How Did Susan Powter Lose Her Money? Bankruptcy and Financial Issues Explained

Susan Powter gets extremely candid about her decades of financial problems in the 2025 documentary Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter.

The former fitness guru went from starring in iconic early 1990s exercise infomercials and hosting her own syndicated daytime talk show to walking away from Hollywood entirely in the span of a few years. A divorce from her second husband, Lincoln Apeland, at the height of her mid-‘90s financial troubles left Powter with nearly nothing as she tried to rebuild her life in Seattle, Washington.

In the years since she retreated from the spotlight, Powter worked as a delivery driver for Uber Eats and Grubhub to support herself and lived sporadically in welfare hotels.

“I’ve known desperation,” she told People in 2024. “Desperation is walking back from the welfare office. It’s the shock of, ‘From there, now I’m here? How in God’s name?’”

Keep scrolling for more on how Susan Powter lost her $200 million fitness empire.

Susan Powter Made Millions as a Fitness Guru

Born in Sydney, Australia, in December 1957, Susan Powter moved with her family to Dallas, Texas, in 1980. She married her first husband, Nic Villarreal, and they welcomed two sons: Damien, born in 1983, and Kiel, born in 1984.

Villarreal and Powter divorced in 1988 and she later founded her fitness studio, the Susan Powter Wellness Center, in Dallas. Powter was inspired to pursue fitness as a career by losing 130 pounds after her divorce.

“I was a frightened, angry, isolated single mother who dealt with trauma by shoving fat into my mouth,” she said in a 1994 speech to the Broadcast Advertising Club. “I went up to 260 pounds. I had yo-yo’d my whole life, but I was never obese like this. I had no energy, I was depressed, my ankles were blown up. I knew I had to resurrect myself from the dead.”

She went on, “I’m not kidding when I tell you I was going to blow my head off. I am not lying. I didn’t want to live anymore. My life was in the toilet.”

Powter promoted her fitness brand with a 1992 infomercial called Stop the Insanity! and by launching a crusade against fad diets. She became a health correspondent on ABC’s Home and later hosted her own daytime series, The Susan Powter Show, for a single season.

Powter eventually built a $200 million fitness empire with the release of more than a dozen motivational CDs and exercise videos, in addition to headlining speaking engagements across the world.

How Did Susan Powter Lose Her Money?

Powter’s financial troubles started due to a dispute with her business partners Jerry Frankel and Richard Frankel over ownership of her business empire. The two sides ended up filing lawsuits against one another for breach of contract.

“There was nothing but lawsuits in the ’90s. They put me in pearls,” Powter told People in 2024. “They produced me out of me. Those segments [I filmed] — I can’t even watch them now.”

Powter reportedly won the rights to her name and trademarks, though her legal battle with the Frankels allegedly cost her $6.5 million. She was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1995.

“I take full responsibility. I never checked [on my financial status],” she explained to Today hosts Savannah Guthrie and Craig Melvin in November 2025. “I never asked, ‘Where’s the money?’ I never said that. It’s not that there was no money. I didn’t go from Hollywood to … a welfare hotel in five years. There was a little bit of money but not the amount of money that was generated.”

At the same time as her business was crumbling, Powter filed for divorce from her second husband, Lincoln Apeland, in 1995.

Powter retreated from the spotlight following her legal trouble and moved her family to Seattle, Washington. She adopted her youngest son, Gabriel, in 1998.

“I just walked away. I literally walked away. I did it very intentionally,” Powter told Today in 2025.

Where Is Susan Powter Now?

The 2025 documentary Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter chronicles the former fitness guru’s attempts to keep herself afloat financially.

In recent years, Powter worked as an Uber Eats driver in Las Vegas and lived in welfare hotels. Prior to the film’s release, she told People in 2024 that it had been an incredibly humbling experience to go from Hollywood success to struggling for work.

“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 explained. “But try to get a job as a 60-year-old woman.”

She wrote a candid autobiography titled And Then Em Died … : Stop the Insanity! A Memoir in 2024 to try to set the record straight about life outside the spotlight.

“I just started writing in case anything happened to me. I think something’s shifting,” she says in Stop the Insanity: Finding Susan Powter. “The fear, the poverty, the hopelessness. It’s this tsunami of what was, what happened, the truth. I’m going to blow the roof off.”

Powter has most recently lived in a low-income senior community. Powter’s three sons do not appear in her 2025 documentary, at her request, but she clarified in one emotional scene that her children do support her.

“They’re very proud of me because I work,” she also told Today in November 2025. “Give me a job and I’ll work.”

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.