Healthful Bites

I was lucky enough to join in on the Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy fun again this week! For this interview, the tables were turned and I questioned the hosts about their jobs and new book, “35 Things to Know to Raise Active Kids!” Listen above for the complete show, or if you prefer, continue reading for an overview (with added links!) of the entertaining Q & A.

Karla Walsh: “What is your most memorable show moment?”

Adam Shafran: “Probably the highlight was when Jack Lalanne sang to us on the air. That was hysterical… It was just an honor to have him on the show and to talk to him. He was a lot of fun. I also remember doing some heavy flirting back in the day with Jillian Michaels before she was a superstar.”

Lee Kantor: “Oh yeah, we helped discover her and launch her career. What about when you were flirting with Susan Powter and she yelled at you and told you she was a lesbian, so you should leave her alone.”

AS: “That’s true, I didn’t realize that. Lee had to fill me in that she was a lesbian. That was pretty funny too. We’ve interviewed a lot of people and the most memorable stuff is what you don’t know is coming. Everytime we do a show, we don’t know what you’re getting into… The art of doing what we do is that each show is going to be different, and that’s always really exciting too.”

“The Fat Guy is really the nuts and bolts of the operation. But I have to tell you, Karla, when we’re in the studio he’s doing like a thousand things at once. He’s a very good multitasker.”

KW: “What has been your most embarrassing moment on the show?”

LK: “Not counting this one? There’s been so many of them. How many times have we messed up the name of a guest?”

AS: “I always try to make sure I call and have a conversation with the guest before they’re on the show.”

LK: “Yes, but that’s a recent development. In the past that wasn’t the case, but it is now because of the messing up of the names.”

AS: “We moved studios and it’s a much nicer place, but getting on the Internet is a hassle. We have firewalls—it’s like the Pentagon in this office. Sometimes I can’t pull up my show notes and I don’t know who I’m talking to, I don’t know what’s going on. So I decided no more of that. I’m going to print out everything and just roll that way.”

LK: “Remember the first show we ever did? We came up with the idea of ‘Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy’ and decided to make a go at it. We had written our first book, but we had never done the show before. On the first day, we go in there and we’re all nervous, we have like 50 pages of notes and have never been in front of a microphone before. We get in there, and the guy who owns the station says: ‘If you guys suck, you’re out of here.’ And then it’s like: ‘Go, start the show, be funny!’”

AS: “Lee and I aren’t the most technologically spunky guys, even though we live in a world of technology. So if something happens to the sound board…”

LK: “We’re dead in the water.”

KW: “It just gives you a special kind of charm. So if someone was on the fence about checking out your new book ‘35 Things to Know to Raise Active Kids,’ what would you tell them?”

LK: “I would ask them the weight of their child. That’s all I’d say. ‘How much does your kid weigh? I think it’s worth the ten bucks right there.’”

AS: “In each chapter, there’s a little zinger that I think would make you laugh, which kind of summarizes what we think you should be doing with that kind of activity. With Lee’s wit and humor in there makes it real fun. Also, a lot of the anecdotes from the celebrity guests that we’ve had… you may find your own childhood in a lot of those stories. Now that times have changed so much, it’s very difficult to capture the spirit of growing up and being active. The universe has changed!”

LK: “And we had a lot of our past guests contribute. We had Wayne Westcott, an expert in strength training. Matt Brzycki, your buddy from Rutgers. Fred DeVito from Exhale Spa, Jennifer Galardi, Miss Ethiopia, Nicci Micco from Eating Well magazine, Marta Montenegro, Dick Hoyt.”

AS: “I think it’s very motivating to read those stories and think that I can get my kid active today and be a part of that too.”

KW: “How did you stay active as a kid?”

AS: “One of the my favorite games was Ring-a-Lario. [KW aside: Sorry doctor! Had to Google that one after the interview! :)] We’d have 30-some odd kids playing. A couple of people’s houses were the bases. I remember hanging up in the trees about 20 feet in the air thinking it was the most brilliant hiding place. You have the pine trees, but you could look and see what was going on. Growing up, it was so wonderful because the change of seasons brought the different sports. When it was getting cooler, like now, we would switch to football. When it was summertime out, we played a lot of baseball and basketball. We always congregated and organized and always did it in a way that we created teams that made it competitive. It’s not fun if you create teams and it’s a blowout.”

LK: “I grew up in Miami, Florida. Growing up, we were allowed to just go out. It was expected. You’d go out and come back for dinner time. We used to have football games and we would paint the street with spray paint—a whole football field down the street and nobody cared. Can you imagine that now a days? Not chalk, because that would wash away and it rained everyday. We would play these games for hours and hours and hours. We didn’t need an adult to make the teams fair. We didn’t need a coach. Right now, it’s so structured for the kids. They have no idea how to pick teams or make it fair.”

AS: “You think that with all of the technology, we’d be able to let go a bit more with our children and let them experience more because we can keep track of them easily. But that’s not the case. Parents don’t want to let kids out of their site for one second. The media portrays it as dangerous… Our kids need more room to realize what it’s like to be independent.”

KW: “Where do you see the radio show and the Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy empire going in the future?

LK: “It will be the Karla Walsh empire and we’ll be working for you.” 

KW: “Ha! Doubt it.”

AS: “We love doing what we do. Whether the show stays like it is or whether we become huge TV stars where we walk the red carpet of events and do movies. We’ll still be doing this! We’ll be regular guys. We’d love to have a bigger audience, we love doing the show, we’d love to get into TV and we love doing events. We want to continue doing that and keep growing the show. And we should have a swimming pool in the studio!”

LK: “Or stand up desks!”

AS: “I took the chair out of my office.”

KW: “Do you have another book in the works?”

AS: “We’ll probably have an idea soon.”

LK: “We’re mercenaries. Do you have an idea? We wrote the guts of this book, outlined the whole thing, driving six or seven hours from New Jersey to the Eating Well headquarters in Vermont. We had way more than 35 though.”

AS: “We came up with so many ideas. For anyone looking to write a book out there, the task of doing so seems so daunting and overwhelming. I think Lee and I are really good at breaking it down from the big picture to the smaller parts. Then, before you know it, you have a full book. We have a good system now.”

KW: “One last question: Who would be your dream interview subject if you could interview anyone on the show?”

LK: “Dr. Fitness always like Richard Simmons… It’s either Springsteen or Richard Simmons.”

AS: “Who would yours be Lee?”

LK: “Fitness-wise? We’ve probably hit everybody that I care about.”

AS: “Jack LaLanne was really cool. Denise Austin is always a lot of fun. Coming up, our next guest is Kathy Smith. We haven’t had the ‘Body by Jake’ guy yet.”

KW: “But you have had Bob Harper, and that was great. He’s my favorite!”

AS: “Yes, he was really good. He had lots of energy. We’ve never had Tony Little.”

LK: “Or Billy Blanks! We could do a whole show…”

KW: “Like a ‘Fitness Stars of the ’90s edition!’”

AS: “It will be interesting to see who pops up in the next five to ten years as the big stars. Thank you for coming on and putting us in the spotlight today!”

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Thanks again to Lee and Dr. Adam for the blast of an interview! Looking forward to the next already. 

If you could interview any fitness celebrities (like Richard Simmons ;) ) who would you choose and why? What would you ask them?