One & Kick & Two, And Stick Out Your Tongue

Maybe it's because her husband neglected to kiss her goodbye one morning. Or maybe she overheard someone at the beach refer to her as "the blimp in the bikini." Whatever the reason, there comes a time in most every woman's life when she decides to reach for her tippy-toes instead of her potatoes. When she does, TV's proliferating exercise merchants are right there on the screen every morning to cheer her on.

"Get the old circulation going!" cries Jack LaLanne, a 53-year-old, V-shaped (47-27-34) monument to muscularity. "Get those sweat glands working! Kick! Back! One-and-kick-and-two-and-kick-and-smile-and-kick! Don't stop! Smile and kick!" He wears ballet slippers and a body-hugging, low-cut jump suit, and bounds around like the original jumping Jack. Backed by bubbly organ music, he gives lectures on the beauties of sweating ("It's Mother Nature's air conditioner"), sings, tells jokes, blows kisses and delivers sermonettes. No one, he says, can hope for a sound body without a heavy dose of "vitamin F--faith, and vitamin G--God."

Lest spirits lag, LaLanne (rhymes with pain) loads his arms with globs of suet, and grimaces: "This is what six pounds of fat looks like, girls! How would you like to carry that around with you all day? Well, that's just what you're doing if you're six pounds overweight." The best way to shed the suet? Out trots LaLanne's white German shepherd carrying the answer on a sign: IT'S GLAMOUR STRETCHER TIME! That cues a pitch for LaLanne's elastic exercise rope ($4), one of the 30 health and beauty products that he peddles. As testimony to the benefits of such items as Jack LaLanne's Toasted Soya Snack Crackers and Jack LaLanne's One-Plus-One Vitamin and Mineral Formula, he introduces his wife Elaine. "When I met her," he says, "she was a bean pole living on coffee and cigarettes. I rebuilt her to my own specifications--35-26-35--and man alive, just look at her!"

LaLanne may come on strong but the ladies apparently love every groaning, grunting minute of it. Each weekday morning he trims something like a ton of excess fat off 15 million women in 80 U.S. cities.

Ferocious Lion. Another ton or two is accounted for by Bodies Beautiful Gloria Roeder and Ed Allen, who work in much the same manner as LaLanne. Gloria, 43, fights "saddlebag thighs" and "dowager's hump" with such exercises as Double Hip Spanks, Thigh Thumps, Chin-to-Knee Bounces and the Pectoral Fling. For "viewer identification," she often has her six daughters, ages ten to 20, exercise along with her. Allen, 39, perhaps to compensate for a double chin, swathes his 197 Ibs. in skin-tight polo shirts and stretch pants, and dresses down his wavy locks with hair spray. He gets 3,000 fan letters a week, travels 60,000 miles a year promoting barbells and beauty creams. While on the road, he keeps in shape by chugging up and down hotel fire escapes.

Richard Hittleman, 40, neither chugs, tugs or mugs. His Yoga for Health, styled as an antidote to the "grunt-and-groan school," is so tranquil that it seems to be running in slow motion. No rippling triceps for him; lean as a leek, he eats only one meal a day. Preaching that "the body is the temple of the spirit" he claims that "20 minutes of yoga is worth an hour of ordinary exercise." During a breathing exercise, he says softly: "As we inhale we will visualize ourselves taking in from the cosmos the life force. As we exhale, we will think thoughts of peace and light." Hittleman is assisted by "the lovely Diane," his wife, who "as the mother of our three children can extol the virtues of yoga for keeping things as they should be in the visceral area."

In the commercial area, Hittleman also pushes a complete line of yoga books, recordings and organic cosmetics. During the "journey into second youth," the lovely Diane demonstrates such exercises as the Ferocious Lion, in which she stretches forward like a cat, stares wild-eyed, and sticks out her tongue as far as it will go. As she does, Hittleman points at the camera and says: "I see that some of you are still afraid and shy; afraid that someone will see you and laugh. But you will have the last laugh."

And so will Hittleman. By living off the fat of the land, he and Flab Fighters LaLanne and Allen make $100,000 or more a year apiece.

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