Jack La Lanne turned 91 in September 2005 and that is hard to believe. He doesn't look it! Wherever Jack appears in public, young people flock to him. Older people feel Jack has found the fountain of youth.

Jack La Lanne is America's Number 1 Physical Fitness Expert and Guru, often called "The Godfather of Fitness". It was not always this way with Jack. "As a kid," Jack flatly states, "I was a sugarholic. I was a junk food junkie! It made me weak and it made me mean. It made me sick. I had boils, pimples, and I was nearsighted. Little girls used to beat me up! Mom prayed...the church prayed. At the age of 15 when I heard pioneer nutritionist Paul Bragg speak at the Oakland City Womens' Club in the San Francisco bay area, I finally realized that I was addicted to sugar." Bragg promised that if Jack would exercise and eat a proper diet, he could achieve good health. With great determination, he set out to build a totally new Jack La Lanne.

He discovered that the Berkeley YMCA had a set of weights and began experimenting with them. Before long, Jack achieved the muscular, healthy body of his dreams. "I became a voracious reader and I absorbed everything that would help me to improve myself. Grey's Anatomy was my bible. During college I studied pre-med to become a medical doctor and I also went to Chiropractic college and graduated; however, I was more interested in helping people with precaution, before they became ill." Resolving to help others find the secrets to health and fitness, La Lanne opened the nation's first modern health studio on the third floor of an old office building in Oakland, California, paying $45 per month for rent. That was in 1936, and Jack was 21 years old. "I was 40 years ahead of my time," he said, "but by then I knew more about the workings of the muscles in my body than most doctors. People thought I was a charlatan and a nut," Jack says. "The doctors were against me - they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive; women would look like men. Even the coaches predicted that athletes would get muscle bound and didn't want them to work out with weights. I had to give them keys so they could come in at night and work out. What I was doing was scientifically correct, starting with a healthy diet and now everyone knows it. Today all the world class athletes work out with weights."

As the years went by, Jack began to formulate a basic approach to physical fitness and nutrition. His methods would be scientifically sound. Jack developed the first models of the exercise equipment that is standard in the health spas of today: the first leg extension machine, the first pulley machines using cables, and the first weight selectors. He was the first to have women work out with weights. He also encouraged invalids and the elderly to exercise for health. "There are 640 muscles in the human body," Jack explains, "and I take every one of them into account as I plan and demonstrate an exercise routine."

Jack's reputation began to spread and by the early 1950s, he had taken to the new medium of television in order to reach even more people. Ever the innovator, Jack used television to reach out to millions of Americans everywhere with his gospel message of get up, work out, and feel better. He was magnetic! He was a motivator! Jack La Lanne believes in daily, vigorous, systematic exercise and proper diet. "My top priority in life is my workout each day." Jack La Lanne lives by what he says to others, and he has been doing it for more than 60 years!

Still as energetic and flamboyant as ever, La Lanne's current hobby is golf, a sport he took up at age 50. He almost gave it up, however, when he was involved in a head-on automobile accident, resulting in severe injuries to his left knee. Doctors told him his golfing days were over. Once again, he proved he could overcome adversity. "I started golfing again several years ago and shot my age four times when I was 73 and five times at 74. "Now at 91, it's getting easier to shoot my age," Jack jokes. "It just shows what the mind will do...remember, if the mind can conceive, the body can achieve. If you have an injury or a weak spot, you can still work around it, and other parts of the body will adapt."

At the present, Jack La Lanne is still coming up with incredible new ideas and exercise programs and together with his wife Elaine, travels throughout the world, lecturing and inspiring people to greater heights through exercise and nutrition.

When asked about the difference between then and now, Jack laughs and replies with a gleam in his eye, "It is most gratifying to me to see that everything that I was preaching and advocating over 50 years ago, not only exercise-wise but nutrition-wise, is coming into fruition. Back then I was a crackpot, today I am an authority. And believe me, I can't die.....it would ruin my image!"