Pump Your Assets With the Godfather of Fitness

Anyone who at 93-years-old still hits the gym for two hours a day and talks about tossing his wife of 50 years across the bathtub to celebrate his upcoming 94th birthday, has got to know a thing or two about prolonging quality of life. MainStreet caught up with the godfather of fitness, Jack LaLanne, whose latest book Fiscal Fitness hit shelves March 21, to dish about food, fitness and finances.

Making the right economical food choices, LaLanne insists, helps your waistline and your bottom line. “Why should you go to a store and spend money buying white flour and white sugar products when you can get the whole grain in whole wheat?" he says. “It’s that simple. If man made it, don’t eat it. And, if it tastes good, spit it out.” (However one indulgence LaLanne is happy to swallow is red wine. “It’s a tonic, a natural health food,” he says. “Just don’t exceed the feed limit and have 20 glasses of it.” )

What do fiscal and physical fitness have in common? “Your bank account and your health are synonymous because the more you put in the more you get out,” says LaLanne. “You got to have a plan. I have a plan and it’s that my wife takes care of all that. I hit the gym for two hours. You got to work at living man, dying is easy.”

Making an easy buck off of junk food, however, is another story. LaLanne may have amassed a media empire during the last six decades, but he has little patience for celebrities who hawk products at the expense of the greater good. “These athletes who are selling all this junk [food] are selling their soul,” says LaLanne. “I’m not adverse to them making money, it’s a capitalistic country, but why not advertise something that’s going to be beneficial to people. But it’s all junk, like soda pop and crappy foods, and these young kids want to do what the athletes tell them to do. It really ticks me off.”