Monte Warden knew it was time to lose weight when he had this epiphany: “I woke up one day and there was a fat drunk in the mirror, and he was screwing my wife.”

The Austin-based songwriter can laugh about it now, because he’s essentially turned his life around. Still, he keeps a photo nearby, taken in 2003, when he was 50 pounds overweight. “That’s the picture that started it all,” he says. “That’s horrible. … It was a long time ago. I had just quit taking pills and quit drinking. I thought I was about 20 pounds overweight, but you step on a scale and you go, ‘F—! I am 50 pounds overweight!’ I had to do something, so I did.”

Warden started by running short distances, and relied on his singer’s lungs to build his endurance. His biggest piece of advice to new runners is to avoid comparing themselves to other runners on the trail. “You say, ‘I’m going to run a mile today,’ and you try, and then you say, ‘I’m going to run 10 yards today.’ The first thing I did, I guess I ran half a mile, and I realized that half a mile is pretty far. Then you run a mile, and I was at a mile for a little while. Once I broke past one mile, I could run five miles. It was the first mile that just about killed me.”

Since he’s been running, almost always in the mornings, Warden’s been on a roll. He’s completely sober and 50 pounds lighter. When he travels, he still makes it a point to run, even in London. “I think about the other things I used to chase down in cities around the world…” he muses. At 40 years old, Warden imagines easily fitting into the stage clothes he wore in his 20s, when he was leading the progressive country band, The Wagoneers. In 2004, George Strait released “Desperately,” a Warden co-write with Bruce Robison. He’s working on new music too, and running a publishing company with his wife, Brandi, who ran the Country Music Half-Marathon with him last year. In April, he’s going for the full, 26.2-mile distance, and the fat drunk in the mirror will be nowhere in sight.

Before she got her record deal, Sarah Johns made ends meet in Nashville by teaching spin classes – a high-intensity workout on stationary bikes common in fitness clubs.

“I taught spin like four times a day. I mean, my legs were just huge,” she says. “I taught that and I taught Body Pump and I taught a bunch of classes. I remember one time, I did kickboxing. Honey, let me tell you something, I could tell all those women in there were like, ‘What the hell is this woman even doing? She doesn’t even know how to do it.’ I was like, ‘Kick. Kick,’ because I thought I could make 30 bucks if I told them I knew how to do it. I had no idea. It was the worse class I’m sure any of them ever had.”

Fortunately, she landed her record deal on RCA, and she’s spending the early part of 2008 promoting a new single, “He Hates Me,” as well as opening concerts for fellow traditionalist George Strait. It’s certainly easy to munch on junk food on the bus, but Johns is determined to stay in shape while she’s criss-crossing the country.

“You just try not to eat all the bad stuff. They have full catering services out here and everything. I’m trying not to eat that bad and maybe walk the stairs and really watch I’m eating, more than anything,” she says. “I went in there for lunch and they’ve got hamburgers and pasta and all of a sudden I was like, ‘I’ll do a salad with fat-free ranch.’ I hate fat free reach, I hate it. But I got it.”

Since she doesn’t want to go back to her small Kentucky hometown, Johns says she’s determined to do everything she can to promote her singing career, which means she’ll inevitably work up an appetite. In that case, she’s certainly on the right tour.

“Tonight we’re supposed to have some good steak and you know George isn’t eating crappy steak,” she says. “It’s the good stuff.”

Well-known Nashville restaurant critic and music writer Kay West has been mixing country music and country cooking for years. With her new cookbook, Around the Opry Table: A Feast of Recipes and Stories from the Grand Ole Opry (Center Street, $24.99), she’s combined food, music and Grand Ole Opry history in one package.

Around the Opry Table includes recipes from country superstars and legends, including Martina McBride’s White Chili, Brad Paisley’s Fishin’ Supper, Alan Jackson’s Pimento Cheese Salad and Minnie Pearl’s Chess Pie. But unlike a conventional cookbook, it also includes stories and photos from Opry members, such as how McBride began making her chili for her crew when they grew tired of catering on the road. “There’s not a single picture of food in the book,” says West. “All the photos are of artists, along with vintage photos from the Opry.”

West searched the Opry archives for photos and recipes in an effort to create more than just your average country cookbook. As publicist for George Strait for many years, West says, “I was always getting asked for a recipe from George for various cookbooks, and I’d always give them George’s King Ranch Chicken recipe,” says West. “I’ve seen that recipe everywhere. So when I started this book I wanted to get recipes that hadn’t been used everywhere else.”

Being a thorough researcher, West naturally had to sample the concoctions. “I tried almost all of them,” she says. “You have check them out, especially because on some of the older ones you have to adapt the measurements. For example, Texas Ruby’s recipe called for a box of marshmallows. And a couple just said a can of this or that, and I really needed them to be a little more specific.”

Her favorites? “I think Martina’s chili is really good, and Marty Stuart’s mother’s applesauce cake is really good. And Alison Krauss’ Pretty Good for a Yankee Chicken Pot Pie really is pretty good for a Yankee!”