[LindaT]

Anyone remember Jack LaLannne?
I found this recent article on him.. the man had it right years ago.

Here is the hyperlink to the article as well as an amazing video clip of the man...if he isn't proof of the value of exercise, I don't know who is....

http://www.msnbc.com/news/807232.asp?0cl=cR

Jack La Lanne’s fitness formula



Father of modern fitness gives tips on living longer — and stronger
Jack LaLanne is still lifting, pumping, and still preaching fitness and healthy living.


NBC News

Sept. 13— Long before personal trainers, before we’d even heard of aerobics, there was Jack La Lanne. If you remember when his first TV show hit the air, you’re probably old enough to be a grandparent — and maybe wishing you’d paid closer attention. For more than a half-century Jack La Lanne has been telling us to exercise and eat right, promising better and longer lives if we did. And he’s been practicing what he preached. Every few years, correspondent Keith Morrison checks in with the father of modern fitness around his birthday. And how old is he?

DID YOU HAPPEN to see a commercial a few months ago, the one for the arthritis foundation? It features a man in a stretchy suit — Jack LaLanne, of course, promoting diet and exercise.
“If arthritis has taken your freedom away. Take it back,” he says in the commercial.
Looks pretty good, too, given that this American icon of muscle is turning — are you ready? 88.
So you could reasonably assume that pushing physical limits is not really what Jack La Lanne does anymore — when he’s not making commercials, that is. And you would be wrong.
In fact, if they ever come up with an award for absolute, unwavering consistency on an issue of unquestionable importance, it could go, hands down, to old Jack La Lanne. Who, in case you haven’t been paying attention for the last 70 years or so, has been trying to tell us how to live as long, and almost as strong, as him.

EXERCISE ENTHUSIAST
Jack La Lanne was already an exercise guru when his TV show went on the air in 1951. There he was, live, in ballet slippers, acting as if he could see bad habits right through the TV set.
“You gals that are having your coffee break and your cigarettes. Put them aside. You can take care of those things later,” he said more than 50 years ago on his show.
“Remember I told you about that big smile,” he said on one of his shows. “A smile isn’t any good unless you give it away.”
There are people with grandchildren now who are barely old enough to remember much about the early TV show.
But then there were these nutty birthday stunts — like the time when he turned 70 and he tied a rope to 70 rowboats containing 70 people, and then, handcuffed, he swam, pulling those boats and those people for a mile and a half, against strong currents and strong winds, in the Long Beach Harbor.
But remember — all this was about living better and longer. So, we decided to go see him back in 1994, back when he turned 80, not just to learn what secrets he might have for the rest of us, but quite frankly, to see if the old guy still had it.
“Would you get your dog up in the morning and give him a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a doughnut?”
— JACK LA LANNE
We found him living in an idyllic retreat not far from the Pacific Ocean in what we assumed would be a kind of retirement. Remember, by then, by 1994, he had already surpassed average life expectancy by four years. And?
Did we find a man taking it easy? We did not. Jack La Lanne was a maniac on his 80th birthday, a human dynamo.

Jack La Lanne: “Straighten your arms.”
Keith Morrison: “Alright.”
Jack La Lanne: “On your finger tips.”
Keith Morrison: “I can’t get on my fingertips. Are you crazy?”
Jack La Lanne: “Now those are really tough.”
Keith Morrison: “No kidding.”
Jack La Lanne: “Right now, I have more things going than I ever had in my whole life by triple, right today. And here I’ll be 80.”

STILL GOING STRONG
Then five years later, we went back to see him again, for his 85th birthday. We try to tempt Jack and his wife Elaine with sweets.
“Now, you expect us to eat that?” asks Elaine.
At 85, he was still going — still lifting, still pumping, and still swimming against time.
So then this year, as ghoulish as it might seem, we decided to check in on him again and see if time had finally caught up with Jack.
We brought him back to an old haunt — Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California.

Keith Morrison: “You used to come here, when?”
Jack La Lanne: “None of your business. Right over here. They had a big platform. Always have an acrobatic or two, hand-balancing tumblers, something like that. We would compare tricks. It was so incredible, just to see all these guys, you know, we could teach some things. They could teach us things, and it was just — we had this one thing in common.”

“If man makes it, don’t eat it.”
— JACK LA LANNE

This is where, more than 60 years ago, the modern fitness movement got its start and La Lanne got famous. And now? We might as well have been walking with a rock star or with a teen idol.
“You’re awesome, Jack,” says a woman who spots him.
At 88, Jack La Lanne is still hot.
A bystander tells him: “I’m trying to be like you. You’re my idol.”
Jack La Lanne: “No, you be like you.”
Another woman says: “I became a personal trainer because of you.”
Jack La Lanne: “You’re kidding.”
She says: “See my biceps.”
Jack La Lanne: “I love that.”



