After high school, in 1972, Gordon entered the Roman Catholic Crosier Seminary in Onamia, Minnesota, but left during his freshman year to attend the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
[2][3] Gordon is the author of three works of non-fiction: Billi Gordon's You've Had Worse Things in Your Mouth Cookbook,[4] which the Saturday Review described as "the humor classic of 1985";[5] Eat This Book: The Last Diet Book, and Your Moon Is in Aquarius but Your Head Is in Uranus, published by West Graphics.
He went on to receive a Ph.D. in neuroscience and did his post-doctoral training in functional neuroimaging and brain research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
In 2009, Gordon was profiled on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, in a piece which focused on his dramatic weight changes and how it related to his career and lifestyle.
[3] A follow-up story reported that he had lost 175 pounds over the intervening five months, which allowed him to be able to fit into an MRI machine at 526 pounds, allowing doctors to further diagnose a large mass growing on his upper thigh.