try to remember not to sacrifice what I really want for what I want in the moment.

11.           Praying. By far my #1 weapon, but it doesn’t sound like much of a tactic, does it? Here’s the thing. Just like I want to be healthy and take care of myself, God wants that for me, too. He wants me to live abundantly, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice, to take care of the body he gave me. So I pray and ask for help. I ask him to help me resist actions that detract from my goals. I ask him to fortify me with his Spirit and satisfy my heart so that emotional eating loses its appeal. With my God I can scale any wall and crush an army (Psalm 18:29); why would alimentary desires be any different?

I still have 30 pounds to go, but that is so doable. It’s nothing like the 100 I started out needing to lose. My goal is to be down two more sizes by the fall and at my goal weight by next January. I could meet those goals even if I lost less than a half pound per week. It’s the home stretch, y’all!

Doughnuts.

Don Miller tells a beautiful story in his work Through Painted Deserts about God’s provision. He’d climbed down the Grand Canyon with a friend--a feat of which the mental, physical, and emotional toll was nearly unbearable. After a particularly grueling day, his friend asked him, “If you could have access to anything right now, what would it be?” Miller replied, “Tortillas and scrambled eggs.” An odd answer perhaps, given his more immediate needs, but he went on to explain how strongly the meal reminded him of home and family. When the pair emerged from the Canyon, they resumed their trip but didn’t get far: their jalopy broke down. They walked to a nearby diner to eat, and guess what was remarkably available for breakfast? Yep, tortillas and scrambled eggs. And guess what was wrong with their truck? Nothing; it started up the moment they were ready to leave. Miller says it brought tears to his eyes, realizing how personal our God is. Even something as simple as breakfast food becomes important to God when it’s important to us. Knowing how much pleasure tortillas and scrambled eggs would bring Miller, our Daddy-God orchestrated a plan for him to have them.

I have never climbed the Grand Canyon and completely lack the desire to try. I do, however, understand the concept of an experience that reduces you to a helpless mass of flesh dependant on a great big God. The last two years have brought enormous challenges in every area of my life: academic, relational, physical, personal, spiritual. One such challenge was my master’s examinations, which I successfully completed last Friday. Spaced over a two-week period, there were four parts, two written and two oral, based on a list of more than 200 works in French. The most terrifying component of the exam came last: the orals. The panel could ask me literally anything from any work on the list, starting with the Revolution. To say this is “terrifying” is an understatement of gargantuan proportions. Not only are you worried you don’t know enough about the individual works, but you’re also wondering whether you know enough historical context, whether you can remember what you’ve read, whether your nerves will hinder your mental capabilities during the exam, and so on. In a word, it’s nerve-wracking.

It’s no wonder, then, that I woke up Friday morning with a stomachache and tears in my eyes. And a huge craving for doughnuts. Huge. You’d think I was pregnant. My brain and heart were so worn out from the stress of the previous two years—and, of course, the task in front of me—that all my nervous energy zeroed in on one desire: a doughnut. Irrationally, I thought, “The only thing in the world that could calm me down right now is a doughnut.” When Jeff asked what I wanted for breakfast, I said, “A doughnut. I want a doughnut.” I didn't get one. It was almost more than my distressed self could take. “No doughnut?” it asked me quietly. “But that’s all I want.” I tried to calm my inner self, saying, “Some way or another, I will get you a doughnut. But you have to shut up now with this nonsense so I can practice my presentation.”

As we were heading out the door, Jeff realized he had to make an emergency run to work to drop something off for his boss. When we got there, he promised to return quickly so as not to make me late for my appointment. I was surprised, however, when he returned in less than five minutes, knocking on my window. I rolled it down and was handed…a still-warm glazed doughnut. “I don’t know where these came from, but they were sitting out on the desk,” he said with a shrug. Tears sprang to my eyes for what must have been the eighty-eighth time that morning. I gratefully ate my doughnut and was reminded of Don Miller’s tortillas and eggs. God was providing for me, something so silly and so irrelevant, but something that showed me how personal he can be. Right then I knew that if my desire for a ridiculous little doughnut was important to God, then my need for success on the exams was that much more so. I knew that, as Isaiah promises, he’d be with me and would help me and hold me up in his victorious right hand (41:10). My human weakness doesn’t matter in the face of such an almighty God.