Jack La Lanne's Average Daily Diet


Breakfast: Vitamins, Minerals and a protein shake. Jack says, "I have a soy drink with 50 grams of protein in it. That's half the protein I need all day. I have it for breakfast. See this keeps my blood sugar up five or six hours, so I can't get hungry. Too many people are starting their morning with a little fresh fruit and cereal. And that digests within an hour and a half or so. Then your blood sugar's down and you get hungry."
Lunch: More protein: Jack eats either four egg whites from hard-boiled eggs or an egg-white omelet. Jack says, "That's as much protein you get in a steak… [yet only] 60 calories." Fruit: A least five pieces of fruit. Occasionally a juicer drink, using whatever fruits and vegetables are in the fridge.
Dinner: This is Jack's biggest meal. He eats a salad with at least ten raw vegetables, fish, brown rice, and soup without any cream.



He eats at least ten kinds of fruits and vegetables each day. He shuns meat, but does eat fish. He avoids saturated fats, and never drinks milk.

He may not be quite the hunk he was, say, 50 years ago, but he’s still doing more and feeling better, apparently, than lots of people half his age.

Keith Morrison: “With all this energy you got, how old do you actually feel Jack?”
Jack La Lanne: “I don’t think, I don’t feel any different when I was 21 or 25 or 30.”
Keith Morrison: “Seriously, you don’t feel any difference?”
Jack La Lanne: “Because I practice what I preach. I can’t do the things I used to do. I am not as strong as I was. I don’t have the endurance I had. I’m telling you, I’m pretty spry for 88.”

HOW FIT IS HE?
So, we began to poke and prod as if he were some kind of experiment.
Keith Morrison: “A lot of people, once they start to get older, have things like strokes and heart attacks, high blood pressure, arthritis, those kinds of diseases that are associated with age. Have you had a heart attack?”
Jack La Lanne: “I can’t afford to. It’d wreck my image. I can’t afford to die, man.”
Keith Morrison: “Have you ever had a stroke?”
Jack La Lanne: “No you— come on!”

He says his blood pressure, cholesterol and body fat are all excellent — though he wouldn’t tell us exactly what they were. His resting heart rate is 55 beats a minute — that’s the resting heart rate of a trained athlete.
His only physical problems: an old high school football injury that wrecked his right knee, and then in 1995, a car accident that wrecked his left knee. So he had both his knees replaced. So maybe, we suggested, prodding again, maybe he just has lucky genes.
“That’s a bunch of …” says LaLanne. “Your genes, they have to do with the color of your hair, the color of your eyes, maybe your bone structure, right?” he says.
“Because I practice what I preach. I can’t do the things I used to do. I am not as strong as I was. I don’t have the endurance I had. I’m telling you, I’m pretty spry for 88.”
— JACK LA LANNE
Though his father died young, his mother lived until 94. And he even has an older brother, still living, age 93. But LaLanne believes it’s not what you’re born with, but how you live your life that makes the difference.
“You’ve got to eat right, think right, and you’ve got to exercise,” he says.
Of course, we all know he exercises. But in these days when people are debating the Atkins Diet versus, say, the Ornish Diet, for a long, long time Jack La Lanne has had his diet.

Keith Morrison: “Don’t you just once in a while, Jack, just once in a while have a dish of ice cream?”
Jack La Lanne: “Never, never.”



Not one piece of candy, nor a donut, nor a hot dog in over 70 years — imagine that!

Jack La Lanne: “Would you get your dog up in the morning and give him a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a doughnut?”
Keith Morrison: “You told me that the first time I interviewed you.”
Jack La Lanne: “You’ll kill the dog.”

He eats at least ten kinds of fruits and vegetables each day. He shuns meat, but does eat fish. He avoids saturated fats, and never drinks milk. Listen to this:

Jack La Lanne: “You name me one creature on this earth that used milk after they’re weaned.”
Keith Morrison: “But milk’s good for you.”
Jack La Lanne: “It’s not good for you. It’s good for a suckling calf. Are you a suckling calf?”

Oh, and also, he fortifies himself each day with a handful of vitamins and minerals. And there is one big rule, by the way, which the processed food industry may not like but here it is:
“If man makes it, don’t eat it,” he says.
More than anything, he still loves his soap box, still loves encouraging the slothful. And one more thing — preaching the gospel of good health, it turns out, is part of what has kept him so healthy.

Keith Morrison: “Why don’t you retire? Take it easy?”
Jack La Lanne: “Are you kidding, retirement? Man, I thought you’re my buddy and you like me. Retirement is a death knell. That’s why so many people die prematurely. Retirement — that is the killer, that’s when you should start living.”

Which he is certainly doing.

Keith Morrison: “So can we come see you when you’re 100?”
Jack La Lanne: “I hope so. I hope you’re around.”
Keith Morrison: “Yes, I worry about me more than I worry about you, frankly.”
As you’ve probably guessed by now, Jack La Lanne will not have birthday cake when he turns 88 on September 26. But he will celebrate with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.