Jillian Michaels joins the Katie Miller Podcast to defend her controversial methods on The Biggest Loser, refuting Netflix claims of starvation while explaining that staged violence created necessary motivation. She critiques modern victim mentality regarding weight and race, arguing GLP-1s lack affordability and safety, yet emphasizes small victories break abuse cycles. Michaels details her supplement regimen including NAD+ injections and peptides, rejects extreme health trends like colonics, and shares her seven-year sobriety from treats. Ultimately, she illustrates how doing what she loved led to career success despite initial plans to brand a gym. [Automatically generated summary]
What big fitness and trainer counts do you follow?
I love to learn about stuff I don't fully have a grasp on yet.
So somebody who's going to break down peptides for me and stem cell therapies and gene editing.
That fascinates me.
I want to learn about it and understand it, whether it's safe or not.
It's a different conversation.
But that stuff I'm really at, that new frontier.
At this point, look to people that have their degree.
I know we've become very, it's a lot of glute trainers on the internet.
I know, but they have inserts.
Those are not real.
Like, no one's askls like, no, that's not real.
There's like an insert you put in your pants.
Don't, come on now.
You can't fall for that.
That's ridiculous.
Hi, and welcome back.
Welcome to this episode of the Katie Miller podcast.
We're so excited to be joined today by Jillian Michaels.
It's exciting.
Make this more exciting, liar.
I think I'm probably the least exciting guest you've had.
No, you're actually one of the most exciting because I've not only watched you on TV for years, but someone who is, I am very into fitness.
So it is very exciting to talk to someone else who shares my deep love of fitness and working out and to hear how I'm doing it wrong and how I could do it better.
Gosh, I doubt you're doing it wrong, but I'll try to be aggressive and beat you up a little bit.
I'm sure you have some hot takes on a lot of different fitness out there.
But can you give us the brief and the audience a brief 30 seconds for those of you who haven't watched you for years?
Got it.
Okay.
Who is Jillian Michaels?
What has she done?
And what is she doing now?
Who is Jillian Michaels?
A mom, a global citizen.
I've built a career in health and wellness.
First came to be a forward-facing individual many years ago on an infamous NBC show called The Biggest Loser, which happened to be number one for a decade on the network for its good and it's bad.
Subsequently, I have not been a part of that for roughly 12 years and have moved into the political arena to a certain extent in that health has become a political football.
So the intersection of health and politics has brought me to this very bizarre place in my life.
And then also as a mom, there are certain culture war issues I felt obligated to take on.
So that's kind of maybe a little longer than 30 seconds.
Becoming a Public Mom00:09:01
That's good.
Do you know, did you think when you jumped into politics and came out in support of the president and Tulsi specifically?
I do love Tulsi.
That you think it would get you here today where you're having fights live on CNN, that you'd feel so passionately about this from when you first started?
Here's what I think.
I don't actually think it's the current administration because the truth of the matter is I try to be relatively neutral.
I didn't endorse anyone.
I did say when Dave Rubin asked me, are you going to vote for President Trump?
I said I am.
It was the day before.
And I said, certainly I should have no bearing or influence on anyone's vote.
I'm not qualified.
You're asking me personally.
I'm answering you personally.
I think the takedown attempts are not about that, even though I do know that's the prevailing narrative.
I think it's a big pharma, big food, big ag, all right, she has to go conversation.
Because there's no question it has been like a hilarious series of unfortunate articles that are years old and on purpose.
And then when you provide proof and it's like, that's actually not the truth, they don't print it.
They print the opposite.
So it kind of reminds me of when they built a compilation of Joe Rogan saying the N-word, despite the fact, by the way, that he was referencing old comedians bits and has zero history of being a racist.
I thought, like, who went through this guy's comedy sketches to put together a compilation of him saying the N-word to try to make him seem like one of the most despicable, disgusting people?
Like, you really had to dig for that.
It's a hoax.
Or it's like Bobby every day.