One July night in 2009, a week before I moved, I was telling God how nervous I was about what lay before me. He showed me the first chapter of Joshua, and I knew in my spirit the words were for me too. Wherever you set foot, you will be on land that I have given you…I will be with you. I will not fail you or abandon you. Be strong and courageous…Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go (1:3, 5, 9). God had already prepared the way for me to succeed. Nothing about my program or my professors or my exams shocked him. He never had to reconfigure his plan for me because something didn’t happen the way he expected. In fact, he was and is so much bigger than a French degree. And if he was on my side—which the whole Bible promises—then what is there to fear? So I went in the exam room being strong and courageous, knowing that God had already given me the “land.” And a doughnut.

French Food.

There’s no doubt about it: France lusts over food. From the hours spent preparing it to the hours spent consuming it, food crosses the French mind every day à plusieurs reprises (“at many repeats”). On any block in France, you will find store after store devoted to alimentation—bakeries, butchers, dairy shops, confectioners, produce markets, and so on. Cafés never lack patrons, even in the middle of the day. French air is overflowing with the aromatic mélange of roasted chicken, garlic, bread, sautéed onions, cheese, coffee, chocolate…Can you smell it yet? It only fits, then, that many of our activités culturelles obligatoires (“required cultural activities”) have centered on consumption and “palate education.”

Sunday, 20 June: Huge group dinner at the Le Nord Brasserie Bocuse, a four-star restaurant in Lyon. Our reservations were at 7:00 p.m., but we didn’t leave until after 10:30—which is actually common in France. If you want to have dinner at a restaurant, not just a café, you’re expected to make reservations. The restaurant, however, only accepts as many reservations as there are tables. After it fills up, the doors are closed and customers can stay until all hours. And it’s a good thing: the food at Le Nord was absolutely delicious. It took all three and a half hours to eat it slowly enough to savor every bite and enjoy the company, too.

Thursday, 24 June: Small group dinners. Our group opted for traditional Lyonnais cuisine, so our professor made reservations at a bouchon, an establishment that serves exclusively Lyonnais food. There again, the meal was incredible. I had French onion soup, quenelle (a soufflé made of cheese, a rich white fish, and spiced cream), and profiteroles au chocolat, the largest chocolate dessert I have ever seen. (I wasn’t sure exactly how to translate profiterole, so I looked in the New American Oxford Dictionary: “a small hollow pastry typically filled with cream and covered with chocolate sauce”. Ohhh, yeah.) Much of Lyonnais cuisine is that which I imagine is served at the gates of hell: tripe sausage, tongue, fish heads, cow brains, and so on. Nonetheless, it’s possible to find more edible dishes, which was the case at our bouchon. I will post pictures when I get back home.

Sunday 27 June: Cheese tasting. You’ve probably heard rumors that French cheese is some of the weirdest and stinkiest on the planet. I concur. But much of it is delicious, despite the olfactory displeasure. Our job on this particular evening was to amble around the room, trying different cheeses, and describing each with words other than “strong” or “stinky.” That left us hard pressed for appropriate adjectives. However, I found a fantastic cheese made of sheep’s milk that had a nutty, buttery taste. That stuff was incredible with some water crackersand a sip of white wine. Three or four of the cows’ milk cheeses were also fantastic: smooth, creamy, and slightly salted. All of those were the perfect compliment to a baguette. Of course, there were others that tasted like feet, acid, and/or poisonous mushroom, so I stuck mostly to my favorites.

