Low-cal Traditions

French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure
By Mireille Guiliano

Mireille Guiliano, now CEO of Clicquot Inc., came to the United States as a student and got fat. Then, she went back to France and effortlessly shed the excess pounds. She lectures the rest of us on how to stay thin by living, not just eating, the French way. The problem: The French do get fat; nearly 40 percent of them are overweight.

Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen
By Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle

Another book inspired by an author who piled on pounds as an exchange student in America. It preaches a diet high in brown rice, fish, and canola oil, and offers the sage advice to eat only until you’re 80 percent full. If you can swallow that recipe, the rewards could be immense.

Stay Slim the Italian Way: A Weight-Loss Surgeon's Guide to Losing Weight
By Eldo E. Frezza

This work has the least glamorous beginnings. It's written by an Italian-American doctor from Lubbock, Texas, who treats the morbidly obese. He came up with the diet for those patients who didn’t qualify for gastric-bypass surgery. Maybe that’s why this diet, with its emphasis on real Italian dishes over creamier Americanized versions, has yet to tip the scales.

 
The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet
By Manny Noakes with Peter Clifton

Devised by an Australian government agency, this diet recommends an intake of nearly twice as much protein as traditional diets. It's controversial, though. Australian nutritionists have linked it to bowel cancer and called on the Australian prime minister to disavow it. Perhaps that’s a few shrimp too many on the barbie.