THE KARL LAGERFELD DIET
By Dr. Jean-Claude Houdret
223 pages. PowerHouse Books
Before he went on a diet, Karl Lagerfeld was almost as famous for his Hitchcockian figure as he was for his designs for Chanel and Fendi. With his trademark dark glasses, fan, and white hair pulled into a ponytail, the 5’11” designer tipped the scales at 224 lbs., which didn’t bother him too much until he saw the menswear designed by Hedi Slimane (who until recently was Dior Homme’s designer).
Cigarette-slim, with starched high collars that wouldn’t accommodate a double chin, Slimane’s fashions were modeled by reed-thin boys with 18-year-old frames. Suddenly, Lagerfeld’s daily uniform of black Japanese attire from Matsuda, Comme de Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto lost its luster. Lagerfeld knew he would have to lose at least 80 lbs. to fit into Slimane’s clothes, and so, with the iron will that earned him the moniker Kaiser Karl, he set about changing his figure and his life.
“It was for totally superficial reasons that I got started on this diet,” Lagerfeld says in the book. “I think that, for women as well as for men, fashion is the healthiest motivation for losing weight.”
The Kaiser consulted French diet doctor Jean-Claude Houdret — he of the Dali-esque moustache — and embarked on the good doctor’s Spoonlight diet for 13 months, during which he lost 92 lbs. and reduced his jean size to 26.
Sound too good to be true? It is. The designer himself describes the diet as “some sort of punishment,” where he had to give up sugar, cream, and rice for life, eat only at certain times of day, and not drink, apart from pints and pints of water, diet soda, tea and coffee. Food is such a luxury on this diet that Karl goes to sleep dreaming of the yogurt-and-toast breakfast he’ll have the next day. After five months, however, he had lost so much weight his skin started sagging, so he had to apply skin-firming creams day and night to keep everything from “falling apart.” (To this day, bitchy fashion-industry types claim that Karl is hiding a considerable turkey wattle underneath all those high collars.)
The Karl Lagerfeld Diet includes 120 gourmet recipes and sample menus, special chapters on skincare, stress management, giving up smoking, and exercise. There are also useful tips for developing the willpower to commit to this diet, which is so rigorous it doesn’t seem feasible unless you cook all your meals or have a personal chef at your disposal.
But the rewards are undeniable. Today Lagerfeld is back to his teenage weight, and Slimane’s clothes fit as if they had been made to measure. As the witty designer himself puts it, “Dieting is the only game where you win when you lose.”
* * *
FRENCH WOMEN DON’T GET FAT: The Secret to Eating for Pleasure
By Mireille Guiliano
280 pages.
Chatto & Windus
New York Times critic Janet Maslin felt like throwing this book across the room a number of times while reading it, and I can see why. While extolling the French’s culinary genius, control over appetite and unerring taste in fashion, author Mireille Guiliano skewers Americans’ many gustatory sins, from their habit of grazing (“Europeans only eat three proper meals a day”), to the quality of the snacks (“those chocolate bars don’t even contain real chocolate”), to not drinking enough water (“my crew have no trouble running down to the deli to buy coffee or soft drinks, but rarely do I see any of them at the water cooler”), to the insanity of the gym addiction (“French women don’t want to spend that much effort on so little pleasure”).
If I were American and my eating habits — hence my culture — were dissed this way, I’d want to throw the book across the room, too. The most infuriating thing, Maslin grudgingly admitted, was that most of what Guiliano said was true. If we only ate more like the French — with gusto and an awareness of what exactly we are putting into our mouths — our extra pounds would miraculously melt away, leaving us slim enough to fit into the latest fashions.