Monday, 28 June: Cooking workshop and winetasting. That’s right: I attended a cooking workshop with a professional French chef. We prepared a chicken-and-pesto main dish with sides of tomates Provençal (“Provence tomatoes,” which are roasted in olive oil, garlic, and basil) and sautéed zucchini. The other half of our group made a sushi appetizer and a raspberry cake with warm compote of tomatoes (yes, tomatoes) and strawberries for dessert. It was terrifying to be in the kitchen of a French restaurant with a guy who does it for a living, let me tell you. It’s amazing how much school they have to go through to be hire-able in the restaurant industry in France. Very intimidating for those of us who struggle with our microwave oatmeal. Anyway, while one group was cooking, the other was in a wine tasting. We did essentially the same thing with the wine that we did the night before with the cheese: describe what we smelled and tasted. Naturally, I liked the white wine best—it was fruity, floral-y, and crispy. We also tried a rosé and a red; the red was surprisingly good. It’s weird to describe a drink as peppery and smooth, but that’s exactly what the red wine tasted like. Too hardcore for me, but I could tell it was of exquisite quality.

Thursday, 1 July: Couscous dinner. Couscous? Is that really a meal, you might ask. Well, no, not usually. Usually it’s a side dish, similar in style (but not in taste or consistency) to rice or other grains. However, at L’Étoile de l’Orient, it is the main attraction. The servers first brought us green aperitifs with a minty-lime taste. Although small, they were refreshing since we were positively baking on the top floor of the restaurant. The meal was served family-style: a dish of plain couscous occupied the center of the table, flanked by a giant bowl of vegetable stew and a gargantuan platter of baked meat. Everyone dug in heartily and delighted in the spicy Moroccan specialty. The portions were so much more than I could ever eat, but I ate until I could hardly wiggle. Before the night was over, one among us who is Canadian sang “O, Canada!” (his version deserves an exclamation point) in both French and English to celebrate Canada Day. To quote Jen from CakeWrecks: “I didn't even realize that the US celebrated Canada with its own day.”

Sunday, 4 July: French-style Independence Day feast. This was just an E and I thing, not the whole group. We wanted somehow to celebrate our patriotism, but the hot dogs here just wouldn’t cut it. They’re served on baguettes. That’s right, baguettes with wieners inside. So, E found a café whose plat du jour was moules-frites (“mussels and fries”). We figured that was as close as we were going to get. I mean, hey, it had fries with it. (Yes, I understand the irony of being in France, trying to find American food, and ordering “French” fries. [Which are not French, by the way. Just wanted to clear that up.]) It was a lovely evening, sitting there in front of the Saône River, chowing down on mussels and fries. But I don’t think I’ll ever order mussels in America: they looked too much like insects with soft flesh.

Tuesday, 6 July: Ice cream. There is an ice cream shop here in Lyon with over sixty flavors. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Baskin-Robbins. Granted, some of their flavors would never make it in the U.S. because they are, in a word, weird. Exhibit A: flower flavors. At the Nardonne ice cream shop, you can order rose, violet, or orange blossom ice cream. Another graduate student, braver than I, ordered violet. She let me try it, and all I can say is that it tasted like smelling purple. I ordered mint, hazelnut, and Nutella, which formed a winning combination. Assuming E and I go back on our own—the chances are pretty high—I think I’ll try dark chocolate, salted caramel, and cinnamon. So many flavors, so little calorie allowance.

Reading back over this, I have three thoughts: 1) How in the world have I lost eleven pounds since being here? 2) The next few days we’ll be in Avignon at the theatre festival and eating most of our meals at the YMCA. Good thing we’ve been stocking up on delicious food up until now. 3) I’m seriously hungry. Time for dinner.

Groceries.

My students always used to ask what sorts of things were different in France. On the spur of the moment, it’s hard to come up with an answer like that. Like when someone asks you, “What sorts of movies do you like?” All of a sudden, you think, What do I like? Well, a couple of days ago something happened that I can cite as a definitive difference between France and America.

