A couple of years ago, when I was going through one of my periodic and futile attempts to lose weight, I came across a little book which appeared to offer hope. It was ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat’ by Mireille Guilano, sub-titled even more beguilingly, ‘The Secret of Eating for Pleasure.’It is one of those lovely composite books, part memoir, part recipe book, part a philosophy of all things French. The author is head of the Veuve Cliquot Company’s New York operation. She has lived many years in the United States and the book is the result of trying to teach American women the French way of eating and staying slim.
Sadly for anyone hoping to lose weight there isn’t anything here that any reasonably intelligent person cannot guess for themselves. Losing weight, she says, is all about eating sensibly, cutting out those fattening foods, like bread, that one eats to excess and eating half measures - half a glass of wine, half a banana. For the pleasure is always in the first half of something, she suggests, rather than in the second. Apart from that, if you want to weigh ten stone then just eat like someone who weighs ten stone and not like someone who weighs 28 pounds more.
So in all the book there is only one dish to which someone like myself who believes in Fairy Godmothers can possibly cling in the hope of some alchemical transformation. Mireille Guilano even qualifies it with the preface ‘magic.’ It is Magical Leek Soup. And there is a diet that goes with it - a 48 hour diet - which, she implies, will kick-start your life-changing regime and bring all manner of wonderful benefits to boot.
Now I’ve had a nagging temptation to try this diet ever since I bought the book. It’s very simple. You buy a kilo of leeks; trim off most of the green bits; slice the leeks into mouth-sized bites; cover these with water; and boil them for 25 minutes. After this you drain off the water into a jug.
You do this on a Friday evening and for the next 48 hours whenever you feel hungry you eat some of your boiled leeks - hot or cold according to taste - which you are allowed to drizzle with olive oil and flavour with salt and black pepper. When you are thirsty you drink the water you have poured off, which now brims with leek goodness.
And you watch the weight fall of your body, the toxins evaporate from your skin, your hair become sleek and your fingernails glossy, your muscles toned and your wrinkles smoothed. True, she doesn’t actually promise these benefits in so many words, but if you qualify a dish with the word ‘magic’ then surely expecting a few of these benefits isn’t asking too much, is it?
Well, last weekend I tried this diet. And I stuck to it even though I had a sore throat and felt quite awful.
My energy simply evaporated. All I could do was lie on a sofa and read or watch television. Having no energy means not only that you can’t move, but that you can’t think either. So writing is out, decision-making ditto. I found myself on the Saturday evening watching two back to back episodes of ‘Poirot’* (most appropriate I thought) and then half an episode of ‘Taggart.’
I ached on the inside. I’ve never had chemotherapy but, from the descriptions, the effects of 48 hours of leeks seem well on the way towards an approximation.
You wouldn’t believe what I would have given for a cup of tea, or how awful a tepid plate of leeks, even drizzled with oil, tastes at half-past seven in the morning. Despite my raging hunger I found them impossible to finish. I sat there like a child compelled to swallow some disgusting meal long after the family have departed. Then there was the abiding smell of leeks which seemed to exude from the very pores of my skin.
Determined to get to the bitter end all I could think of was the phrase that trips so happily off the tongue of my French neighbour. ‘Il faut souffrir un peu pour etre belle.’ (You have to suffer a little to be beautiful). It gave me little comfort.
And for this suffering what did I get? Well, certainly not beauty! But I did lose weight. Two and three-quarter pounds in fact. And my buoyant blood pressure fell by 15-20 points. Did I feel cleansed, de-toxed, raring to go when the whistle blew at 5 o’clock on Sunday evening and I could permit myself a cup of tea? Answer no, not really, and sadly in the few days since then my weight and blood pressure have reverted to what they were.
No magic then. But the tea did taste beautiful.
(*Poirot is the French word for Leek)
