Jack LaLanne Was Cool

Jack LaLanne died Sunday, at 96 years old. He was one of my heroes. He followed his own voice. He created his own niche, and in the process helped untold numbers of people get healthier. As a byproduct, he became famous and successful, in the best sense of that word.

He gave up sugar when he was 15. Fifteen! Why? Because he was a violent kid, with suicidal thoughts. He was so incorrigible as a teenager, that in desperation his mother took him to a lecture by a health food speaker (yes, they were around even then), hoping for some kind of miracle, and it worked. It changed his life. He realized sugar was making him crazy and violent. It was a mood-altering substance. (If you don’t think sugar is a mood-altering substance, just hang around two groups of toddlers, one with sugar, one without…*) Getting off sugar also cured his chronic indigestion, pimples, boils, and nearsightedness.

*Sugar is also highly addictive. If you don’t believe that, try going cold turkey for a month. (No artificial sweeteners, either. Just fresh fruit.) This post is not about me, but I’ve been trying to get off sugar for about 30 years, with only intermittent success. My family jokes about my eating habits. One time at a baseball game, when there was a lull in the action, a beer vendor came by, and my brother yelled, “Hey beer man, got any broccoli for my brother?” Everybody in our section thought that was hilarious.

My other brother has successfully given up sugar and alcohol for several years now. Not because he’s an alcoholic, he just doesn’t like what they do to him. I can’t tell you how impressed I am with that, because it’s HARD.

Jack LaLanne got up every morning at 5 AM for a two-hour workout. He challenged anybody to do it with him and keep up. He used to say it was the hardest thing he ever did — working out two hours every morning without a day off. And after that, everything he did the rest of the day was easy.

He started the modern health club as we know it. He became a body builder. Every ten years on his birthday he would pull off some epic feat of strength and endurance just to show it was possible, like swimming from Alcatraz across the San Francisco bay to Fisherman’s Wharf with his hands and feet tied, and towing a 1,000 pound boat. At age 60!

He realized early on the power of television. Maybe you remember him from the ’50s, in his black jumpsuit, smiling, demonstrating slimming and strengthening exercises on daytime TV. He was always encouraging, saying it was wonderful to get in shape, and reminding us how much better we’d feel.

He used to say, “You wouldn’t get up in the morning and give your dog a cup of coffee, a doughnut, and a cigarette! Why would you do that to yourself?”

Obviously, Jack LaLanne had an inner drive, a mission, a purpose. Maybe it seems more powerful than what most of us mere mortals have. But the secret was he loved it. It was who he WAS. He was becoming the best of himself by taking his love of fitness and health and combining it with commitment. He didn’t let the “urgent” get in the way of the “important.” He got up early every morning for that brutal two-hour workout.

I always got the sense that even if he had never become famous or as “successful” as he did, he would have lived his life the same way, just reaching people on a smaller scale.

It reminds us to ask ourselves:

• Are we spending enough time doing what we love?
• Are we putting the urgent before the important?
• Can we make a stronger commitment to spend more of our time where we’re gifted, getting better at it, and thereby adding more joy to our lives and value to the world? (Even if it’s just playing with our kids…)

© 2011 Greg Tamblyn