’90s fitness icon Susan Power has disappeared from public life after a ‘humiliating’ Hollywood experience

While building a successful career as a fitness guru in the 90s, Susan Power who became famous as the face of the Stop the Madness! infomercial, host of “The Susan Power Show” and author of many books on diet and weight loss, was secretly fighting her own behind-the-scenes battle.

“They started creating an ‘me’ out of me,” said Power, who is promoting her new book And Then They Died… Stop the Madness! Memoirs,” she told People magazine.

“And this happened when the money got here (raising his hand high). Then it was like, “Oh, Susie, don’t say that. No no. It’s too much. Oh, you’re shocking. But it’s the same shock that brought me there.

“I worked really hard on (The Susan Power Show). I filmed three shows a day. I did it with everything I had,” she added. “But it was humiliating. They put me in pearls. Look at me. Do I look like a pearl type? And I didn’t have the right to vote. All these fragments, I can’t even watch them now.”

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Powter’s path to success began during one of the darkest moments of her life. She was a 260-pound mother of two in the midst of a bitter divorce.

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“I was a scared, angry, isolated single mother who coped with trauma by stuffing fat into my mouth,” the Australian native, who moved to the United States with her family when she was 10, told the Washington Post in 1994. “I got up to 260 pounds. I’ve yo-yoed all my life, but I’ve never been this obese. I had no energy, I was depressed, my ankles were torn. I knew I had to resurrect myself from the dead.”

“I’m not kidding when I tell you I was going to blow my head off,” she said while speaking at the Broadcast Advertising Club luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Chicago that same year, according to the Chicago Tribune. “I’m not lying. I didn’t want to live anymore. My life was in the toilet.”

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It was at this point that Power decided to take control.

“I just got up and talked to women,” she told People magazine. “That’s what I did in the commercial. It was not rehearsed, not according to the script. And these women responded.”

In her commercial, Powter offered a health package that combined a low-fat diet and an exercise regimen. According to The Washington Post, the $79.80 kit included five audiotapes, an exercise video, a recipe book, a dietary fat guide and a caliper for measuring body fat.

At the time, Power was selling about 15,000 of these packages each week, totaling about $5 million, according to the Post.

Before she knew it, the fitness guru had already made a name for herself and signed her first contract with her manager and investor partner in hopes of creating “an exercise studio and maybe a clothing line,” she told People magazine.

Her career unexpectedly took off when she began appearing on the national daytime talk show “The House Show” and received a $2 million advance for her first book. She once sold $50 million worth of products a year, according to People.

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“Nobody expected this,” she told the publication.

Although everything seemed to be going smoothly, Power said she gradually began to lose control of herself, her image and her business plan.

“I didn’t run my company; it was a 50/50 deal,” said Powter, who ultimately tried to separate herself from the commercial deal she was involved in at the time. “In the 90s there was nothing but lawsuits.”

In 1995, Power filed for bankruptcy.

“Yes, there was money, but I never had $300 million in my bank account,” she said. “I never made the money I made.”

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Power made the fateful decision to leave Hollywood and live a much simpler life in Seattle with her three children.

“I didn’t just decide to leave. My heart broke in two,” said Powter, who came out as a lesbian in 2004. “It was shocking. I was furious. And I just thought: I’m just out.”

Power chose the “hippie” lifestyle, which made her feel “very happy” for a time. But before she knew it, she started having financial difficulties.

“Try getting a job as a 60-year-old woman,” said Powter, who eventually moved to Las Vegas and has worked as a delivery driver for Grubhub and Uber Eats for the past six years.

“I knew despair,” added Powter, who lives in a low-income senior community. “Desperation is returning from the Social Security office. It’s a shock: “From there, now I’m here? How, in the name of God?”

Despite losing hope, Powter’s faith was restored when the actress Jamie Lee Curtis approached her with the idea of ​​documenting her life story.

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“I was in tears,” Powter said of her first meeting with Curtis, executive producer of the upcoming documentary Stop the Madness: The Search for Susan Powter.“ “And I said, ‘Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. I’ve lost my faith. I have lost complete and utter hope.”

“As one of the world’s first influencers at the beginning of what we now call the social media era, Susan Powter was brazen and brave and woke us all up,” Lee told People of Powter. “Like so many women’s stories, Susan’s strength and light were diminished, denigrated and rejected.”

Pawter said she’s looking forward to reconnecting with people across the U.S. as she begins to promote her book, and strives to continue building her legacy.

“These women will hear my voice and say, ‘Well, damn, she hasn’t changed one bit,'” she said. “What I feel now is the possibility of opportunity. There were days and days and months and months and years when I didn’t feel it. I lost hope, but now I’m full of it. I’ve never been more excited.”

Original article source: ’90s fitness icon Susan Power has disappeared from public life after a ‘humiliating’ Hollywood experience