E and I went grocery shopping twice last week: once to the Sunday market for produce and fresh bread, and once to the store mid-week for everything else. Unfortunately, I’d already run out of produce when we went to the store on Wednesday, so I picked up some apples, cherries, and tomatoes to hold me over until Sunday. As is customary in France, for the surge of customers waiting to check out, there was one open cash register (and four closed ones [and a handful of unoccupied employees who weren’t about to get to work {which reminds me of a French comedian who said that Obama’s “Yes, we can!” slogan would never work in France. They operate more along the lines of, “No, we can’t!”}]). Anyway, when I finally got up to the front, I put everything on the little conveyor belt, just as one does in the States. Everything went smoothly until we got to the produce. “Il faut les peser,” the cashier informed me. Because I was flustered, I couldn’t catch the words, so I asked her to repeat. She did, and added, “Je vous attendrai.” Great, so I had to go back to the display where I picked up my produce so that I could weigh it, all the while with her waiting for me at the front with the other six shoppers in line behind me.

I had no problems with the apples or tomatoes, but I simply could not find the button on the scale for cherries. So that I wouldn’t hold anyone up any longer, I just pushed the “grapes” button and hoped for the best. Close enough, right? By the time I rushed back to the front where she was indeed waiting with the rest of my purchases, the line had increased by three more shoppers. I was so embarrassed about holding these people up for so long that I wanted to crawl under that produce display and become a troll as a cautionary tale for other unsuspecting Americans.

The weird thing is that no one seemed especially put off by my unintentional antics—and it was the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday! They looked at me as though I were a fish in an aquarium. What is this species, one seemed to ask another in French eye language. Why is its face turning red? It appeared as though no one was really in a hurry. Certainly the cashier was not: she’d been talking to the customer before me about going south for vacation—the French get six weeks of paid vacation per year—long after she was done ringing up the woman’s purchases. The other potential cashiers were not in a hurry; they were instead ambling around the grocery store without a care in the world. Even the customers were more curious than frustrated. In America I would’ve been raked over the coals.

When Jeff and I had our neighbor F over last month, this same thing came up. I asked F what was the most surprising thing about America, after having grown up in Austria. He said, “It surprises me how quickly everyone moves in the stores. We move through the line fast, always. What if you love your customer and you want to say, ‘Your barber did a good job this week’? You cannot do it. You must just move, move, move.” Upon asking the same question to Professor B, a French professor from the region where we’re staying now, I was given the same response: “Why are Americans always in a hurry in the stores? If something takes awhile, we could just talk to each other in line, no problem. And what if we want to talk to the person who works for the store? But you cannot do it! We are rushed all the time.”

It’s a surprising thought.

But would it work in America?

Call it greed, call it capitalism, call it “making an honest living”…but one thing we hold dear in America is making money. I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. We want to take vacations to get away from the stress of everyday life, we want our children to go to highly rated private schools, we want to shop at Whole Foods or Greenlife so we get the cleanest food possible. Our lives require a lot of money. If we were to slow down in stores or in restaurants, we’d accommodate fewer customers, thereby bringing in less money. In France, for example, it’s common for a restaurant to fill up and then shut its doors for the night: patrons will stay from seven o’clock until midnight, lingering over bread, wine, and cheerful conversation. Would slowing down in this manner be worth the exchange we’d make? We would make a smaller profit, but we would know people better and perhaps, for that reason, benefit from increased national solidarity. Would racial anger begin to dissipate? Would religious extremism attenuate? Would we be physically healthier if we took things a little more slowly? Or would it make a difference at all? Perhaps we are too ingrained in our ways, too dependent on our money and independent of each other, for anything to change. After all, as a hardened introvert, I have trouble imagining myself talking to people for long periods of time at the grocery store or spending hours at the dinner table with others. Perhaps talking in line at the grocery store and lingering at the table wouldn’t make a difference. And we would probably have to give up the private schools and find other sources for the organic food.

I don’t think the French are wrong or the U.S. is wrong here, but perhaps we could benefit from each other. What’s the most important thing to get out of our lives, and how is the best, most balanced way to do it? I’d love to know what you think.

Fête de la musique.

On travaille moins et on joue plus ! (We work less and we play more!)