The author presents herself as Case Study Number One. Guiliano spent time as an exchange student in the US, and gained over seven kilos on an all-American diet of huge portions and fast food. When she returned home, her father took one look at her and ungraciously remarked, “You look like a sack of potatoes,” which, if you can believe it, doesn’t sound any less brutal in French. Far from reforming his naughty Madeleine, he sent her into a downward carb spiral secretly conducted at many of the 16 patisseries in the vicinity of Guiliano’s school, Le Sorbonne. It took an intervention by her mother and the family physician, “Dr. Miracle,” to set our heroine back on track, reminding her of the time-tested strategies used by French women to maintain their figures and enviable chic.
Without giving too much away, this involves eating seasonally and sensually, taking pleasure in good food and staying away from empty calories, coming away from the table contented but not overfull, and moving like a Frenchwoman, without fear of climbing stairs, long walks or biking to work, which is easier to do when one lives in a city as beautiful as Paris.
Though Guiliano presents French Women… as an anti-diet book, it uses diet-book formulas like a two-day “recasting,” in which the reader is encouraged to eat nothing but Magical Leek Soup for a weekend, includes recipes that sound good (if we could only find the ingredients in Pinoy supermarkets), and even lists a menu or two.
But if you’ve ever wondered about the “French paradox” — how the French can consume so much wine, food cooked with real cream and real butter, bread and pastries without getting fat — you’ve come to the right place.
* * *
Japanese Women
DON’T GET OLD OR FAT:
Secrets of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen
By Naomi Moriyama & William Doyle
276 pages. Delacorte Press
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, author Mireille Guiliano should feel plenty flattered. Japanese Women… rips off the template of French Women Don’t Get Fat, from its title to the food memoir-cum-cookbook within, and tries to do it one better, by telling readers to forget about French food and looking like Amélie: eat like the Japanese, it says, and not only will you get slim and healthy, you’ll also live to be 120 like those people in Okinawa!
Citing statistics that show that the obesity rate in France has climbed by almost 40 percent, and that Japan is lower than both France and Italy on the obesity scale, Moriyama presents her arguments very convincingly. Having been slim all her life, she started preparing her mother’s traditional Japanese recipes for her American husband, co-author William Doyle, who consequently lost 35 lbs. and is holding steady at his new weight.
According to Moriyama, the road to health and longevity rests on the seven pillars of Japanese home cooking: fish, vegetables, rice, soy, noodles, tea and fruit.
Though I’ve always loved Japanese food for its flavors, not just its healthiness, I had my major epiphany when I was studying in the States. My dorm at Boston University prohibited any sort of appliance in the rooms, and though sheer hunger forced me to stash a hotpot for noodle soups, the call of my Japanese neighbor’s homeland was so strong it drove her to hide a rice cooker in her room! She was the one who introduced me to onigiri, the delicious rice balls that are Japan’s national snack, plus other tasty contraband.
Finding a recipe for onigiri in Japanese Women… plus chicken rice and other Japanese comfort food, was an instant reminder of those forbidden meals in Ikuo’s room, which I count among the best I’ve ever had.
With our many good Japanese eateries, Filipinos will have less trouble than Westerners in adapting to a Japanese-style diet. The only problem I can foresee is that Japanese food is perceived as a special cuisine best prepared in restaurants — after all, don’t you need years of training to become a sushi chef? Many people also feel intimidated by the thought of going into a Japanese grocery and picking ingredients labeled in Japanese.
Moriyama debunks that misconception by presenting Japanese home cooking as the simple affair it really is. You won’t need to know how to slice raw fish; by just adding a few Japanese ingredients and utensils — many of them now labeled in English — you can start your own Tokyo kitchen.
Personally, I’d love to give Moriyama’s recipes a try. Countless studies show that the Japanese are indeed the healthiest, most long-lived people in the world, and most of the credit goes to their diet. As Bill Murray says in the movie Lost In Translation: “I would like to start eating healthier. I don’t want all that pasta. I would like to start eating Japanese food.”
I hear you, Bill. I hear you.
* * *
French Women Don’t Get Fat and Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat are available at National Book Store and Powerbooks. The Karl Lagerfeld Diet is available through special order at Powerbooks.