French women eat chocolate (about 12 pounds a year on average). They also eat bread (we fought a revolution over it!), another item on our watch list of offenders. But: French women don't get fat. In fact, here's another form of the French Paradox: Pretending such pleasures don't exist, or trying to eliminate them from your diet for an extended time, will probably lead to weight gain. The only long-term effect of deprivation is the yo-yo ‑- down today, but up again before you know it. It's utterly pointless, especially because both bread and chocolate are good for you.

If we are going to eat bread and chocolate (and we are) and not get fat (and we are not), we need to use our heads, as Dr. Miracle advised. Maximize the rewards of pleasure while minimizing the costs. In fact, he insisted little pleasures (menus plaisirs) were the key to success, and according to his prescription, I absolutely needed to have my chocolate, but in little doses (par petites doses). I also had to cultivate my appreciation for what I was having. In short, he taught me the French way of enjoying those foods that can be friend or foe depending on how we treat them. The keys are sensory awareness, portion sense, quality and an eye to the big picture of overall wellness (bien-être).

I've already confessed that je raffole de chocolat, which basically means I am a chocoholic. I'm convinced I inherited that gene from my mother. She had an amazing repertoire of chocolate desserts, as well as a passion for straight consumption. It made her the easiest person in the world to shop for. Bringing back chocolate from Belgium, Switzerland or any good French chocolatier was a sure way to her heart. Some years ago, when a famous chocolatier in Lyon passed away in his late seventies, the obituary in Le Monde revealed he had eaten one tablette (a good-size chocolate bar) a day for most of his life. The joke in our family became that there was now proof of at least one person in France who had eaten more chocolate than my mother. But since she would live past ninety, enjoying chocolate all her days, I'm sure she beat him out in the end.