That slogan was on ads citywide for Fête de la musique, the national French holiday for music. Fête means “party,” “festival,” or “celebration,” and it is the word used to denote public holidays. I like the sentiment: Fête de la musique translates to “music party/festival/celebration.” The French counterpart of Independence Day is Fête nationale, which would translate as “national party/festival/celebration.” In keeping with the idea of a party, red, white, and blue bulletins were printed out with the above slogan on the front and a schedule of all the registered concerts in and around Lyon on the inside. However, some concerts are little more than a duet or trio with a boom box, and those were not included on the list. Dancers also seem to gain rights to their land for the night by squatting, so you just have to amble around if you want to find them. Anyway, contrary to how it might sound, the French do go to work on Fête de la musique, and most of them work a full day. But at 5:00 p.m. sharp, the party begins. Actually, it began a little before that outside my window on Monday afternoon: by 4:00 p.m., my window and head were pounding a bass rhythm in time with the impromptu discothèque on Quai Claude Bernard.

It has long been known that the French are healthier than Americans—fewer heart attacks, strokes, alcohol-related deaths, and Type II diabetes diagnoses, to name a few. We already know that they walk/bike more, eat less sugar, and enjoy smaller portions of food. But surely there has to be another reason for their robust health. As we walked the streets of Lyon in pursuit of good music and the perfect crêpe au chocolat, I wondered whether Fête de la musique might be the secret to French health…or at least indicative of the mindset that contributes to French health. On 21 June each year, people gather for the simple pleasure of being together. They dance in the streets, sing along with the bands, and eat ice cream and crêpes. They chatter and laugh and walk around with cocktails. They take pictures and breathe deeply and hold hands. It’s the very picture of their expression joie de vivre (“joy of living”). Who can stay sufficiently stressed out to have a heart attack when they’re having such a great time?

The fact is this isn’t just the picture of Fête de la musique. Have dinner at any restaurant in France, and you’ll see the same thing: people in groups, laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company. Last night we had our “small group dinner” which means that eight of us students went out with one professor for the sole purpose of enjoying ourselves in the city with someone to make sure we spoke French the whole time. L, one of the grad students, asked Professor B why the tables were all set for upwards of four people. After all, in America, most tables are ready for two, three, or four. Professor B replied, “Because that’s how many people have to sit at them!” In France, she informed us, people don’t just go out for dinner. If you’re at a restaurant, it’s because you’re celebrating something—which you would always do with friends. You go to restaurants when friends come to see you, when someone graduates, when a couple gets engaged, when you get a promotion. You don’t go just because you made it to 5:00 at work without keeling over.

Speaking of work, I think the French attitude toward it might also explain the decreased incidence of health problems. While the Fête de la musique bulletins might have especially brought it to the forefront, “On travaille moins et on joue plus!” is the general sentiment in the French mind as it relates to work. Professor B explained that the word “career” is used much less frequently in France than in America: one has a “job,” not a “career.” Work is simply not as meaningful or beneficial for the French as it is for Americans; the French punch in their time card, give their boss the next seven hours of their day, and then go home to enjoy an evening with their families. Professor B said that French people “live for evenings, weekends, and holidays.” Those are the times when living happens. As a result, the French workweek is only 35 hours, and everyone gets six weeks of paid vacation a year. And even more than that in some companies. The “lunch hour” is actually two, so people generally walk home and eat lunch with their families. Work is a means to an end, not an end in itself. That has to help the health statistics.

While I embrace the French culture of joie de vivre, I do believe there should be a balance between responsibility and fun. It seems to me that Americans in general lack the willingness and perhaps the know-how to lead truly sociable lives. I suspect I am just such an American. On the other hand, there is a value in working to better one’s environment, whether in the arena of business, education, medicine, law, parenting, or other such fields. These might be missing some extra punch in France because of the longing for weekends and holidays. Perhaps the French economy could be stronger if there was more interest and ambition on the part of the workforce. Or I might be wrong about both nationalities. What do you think?

The Bread Man.

