After years of yo-yo dieting, how Trisha Yearwood created her own eating plan and trisha yearwood bacon wrapped asparagus got the body she always dreamed of. Plus: Her very own slimmed-down recipes.

Country superstar Trisha Yearwood is in New York City, racing from one TV-show set to another. Food Network series, Trisha’s Southern Kitchen. Honesty is the hallmark of the three-time Grammy winner and multiple winner of country music’s Female Vocalist of the Year award. Now, at the end of her day of television interviews, Yearwood eases onto a banquette in a midtown bistro and orders coffee with sugar—real sugar, but just a little. She then leans in, ready to spill the secret that can’t be told in a short television appearance. Well,” whispers Yearwood—now 48 and rocking a turquoise blouse and a black leather miniskirt, “I decided to lose weight when I was 15.

I did Atkins,” she rattles off. Of the original high-fat, high-protein program last on that list, she recalls, “I was like, I can eat bacon and cheese every day! But that got old really quick. Because if I give up a food group, it’s all I want. I was like, I just want a piece of toast! The craziest one I did was in college—it was called the Banana, Egg, and Hot Dog Diet.

To make a long story short, Yearwood lost weight, then gained it back—often with a bonus—more times than she can count. Like a lot of Americans, the singer hails from a family that is “genetically and habitually predisposed to be heavy,” she says. Country cooking and Southern-style foods were expressions of love in their Monticello, GA, home. And the singer admits she maintained unhealthy eating habits even as every other member of her immediate family “got healthy. After a type 2 diabetes diagnosis in the late eighties, Yearwood’s father quit smoking and dramatically cut down on carbohydrates and sugars. In truth, Yearwood had agonized for years about why she, too, could not “flip the switch” and—like those she loved and admired most, whose DNA she shared—get disciplined about diet and exercise: “Especially because of the business I am in, I was always like, ‘I want this. I wanted to be healthier, to be thinner,” she says.