K’Lynne Comes to My House — With KMart Pants
Last year in Portland, I barely got to spend any time with someone I think is pretty special. In fact, she and her “before and after” photos, and her story, are in the latest 12 Steps to Whole Foods manual.
She lives in a tiny, one-stoplight town. No health food store. But she took 12 Steps to heart, changed her diet radically, and lost 100 POUNDS in less than a year. She’s a school lunch lady and a mom to four children, including two college students. She’s my age exactly.
She wrote on her blog about how, as a shy, very soft-spoken person, she drove 4.5 hours with her friends to hear me speak in Portland last year and then very nearly didn’t come up to talk to me. She did, though, and I asked her questions in front of 150 people. Details on that from last year, HERE.
She wrote me after that, “I just have to tell you the response to me being on your blog has been amazing, this last week has been mind blowing. All kinds of people emailing me who are exactly how I was and want advice. I tell them what I did and am doing….which is following your program and eating health and exercising.”
There’s really no other way, is there?
We had to tear out of Portland like bats out of Hades to make it to our gig in Seattle later that day. I finally got my chance to talk with K’Lynne at more length this week, sitting on my porch.
It’s all on camera and we’ll release that later.
Turns out, the day we filmed her, July 17, was her 25th wedding anniversary with her delightful, supportive husband, Chuck.
I asked him on camera to tell me how he felt about K’Lynne. He got emotional. He said he was so proud of her. So thankful to her. Her choices impacted his life for the better.
I’ve been waiting for the visit from K’Lynne Wagner of Phoenix, Oregon, to tell me more about what it’s like to shed 100 pounds.
Because there are lots of ways to lose weight. And ditch her meds and get her health back.
But there’s just one way to get healthy, and it absolutely has to include a whole-foods diet.
I don’t want to get into whether that should include organic, grass-fed meat…..if you can afford that, that’s between you and your relationship with animals, it’s not my axe to grind. Or what percentage of carbs/fats/proteins you eat, in your whole-foods diet. Or whether or not a little “cheating” with processed food is allowed……you can experiment and discover your own “truth.”
All I care about it that you shift to whole foods, mostly plants!
That’s my core value. It DOES work for everybody. (With variations like the examples and debates above, and lots of individual variety.) And that core foundation is all I’m interested in teaching.
K’Lynne says that green smoothies were a huge part of her shift. She said, “I tried Step 1 in the program, I liked it, so I went on to Step 2, and pretty soon I was doing it all. I would read the manual out loud to Chuck. I was always taking it places, and always reading it.”
Chuck has dropped 20 lbs. by ditching the bacon-and-eggs breakfast in favor of unsweetened oatmeal, fruit, and green smoothie. His wife makes him a salad for lunch, and for dinner he eats lots of healthy stuff K’Lynne makes.
Don’t we all love compliant husbands? We’re happy to do what makes THEM happy—-just indulge us and eat what we feed you!
K’Lynne is off her blood pressure meds and has perfectly healthy cardiovascular biomarkers now. Both she and Chuck are at a healthy weight. How exciting—that we can make change at any age. They are both loving the energy they say changes EVERYTHING in life.
K’Lynne’s counsel to those who have 100 lbs. to lose? Just stay in today. Think positively and make good choices TODAY. Because you really CAN do it. One day at a time.
I gave her the latest, greatest 12 Steps to Whole Foods manual, and I had fun looking through her old copy at the recipes she’d marked as her favorites. We both love Pink Hummus Quesadillas and others.
She talked about how she sees dishes in restaurants that she used to love, and she momentarily feels the pull of addiction…..but then she realizes she actually doesn’t really want those foods any more. Kristin has said the same thing to me. I agree. I love chocolate and dessert. But honestly? The vast majority of it, most of the time, just isn’t interesting any more.
K’Lynne told me about going to Cheesecake Factory this week while on vacation, and ordering the most fabulous vegetarian burger made from faro (an Egyptian grain) and beets. It was so good that Chuck wished he had it, instead of his shrimp tacos.
I’d emailed K’Lynne asking if she wanted to bring any clothes she used to wear. She came with a pair of jeans in her old size, with a K-Mart tag attached. She said:
“I threw those pants away. Because I’m never going back there.” After she left my house, she and Chuck headed to visit family in St. George and Vegas. They stopped at K-Mart and returned the pants.
Are you inspired? I am!
Posted in: 12 Steps To Whole Food, Green Smoothies, Healthy Weight, Whole Food