Last Sunday E and I woke up early (well, early for jet lagged Americans) to go to the open-air market just minutes by foot from our apartment. We wanted to absorb everything, taking stock of all the available goods, before committing to any one particular vendor’s wares. We noticed right away an especially delicious-looking display of small breakfast bread loaves in various flavors and promised each other we’d return. We kept our word: after purchasing conservative quantities of tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, cherries, and strawberries, we made our way back to the Bread Man. E asked for a pain aux fraises et au chocolat blanc (bread with strawberries and white chocolate), and I chose a pain aux pépites chocolats (bread with chocolate chips).

Upon hearing our French, the Bread Man brightened and asked, “Which nationality?” We replied that we were Americans, and he was delighted. “Americans, yes?” he clarified jovially. “So Lyon is cold for you!”

Wasn’t that the truth! The day E and I arrived in Lyon it was in the low fifties with rain, and the next morning was no warmer—less so, in fact. “Here some years we ski on our national holiday!” he enthused. “Can you ski on your national holiday?” he winked at us. We all laughed. “Impossible!” I said, while E too assured him there were no such opportunities in our native land. Skiing in July! If you’re not in very select locations or you don’t own a snow machine, you are likely unable to celebrate the Fourth of July with snowballs.

Quickly, as happens with many of his line of work, he turned to the quality of his craft. “You have bread like mine in American stores, no?” I replied that while we had bread—even bread meant specifically for breakfast and dessert—we definitely had nothing of the caliber he offered us, at least not in stores. He nodded knowingly. “Yes,” he agreed, “your bread is industrial. Me, I make all my own bread. All of this”—he waved a hand across the whole spread—“all made by my hands. In America, you make things much more quickly than I do, but then you lose the love of your food. I make everything with much care, yes, much care.”

And how true is that. I am not the sort of person who thinks everything in France is better and more interesting and more chic than everything in America or vice versa. Both countries should be appreciated and celebrated for their differences, particularly their strengths. Nonetheless, I think the Bread Man is right on target: we are so separated from our food in America that many of us either hate it, anesthetize ourselves with it, or struggle between the two. It’s a consumable like everything else, something to be mashed into our mouths while working, watching television, or driving hurriedly from one appointment to the next. We don’t love our food because we expect it to fill voids for us or because we are so disillusioned that it hasn’t. We tie it to what it does to us, for better or worse, rather than from its source.

The French are paradoxical as it relates to food. On the one hand, everything they eat is loaded in fat—butter, cream, grease, take your pick, and it’s probably there. Bread and butter are served in large quantities at each meal. Lunch and dinner are both accompanied by wine, and sometimes by a few wines. The French spend—quite literally—hours of their lives à table (at the table), lingering long after the last morsels and drops are gone. Our group had dinner at the high-class Brasserie du Nord on Sunday night. Our reservations were at 7:00 p.m., we were seated immediately, and yet we didn’t leave until after around 10:30. It took that long to eat our three-course meal. Each course was eaten slowly with much laughter and conversation interspersed between bites and courses. Both wine selection and food preparation are sciences at which native French people are expected to be proficient; serving at a restaurant, even a merely decent one, requires the highest levels of such knowledge. Servers, in fact, often have culinary degrees. Yet with such importance placed on food, the French remain one of the healthiest, slimmest, and most robust nationalities on the planet. How is this possible?

For one, the quantities are much smaller. I haven’t left a table hungry yet, but much less is served to me than I would expect at even a Steak ‘n’ Shake in the U.S. Also, the streets are teeming with walkers and bike-riders. Rush hour is nothing to be worried about because if a person lives within four miles or so of his/her office, she/he walks. Everyone is aware of how much they are eating because they eat so very slowly and deliberately. Meals are accompanied by things other than food to look forward to, such as the entertaining and fulfilling company of others.

Of course, not all of these elements of the French meal could be adopted in the U.S. We lead faster-paced lives, we frequently live a longer distance from our jobs, and we enjoy the peace and quiet of our fierce individualism (myself included). But what if we did slow down, eat a little less of the delicious foods we love, and invite friends over often to share a meal with us? What if we did prepare our food on a regular basis—and take pride in it as a craft that sustains life—rather than buying “industrial bread”? I wonder how our health and our entire society would change, with or without the gym.