Remember when Bobby at Newsweek came out and said he ate dogs?
Newsweek said that Bobby Kennedy ate dogs.
And I thought this is a new low.
So I tend to think it's one of those sort of smear campaigns.
Like, don't listen to her.
She's an evil, horrible bitch.
Like, you don't want to listen to her.
I think if I had to guess, I think it's that.
So you have a son or daughter?
Both.
I have a 13-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter.
And what's life like bin parenting?
My kids are actually great.
I feel bad that I'm their mom.
I really do.
They go through so much and it's not fair to them, but they handle it with grace.
I never cease to be amazed at how mature they are.
You know, imagine calling both of my kids right before they started school this year.
And I'm coming to LA.
My son was having a surgery and I was coming to take care of him.
And then I'm calling my daughter.
I'm like, honey, I need you to get on the phone as soon as possible.
And I'm like, so the entire left is calling me a racist and calling for DCFS to come and get you.
She's like, who cares?
I'm like, well, you're going into your second year of high school in California.
And I just feel like maybe you should, you know, why don't you watch it?
And she's like, mom, this is such bullshit.
And I was like, all right, well, I love you.
She's like, okay, I love you too.
I'm going to so-and-so's pool party meeting.
It's like, okay.
The 13-year-old struggled with it a bit more because there were, he has like a little Instagram page that we manage for him.
We don't let him go on it, but he gets to post things and then he will look at the comments and he's a bit more vulnerable than she is.
And it was like a little Nazi.
And he was disturbed by that.
And I, you know, like, this is, this is teaching you a very difficult lesson at a very young age.
You know, you've seen things that I've gone through and horrible things people have called me.
You know, they're not true, but I don't think it's easy for them at all.
And I feel bad about that.
What have you said to them when it's been difficult for other moms out there going through things or scared to speak up and speak their mind?
What I said to the kids is like, when I became a public figure, you guys didn't exist.
You didn't exist for like, I don't know, 10 years.
I don't know that I would have done this had you existed.
I didn't even know you were going to exist.
So it wasn't like I was planning on it.
You guys were an impulse set.
Like I suddenly decided one day I was missing out on everything important and wanted to be mom, but that was at 38.
I got into being forward-facing at 30.
So with that said, it does come with the territory, but then there are things that you do on behalf of them and their generation that might hurt your immediate kids.
So conversations around race in America, conversations around the LGBTQ plus movement potentially going too far.
These are things that I worry about with regard to the society that they are going to grow up in.
So while I hope to give my kids a better world, whether it's food or pharma or ag or insurance or culture wars, it sure doesn't make it hard for them in the moment.
And I've tried to explain that I think it's for the greater good and what can we learn from these lessons and can they become sharper, smarter, tougher, stronger at a younger age than most?
But it's certainly not, you know, it's not ideal.
So you decided at 38 you were missing out on what you felt like everyone else was going through?
You know, I never saw myself as, I was like, eh, you know, I like to work a lot.
Like some people are born to do this job.
Like I really look at motherhood as a true gift.
Like when you meet somebody who's a musician and they're just inherently talented, it's like, all right, God gave you this.
This is not, no, this is, this isn't just practice or doctors who can saw through bone.
I mean, most people are not capable of that.
You must be, you must have some special gift imbued at birth.
God did not give me the gift of singing.
Same.
But there are certain people that are born to be parents.
And they just, oh my God, they're incredible at it.
I marvel.
I have to struggle every day.
I'm like the Jack Nicholson in the Helen Hunt movie, As Good As It Gets, where he says to her, you know, you make me want to be a better man.
The kids make me push to be a better person, but I am far from without my flaws.
So I didn't think I was going to be a parent.
And I started working on a TV show called Losing It.
And I would move in with these families.
And one family had this, gosh, I think the kid, her name was Lily.
So, oh my God, she's probably like 20-ish thing now.
I think she was around 10 or 11.
And this had to be the freaking cutest kid.
