Jillian Michaels is defending The Biggest Loser months after Netflix’s documentary about the controversial reality show made headlines.
“Here’s the thing you have to remember: I was actually training those people. There just happened to be cameras,” Michaels, 51, said in a cover story for Women’s Health published Tuesday, October 14. “If you say it’s unrealistic, I totally agree. But if you say it’s unhealthy, I’d disagree, and I have the data to back it up.”
While The Biggest Loser was once one of the most popular shows on TV, the methods its stars used to help participants lose weight have since come into question. Michaels, who was a trainer on the competition series from 2004 to 2014, has repeatedly defended the show’s premise. (The Biggest Loser ultimately ended in 2020 after 18 seasons.)
In August, Netflix released a three-part docuseries about the show titled Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser. The series depicted Michaels, who did not participate, as behaving harshly toward contestants and supplying them with caffeine pills to lose weight.
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After the docuseries premiered, Michaels said she had no second thoughts about choosing not to be part of Fit for TV.
“Zero regrets about not doing it because I would have simply lent credibility to something that is an egregious lie,” she told Fox News in August.
When asked whether she planned to take legal action against the streamer, she replied, “To be totally honest with you, at the moment I’m choosing my battles because there are a lot to fight. I will absolutely take on one of these. The question is, you can’t fight 10 Goliaths at the same time. So, I have to determine what I want my legacy to be and that is going to be a result of which fight I pick.”
In her Women’s Health interview, Michaels defended some of her more controversial opinions, including the 2020 remark she made questioning why people were celebrating Lizzo’s body.
“It’s nuts that it’s not OK for somebody to say, ‘I don’t celebrate obesity because it kills people’ and you can be demonized and canceled over it,” Michaels told the magazine. “It should be utterly nonpartisan. It’s so unfortunate because I thought, ‘Surely we can all get behind this.’”
Michaels again questioned the body positivity movement, saying, “The narrative is exceptionally dangerous because it’s disempowering. ‘Listen, you’re obese. This is a disease, but don’t worry, we’re gonna save your day with a shot.’ ”
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She also slammed the increasingly widespread use of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Mounjaro.
“Ultimately, rapid, accelerated weight loss has a host of downsides that doing it through diet and exercise does not,” she said. “It’s also an eating disorder in a pen.”
While Michaels acknowledged that some of her opinions aren’t popular, she said she has no plans to keep her thoughts to herself, explaining, “There’s no question in my mind that it is now the next chapter for me, to try to fight back, even though you end up alienating people when you do it.”
