Random Books, Reviewed: January 2018

PUBLISHER: GT Publishing Corporation, 9/1999
GENRE: Nonfiction/Memoir
AUTHOR SITE: link
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: A-

FROM PUBLISHER: On a sweltering New Orleans evening in 1948, Shirley Simmons, eight-and-a-half-months pregnant, had an overwhelming craving for Chinese food. But she would never get the eggroll she'd longed for; she went into labor in the restaurant. Sixteen hours later, her youngest son Milton T. Simmons was born. And so begins the saga of fitness guru Richard Simmons and his lifelong love affair with food. Along the way he's helped millions of Americans with their battle of weight loss. Many know him through his groundbreaking infomercial products like Deal-A-Meal, Get Down the Pounds, and his exciting new Move, Groove, and Lost program. Still more have enjoyed his best-selling low-fat cookbooks Farewell to Fat and Sweetie Pie.

MY THOUGHTS/SUMMARY: What's not to like about Richard Simmons?! He has such a good nature. The book is pretty well-written and full of his trademark humor. He seems to be a very good-hearted person who has done so much for a lot of people, including many he's never even met. Examples would be him calling strangers who've written him letters and arranging doctor appointments for obese people in crisis. He maintains relationships with some of those people as of the book's publication in 1999.

He didn't have that great of a relationship with his father when he was young. His father seemed annoyed by him and saw him as the source of any discord between he and his wife. They got closer as Richard got older. His father Leonard was fifty years old when Richard was born. He's always had an excellent relationship with this mother, Shirley. His older brother Lenny wasn't mentioned too much in here but Richard seems to get along fine with him. The only relative Richard's ever known is his father's brother, Milton. Milton paid for Richard to go to college. Milton died around 1969.

Richard's been an overeater since he was very young. He was teased for it by boys at school so he naturally bonded with females since they didn't pick on him. He began taking diet pills around sixth grade, pills he'd get from his female friends, who got them from their own mothers. He took laxatives that were in the form of chocolate (Exlax or similar brand) and was also bulimic for awhile. He stopped taking diet pills when his heart rate got very fast and it scared him. In his late teens-early twenties, after receiving an anonymous note on his car's windshield telling him he needed to lose weight (he was well over 200lbs and he's 5'7"), he became anorexic. He once passed out and went to the hospital. He worked at a resturant and when he was twenty-two, a female coworker taught him how to be bulimic, so he gave that a try. During a doctor visit he somehow knew Richard had been purging and he told him how bad it was for his health, so Richard stopped it. He got his act together and started eating healthy and exercising. He opened up his own exercise studio in 1974/75, before he was famous.

A sad story is he had a client named Ellen, a petite woman with a young-sounding voice. She had a job making teddy bears. Richard noticed she kept getting thinner and thinner but he never asked her about it. She didn't show up to his class a few times and he didn't know how to get in touch with her. One day he went to a place that sold her handmade bears to inquire about her. He was told she died from anorexia. After that he got the idea to start exercise class thirty minutes early so he and the class could discuss diet, health, and any other issues they wanted to talk about. He even got anonymous letters from the women with topic suggestions.

A funny story would be that when Richard was in seventh grade or so, he'd steal the heads off of Barbie dolls and store them in a drawer in his bedroom. His father was snooping and found them one day.

Richard never mentioned dating anyone at all so that part of his personal life was left out completely, which is too bad and it's why I didn't give the book an A+.

Richard's comment about being out of the closet here.

I've uploaded some photos from inside the book here.

Missing Richard Simmons podcast here.