Anthony Lolli trimmed down his real estate empire when he sold Rapid Realty last year. And since then, he’s done the same to his waistline.
Lolli over the past nine months has gone from flab to fit, shedding more than 100 pounds as he’s transformed himself through diet and exercise. And now the former brokerage chief is working as an executive producer on an Amazon Prime series about fitness.
“When you’re in business you’re eating at restaurants and meeting at restaurants and then the only cardio you get is walking from your house to your car from your car to the restaurant,” he told The Real Deal. “It’s very easy to just kind of let fitness fall to the wayside.”
Lolli said he weighed 305 pounds at his heaviest. Shortly before his 42nd birthday, though, he decided he had enough with being overweight. So, he decided to get fit and came across the subculture of body transformations, where people who weigh as much as 400 or 500 pounds turn their lives around and get in shape.
He enlisted a transformation specialist who came and lived with him for six months — teaching him about healthy eating and exercise and helping him get down to his current weight of a lean and muscular 181 pounds.
“I learned everything I needed to learn about food and macros and vitamins and all sorts of stuff and then I started training three times a day,” he said. “The pounds started flying off and the energy shot through the roof.”
Lolli, who gained notoriety in the real estate business with his flashy marketing campaigns, catalogued his transformation on Instagram and even produced a video of his journey. He showed the video to James Hergott, a TV producer and competitive bodybuilder who produces the Amazon Prime series “Radical Body Transformations.”
The show recently expanded to Canada and New Zealand, and Hergott brought Lolli and his business partner Carlos Angelucci on as co-producers.
Anthony Lolli
“I was impressed by how far he transformed in a short period of time,” Hergott said. “I thought Anthony and Carlos could bring their marketing experience the way they grew their real estate business and grow [the show] into more territories.
Rapid Realty rose to fame as one of the fastest-growing residential brokerages in New York. But things got rocky last year amid mounting legal troubles and revolt by a number of dissatisfied franchisees. Lolli and Angelucci sold the company last year.
Lolli said he still invests in real estate: mostly small three- to five-unit multifamily buildings in neighborhoods like East New York and Staten Island.
For now, he said, he’s enjoying the fitness business.
“There’s nobody out there really speaking to the transformation community,” he said. “The goal is to save lives and help people achieve a happier and healthier life.”