‘Stop the Insanity!’ ‘90s Fitness Guru Susan Powter Lost Empire Worth Millions and Survived by Delivering GrubHub: ‘Scary as S—‘ (Exclusive)

• Susan Powter’s Stop the Insanity! infomercial made her a fitness icon in the 1990s and earned her company $50 million annually
• Bad business deals and lawsuits left Powter financially struggling. By 2020, she was on Medicaid and delivering food from GrubHub to make ends meet, she reveals to PEOPLE for the first time
• Powter has written a memoir, is the subject of an upcoming Jamie Lee Curtis-produced documentary and is relaunching her wellness brand

In a two-hour Zoom call from her Las Vegas kitchen last week, Susan Powter never sits down—she is in constant motion.

Wearing a black shrug and tank top that show off her tattoos and slim frame, she gestures excitedly, her long, dark, polished nails flickering, her voice booming in rapid-fire delivery as she extols the virtues of exercise, breathing and… cauliflower. “I make the best cauliflower on earth,” she insists.

Three decades after the ‘90s “diet deity”—as People called her at the time— first burst onto American TV screens with her platinum crew cut and in-your-face Stop the Insanity! fitness infomercial, Powter, now 66, states the obvious: “My energy’s still here!”

But despite that vigor, the former fitness mogul who once sold $50 million in products annually, reveals to PEOPLE — and in her new book And Then Em Died… Stop the Insanity! A Memoir — that for the past six years, she’s been struggling.

“I’ve known desperation,” admits Powter, who still lives in a low-income senior community where two times each week a local charity hands out free meals. “Desperation is walking back from the welfare office. It’s the shock of, ‘From there, now I’m here? How in God’s name?’”

In the early ’90s, Powter was a cultural icon, with her thundering voice and frenetic vibe. She was spoofed by Saturday Night Live —and landed on People’s list of “Most Intriguing People”in 1993.

Legions of fans shelled out $79.80 for her Stop the Insanity! program of recipes, workout tips and motivational audio cassettes — and they made Powter a best-selling author three times over. They were drawn by Powter’s personal story — a 260-lb. Texas homemaker with two kids whose husband leaves her for another woman gets revenge by getting fit — along with her take-down of the diet industry and her “fat makes you fat” message.

“Susan was one of the world’s first true influencers at the beginning of what we would now refer to as the social media era,” says Jamie Lee Curtis, executive producer of Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter, an upcoming documentary on Powter’s life by filmmaker Zeberiah Newman that’s expected to be released next year. “She was brazen and brave, and woke us all up.”

But Powter, who came out as lesbian in 2004, seemed to disappear almost as quickly as she rose to fame.

Although her company had been making huge profits and Powter got her own syndicated show, she says she realized the 50-50 split she’d made with her business partners when she was first starting out was a raw deal. She sued, they countersued, and in 1995 she declared bankruptcy. “There was nothing but lawsuits in the ‘90s,” she says.

Meanwhile, her show turned out to be “complete crap,” she says bluntly. “They put me in pearls. They produced ‘me’ out of me. Those segments — I can’t even watch them now.”

Frustrated by being controlled, she walked away from the TV contract and moved to Seattle with her third son, whom she’d adopted as a single mother when he was an infant. “I was teaching classes in an elementary school basement, photographing underwater home births, driving my little Volkswagen Bug with my baby, just being a mother,” she says. “I’m a very basic hippie kind of gal.”

She was spending less and the funds were still flowing, but she wasn’t keeping track, trusting that her money was being managed: “Someone else was handling it. I never checked balances,” she says. “I should have questioned. I fully acknowledge that. I made a mistake.”

Eventually, the money was gone. “I knew how much control I gave up. I didn’t know what got paid where, but I had no property. There was no fund left for my children.”

And more frightening: she started to find that doors once open were now closed to her. “I didn’t think there would never be another book or video. I’ve never not worked. I never thought I wouldn’t be able to make a living,” she says. “But try to get a job as a 60-year-old woman.”

In fact, she says she once lost a job as a waitress after her boss discovered she was Susan Powter. “She Googled me and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ She thought I was doing an exposé.”

By 2018 life started getting “scary as shit.” Forced to move from a campground where she’d been living in an RV to a notoriously dangerous complex in Las Vegas with weekly rent, she began delivering for Grubhub and later Uber Eats, desperately hoping to pocket at least $80 a day so she could afford to eat and make rent. “It’s so hard. It’s horrifyingly shocking,” she says of trying to make ends meet. “If sadness could kill you, I’d be dead.”

She kept the depth of her troubles from her three grown sons: “My sons read my book and they were like, ‘Mom, we didn’t know.'”

And she kept a low profile in her daily life in Vegas. But every so often, someone would recognize her on the streets or making a delivery: “Didn’t you used to be Susan Powter?” And she’d return to her car and weep. “I didn’t recognize me any more,” she says.

Then about a year ago, she had a health scare that spurred her to apply for Social Security. And she began receiving a monthly check, which has been a lifeline, she says. “That $1500 check shocked the hell out of me. Whoever said money can’t buy happiness lied. Liar. It wasn’t happiness. It was bigger than happiness. I took the deepest breath,” she says. “And this is not just a ‘you used to have millions and now you don’t’ story. This is a very real thing that many, many women go through.”

Finally she was able to save again, so she began tucking her food delivery earnings away. “Obsessively. I don’t spend any money. I don’t go anywhere. I don’t eat out.,” she says, as she steps back from the Zoom camera to show off a pair of black trousers. “These are the sweatpants I wear all the time. Seven dollars on Amazon.”

And then last November, she met filmmaker Zeberiah Newman who proposed the documentary. “What ‘s made a big difference for me is the response that Zeb has gotten,” Powter says. “In the industry, people are like, ‘Oh my God. She still looks good. That’s so great.’ That has meant something to me. I don’t walk around wondering if people are interested in what the sh– I’m doing. But that has been very heartwarming.”

Curtis says she’s one of those rooting for Powter. “Like so many women’s stories, Susan’s power and her light was diminished, denigrated and dismissed,” says Curtis. “Life on life’s terms can often be harsh, as is the case with Susan’s story, but watching her fight for her rights and start to build back her life is also as much about the American dream as her success was. I’m so proud to be a small part in the reemergence of this incredible woman.”

Newman and Curtis’s interest, along with the modest stability her Social Security gave her, prompted Powter to turn the journal she was keeping into a memoir—and to begin to dream again. “It’s been healing and life-enforcing,” she says.

Powter knows life won’t change immediately, so she continues to deliver orders for Uber Eats. “I’ve got 4,800 total trips,” she says. “I’m a hard worker and I take care of that food and I’m proud of the work I put in.”

And she’s not expecting to build another fitness empire—she has more modest and immediate goals. “The money has been gone for 25 years. I’m not looking for a big fancy-schmancy life,” she says. “I want to talk to the world, I want to write books. I want insurance, I want a credit card, I want to pay my bills. I want a dentist. But if it does happen, it’s going to be well-managed. It’s going to go to my kids and to me. I want to give my children back what should have been theirs.”

She says she is ready for her next chapter. “And I’m counting on one thing: me.” Her memoir is self-published, she says, “to be away from the shackles — my idea of heaven.” She’s also planning a podcast and exclusive live-streaming content for subscribers once she relaunches her fitness brand on social media this week.

And she plans to use her small savings to buy an RV and tour the country, meeting fans and selling her book.

“I’m going out and I’m going to connect with women,” she says. “I feel the possibility of possibilities. I feel grateful and hopeful. And being hope-filled makes all the difference in the world.”

For more on Susan Powter, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, available Friday.