After three months of living in the Abbey of Pontlevoy, my fellow interns and I discovered that we had grown in many ways. Specifically, around the middle. Spending your days and nights walled up in a decaying monastery-cum-hostel or the bar across the street (only a stone’s throw away from the town cathedral) is not conducive to the waistline. Especially when said town is smack dab in the middle of the land of wine, cheese, and chocolate.
So, in honor of spring and love and swimsuit season, the interns and I banded together to face our most difficult challenge yet. More daunting than our American boss, who had us working sixty-plus-hour weeks for pocket change. More aggravating than the yellow industrial walls that surrounded us like a Charlotte Perkins Gilman tale come to life. More inescapable than the broom-closet-sized WCs in our rooms. Together, we girded our loins and commenced … the South Beach Diet.
It started off with a bang: this, our own personal Battle of the Bulge. I even accepted the horrific fate of eating salami for breakfast. Nothing says “morning” like a big slice of fatty pork. Mmm. Cold, fatty pork. Step aside, Kellogg’s!
But we were determined in our quest for physical perfection (or, at least, clothes that fit correctly). As we grew accustomed to the gastronomical sacrifices of our diet, we entered the next phase in our plan: a steady exercise plan.
Now, it has been noted by many that the majority of French people don’t exercise – at least, not to the crazed extent that Americans do. In the celebrated (and highly recommended) book Paris to the Moon, American writer Adam Gopnik notes that the only people who run in France are Americans and French riot police. (Or, as I discovered, pickpockets.) Still, with a little bit of searching, we were able to find a series of aerobics classes being taught in a neighboring town.
We piled ourselves into the rusting Peugeot that we had dubbed “The Red Rocket,” and headed off. Everything was going smoothly until we got into town and proceeded to drive around in circles for a half-hour, trying to figure out where the class was located.
When we finally located the gymnasium, we burst into a group of ten thin, dark, lovely people who were bouncing around to a remix of ‘80s classics. The instructor whirled towards us and gave us a shocked look, as if we had just incorrectly ordered a bottle of Chenin Blanc to accompany our dinner of cassoulet.
It was quickly discovered that his horror was due to the fact that the gauches Americaines had misinterpreted the starting time of the class and were not fifteen minutes late, as we had thought, but forty-five minutes late. Not to be dissuaded, we threw ourselves on the floor for a flurried rush of sit-ups and crunches until the class ended fifteen minutes later.
We determined to do better on our next attempt.
That Thursday, after successfully navigating our way back to the gymnasium, we arrived on time for our step aerobics class. All was well: the instructor (dressed in an outfit that Richard Simmons would have envied) was warming up to some funk music, and we had grabbed workout steps for each of us. After a quick discussion about what the word “step” was in French (it’s pas), we were ready to sweat.
Alas! How quickly we had forgotten our experiences in the discothèques of the Loire Valley and the unique sense of rhythm that the French possess. Over the the next hour, the musician and the latent engineer inside my head short-circuited as the aerobics instructor proceeded to re-create every existing rule about tempo.
“One, two, three, four, to the right, two, three, four, now slide, one…two, to the front”–
– I tripped over my feet in a vain attempt to try and follow –
– “now LUNGE, two, and…again, to the back!” –
– at which point I knocked over my exercise step and looked around in bewilderment at the rest of the class, who had inexplicably managed to follow the instructor without missing a nonexistent beat.
At that moment, I wondered if I had inadvertently missed something while reading the course description. Maybe this was actually the interpretive free-form step class.
By the end of the hour, we were shaking our booties to a techno song with no recognizable beat, while our instructor kept dancing faster and faster. I couldn’t finish the last rep because I was laughing too hard.
That was my first and last experience with the “make-up-your-own-tempo” rhythm-free step class. It was also my first and last experience with the South Beach Diet. The next day, when my French friend presented me with a basket of chocolate at the conclusion of dinner, I grabbed the Milka without a second thought to carbs or my ever-tightening waistband.
Dieting in the land of bread, wine, cheese, and chocolate? Puh-leeze. I’ll give anything the old college try … but I know a losing battle when I see one.
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