The real pride, the real present, is your health and your longevity. My whole career, I have never done anything where competition was involved with weight loss.
How do you get motivated? By knowing your worth. Americans do not know how worthy they are. You deserve to be healthy, but a lot of times, people have, as childs been told - as a children been told that they're no good, that they're never going to be anything else.
When you're feeling down, sad, lonely, negative, you don't want to take care of yourself - and the weight problem and the diabetic problem and the heart attack and stroke problems and high cholesterol set in.
I'm a real paradox. Because I'm a very serious person, and I take my work very seriously. But I wrap it up in a court jester and a clown and make people laugh and make them feel good about themselves.
My way is the sensitive, emotional way, because that's who I am. I try to be the clown and court jester and make people laugh. At the same time, you have people in the hospital who have had gastric bypass or lap-band surgery, and they still have to work out. If you don't work out and eat healthy, you'll look like a melted candle.
Puberty for me was graduating from Thousand Island salad dressing to Caesar salads. It was like going from hot dogs and hamburgers to beef stroganoff, or from ice cream in a cone to creme brulee.
No one is perfect... absolutely no one. Like precious stones, we have a few flaws, but why focus on that? Focus on what you like about yourself, and that will bring you happiness and peace.
I think it is very important that you like yourself for who you are and not want to look like anyone else. You also have to understand, many people have had cosmetic surgeries in order to look the way they look. So why look like them when you can just look like you? And there is nothing wrong with looking like you.
I don't know about you, but every time some joker points me out as I walk through an airport wearing extra-small Dolfin shorts, a tank top and leg warmers, I get a little upset.
I could be hit by a Sara Lee truck tomorrow. Which is not a bad way of going: 'Richard Simmons Found in a Freeway in Pound Cake and Fudge, With a Smile on His Face.' Let's face it. We don't know anything.