1. Constantly go to cafes. Order coffee. It’ll come with a large jug of full-fat milk and will taste so bitter, you’ll need to douse it in sugar. You’re going to need a croissant to break up the strong flavor of coffee. It’ll be made almost entirely of butter.

2. Buy “souvenirs” for friends and family back home – macaroons are a great choice! However, they don’t last more than two days, so you will have to eat them immediately and bring your friends postcards instead.

3. Stay with a French family – they will keep things like a dozen ramekins of chocolate mousse in the fridge. How do they stop themselves from eating six at a time? Doesn’t matter: more for you!

4. Slather dulce de leche (sweet caramel crème sauce) on foot-long baguettes and call it a snack.

5. Take advantage of the Parisian restaurants. Why order just an entrée when you can have foie gras before and pecan tart afterwards?  Everyone wins except for the goose.

6. Let yourself eat cake. The people of France didn’t fight in the French Revolution to only eat stewed carrots.

7. Shop at grocery stores if you’re low on money. You can still get your day’s worth of carbohydrates from the tiny tarts and buttery madeleines in the store. Buy the “Bonne Maman” brand (translation: “Good Mommy”) – it will briefly make you feel like you’re doing a good job as a mother to your future unborn children, until you eat the entire package and leave none for hypothetical babies.

8. If it’s a holiday or a Sunday when all the shops are closed, don’t worry. Just use your Sunday to stock up on frozen food from Picard. Did you know that you can get a frozen bag of chocolate croissants? In an emergency, you don’t even have to defrost them. It’s like eating. . . a frozen chocolate croissant. Still better than not eating a chocolate croissant.

9. Keep an eye out for fat French women. They are rare sightings, like bats. Once you see one, you will feel an immediate sense of relief that you are doing okay, comparatively, until they stand up and you realize there are no fat French women: just pregnant ones.

10. Keep an eye out for skinny French women. Observe them carefully. Recently, at the Café de Flore, a woman left four selected pastries on her plate. WHY? Is she a spy? Why would a spy do that? Is she trying to lure gluttonous Americans with them? Only one way to find out.

11. Roll yourself back to Gare du Nord to catch the last train back to London that night. The French woman next to you eats a banana and an orange. What was she thinking? She must not realize that they sell chocolates at the train station.

In conclusion, no one knows why French women don’t get fat. They must be witches.

*Based on a real 4-day trip to Paris