Billi Gordon
Novelist
Known for his humorous books Your Moon is in Aquarius but Your Head is in Uranus; Billi Gordon's You've Had Worse Things in Your Mouth Cookbook; and Eat This Book: The Last Diet Book, this Michigan-born writer also penned a Psychology Today blog titled Obesity Speaking.
After dropping out of both a Catholic seminary in Minnesota and the University of Michigan, he began working as a Los Angeles-based actor. He played female roles in two television comedy series: Married with Children and Women in Prison.
In his forties, he re-enrolled at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, and earned a doctorate in neuroscience.
He was born and raised in Michigan. Throughout his life, he struggled with his weight; at one point, he reached nearly 1,000 pounds.
After completing post-doctoral work at the University of California-Los Angeles' David Geffen School of Medicine, he worked as an obesity researcher at UCLA's Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for the Neurobiology of Stress.