A tribute today to the late Jack Lalanne, to some the godfather of fitness who died at the great age of 96.
He famously said that that he could never die, it would be bad for his image!!!
Jack started off addicted to sugary foods and was thought of as a lunatic, he even took an axe to his brother, was a nightmare at school and was thought of as someone who had a bleak future in front of him.
In desperation, his mother took him to a lecture by a nutritionist who preached the virtues of eating natural food. Lalanne spent 30 minutes backstage with him afterwards, enthralled on what he had just heard about the power of natural foods.
He then gave up all the sugary and fatty food almost overnight, and almost immediately his behaviour changed overnight. He became a good student very soon and became the school’s champion athlete in just one year. He then became a health and fitness advocate with a high profile.
He then started a health club with a juice bar before anyone else, but due to the depression, these went bankrupt. He eventually started them up again after the war creating a chain which he eventually sold to Bally’s for a lot of money.
He had a television series running for 35 years in the states on fitness, and created the famous jack lalanne power juicer, which is still famous today.
He was also famous for his physical feats such as swimming from Alcatraz towing an entourage of boats with his teeth! He performed such feats on his 40th, 50th, 60th and 70th birthdays!!
A huge advocate of physical fitness and eating natural foods, he became a member of the president’s council on health and fitness and a motivational speaker.
This is a just brief description of his life in the simplest terms, and if you put a google search for his name, you will learn a lot more very interesting and entertaining stories about the great man.
When he first encouraged people to exercise and eat well, doctor’s said you would get a heart attack if you exercised like that, or you would get all ailments under the sun, you would get high blood pressure and if you were female, you would get bulky and huge muscles!
The opposite of all of this is true of course, science has proven this!
The athletes always knew first before the doctors, so rest in peace jack!!!!
