Chefs Behind the Lessons: Art Smith

Have you seen Art Smith on "Top Chef Masters"? He looks ah-maze-ing! If you caught him last time he competed on the show, you probably remember a hilarious, charming, big Southern teddy bear of a chef -- at about 325 pounds. This time around, the chef-owner of Table 52, Southern Art and Art & Soul still has that unmistakeable charm, but he's 125 pounds leaner.  I loved seeing him Wednesday on the season debut, and pleased that they touted his incredible transformation. He goes into detail in "Smart Chefs," about how he changed his eating, started exercising, and eventually reversed his diabetes symptoms.  Here's some of Art's story from the foreword to "Smart Chefs," which the chef himself was kind enough to write...

In my years as a chef, I’ve made Hummingbird cake for Lady Gaga, dirty rice for the Dalai Lama, chicken with pomegranate sauce for the first George Bush, and a Valentine’s Day dinner for Barack and Michelle Obama. I prepared countless meals for Oprah Winfrey as her personal chef and served my fried chicken to ballrooms full of Hollywood luminaries—and let me tell you, I’m not being proud when I say that they loved me for it. Everybody loves a chef, because everybody loves food.

But the most important meal I ever cooked wasn’t for any of these big names. It was for just me.

It was a bowl of oatmeal with berries, and some egg whites scrambled with zucchini. The first time I ate that breakfast I weighed 325 pounds and had recently been given a diagnosis of diabetes, the disease that would take my father from me too soon. Chef Art, before (photo: Bravo TV)

I knew I had to make changes, but even though I’d expertly prepared thousands of meals for other people—many tailored to their diet specifications—I had never given much thought to how to feed myself in a healthful way. If the boss said, “Art, I need steamed vegetables, I need a grilled piece of fish,” that’s what I gave them. But I never actually connected the good choices I was helping them make, with how I could improve my own poor habits. I knew other chefs who struggled with their weight, and some chefs who stayed fit—I just didn’t know how the second group managed it, since all the chefs I knew seemed just as passionate about great food as I was, and still am.

Someone, in my case a health coach, needed to say, “Art, eat oatmeal. Eat berries. Eat egg whites and vegetables.” So I did. Now, more than one hundred pounds lighter, I still have that same breakfast virtually every day. I’ve run marathons and in 2010 married my love, Jesus Salgueiro, wearing a suit that was smaller than the one I wore for my high school graduation.

Chef Art, today (photo: Bravo TV)

The moral of the story is that while the motivation had to come from within, I still needed some inspiration from outside. That’s what I hope this book will do: inspire you. When I heard that Allison planned to tackle the very question I once puzzled over, I decided right away I wanted to be part of this project, and share what I now know to be true: that you can be fit and enjoy wonderful food."

Excerpted from "Smart Chefs Stay Slim: Lessons in Eating and Living from America's Best Chefs" by Allison Adato, foreword by Art Smith (c. 2012)