Doctor Shares Secrets to Longevity and Better Health
06:14
Elaine LaLanne is spending the days since her 100th birthday with the same healthy habits she’s been cultivating for decades: exercising every day and eating a nutritious diet.
She starts each morning with abdominal exercises, leg lifts and and pushups, noting she’s “very strong in the core.”
The widow of famed fitness guru Jack LaLanne credits her husband for turning her life around. He hosted the first TV healthy lifestyle.
“I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t met Jack LaLanne. I was always eating chocolate donuts and smoking cigarettes and eating candy bars for lunch,” the centenarian, who lives in California, tells TODAY.com.
“He told me, ‘You should be eating apples and bananas and oranges.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ Then I changed my tune, and I’ve been a convert ever since. I know that’s why I lived to be 100.”
She stopped smoking, started eating healthier and began exercising. The couple married in 1959. She says most women didn’t work out in those days, but the “The Jack LaLanne Show” got many female viewers interested in exercise.
Elaine LaLanne was a regular part of the program, and became an author and public speaker, touting the benefits of exercise and good <a The first lady of fitness."
She was married to Jack LaLanne until his death at 96 in 2011.