And she would come into my trailer and like draw me pictures and talk to me for hours.
And we would talk about her school lunches.
And I remember this light bulb going off, like, oh, am I missing the point?
And then I ended up going to Africa on vacation, 2010, same year.
And long story short, we almost drowned in the Zambezi, myself and my ex on some stupid adventure that we had underestimated.
Don't ever wrap the Zambezi, unless you have a death wish.
So about halfway through, we climb out soaking wet on this twig ladder, like the 45-degree cliff, and the day's over.
My ex is like, we're not finishing this river.
We're not jumping off that bridge.
We're done for the day.
And there happened to be an orphanage across from where we were staying.
And this is at the time I didn't understand like orphanage tourism.
I didn't understand any of that stuff.
All I knew is there were kids over there.
And we had the afternoon off.
So I was like, why don't we go and like see if we can find pencils and underwear or books or whatever?
Is there a place to buy stuff for these kids?
So we bought a bunch of stuff, brought it over there.
And as we pulled in, this little girl comes around the corner in a little pink dress.
She was two years old and her name was Esther.
And I felt like I felt something grab my heart and just squeeze.
To make a very long story short, due to international adoption laws, which are exceptionally corrupt, and that's a separate podcast, I was not able to adopt her because Zambia was closed to international adoption.
So we began this whole process of adoption because at that point I was like, of course I'm supposed to be a mom and of course I'm supposed to adopt.
This is what I'm supposed to do.
And very long story short, two years later, we ended up in Haiti with our home study because Haiti happened to be open still to international adoption.
And over the course of that process, my ex was getting increasingly frustrated and was like, I'm just going to get pregnant.
And we ended up with two kids at the same time in the same week.
And it is what it is.
Racial Division and Citizenship00:14:48
So that's the bizarre, serendipitous series of events.
God works in mysterious ways.
so.
When you talk about race now, you had a big controversy or created hoax on the internet.
No, no, it's both.
It's both.
It's both.
About race.
About race, 100%, yes.
Well, finish your question.
Forgive me.
I'm just going to say.
No, no, go ahead.
You're going to jump in.
But I think, you know, when you speak from such a deep personal sense of what that is for you and your life and have somebody who is telling you that you're wrong and the way you view the world is different than the way she views the world.
Which is fine.
As long as you're being honest about the views that are being expressed.
So, so here's, let me give you a little bit of history on this conversation.
And it's absolutely a fight that I am committed to.
Was there something that happened off-air that led to an on-air conversation?
I wasn't off-air with Abby Phillips.
So in case you've been living under a rock, I got into a conversation about race and simultaneously the Smithsonian on CNN.
And here's where it went.
But before we get there, I'm out of the country for the summer.
I'm a month out of the country.
I'm with my kids and my wife.
And they're all looking at freaking lions and zebras, horseback riding on the Mara.
No news, no cell reception.
I come home and I have to jump back into work.
And I'm like, oh, God, am I ready to take on the news right now?
And you start right at CNN.
No, no.
I start digesting different stories that have made the news.
And inevitably, so many of them involve race and division.
So it's like the two white people that got the crap kicked out of them by a black mob in Cincinnati.
And maybe the white guy called them the N-word or something.
And then you've got the council woman who says that the white people deserved it.
And like the white lady almost died.
And then you've got the white woman who, I can't remember the state at this point.
There was like a five-year-old black kid that was rifling through her bag.
I mean, I shoplifted at Packagum at five.
My mom marched me back.
She called him the N-word and then raised a bunch of money because I guess she was getting death threats.
So she raised a bunch of money to relocate.
People actually were like, oh, this woman called this five-year-old an N-word.
Let me give her a bunch of money.
And just racial story after racial, the Harvard professor who got his ass kicked in the movie theater and then wouldn't disclose the race of the kids.
So of course everyone then launches into all of these really, really racist comments online about it.
And I'm thinking to myself, this is not, listen, we've been dealing with this now for quite some time.
Since 2020, this has exploded.
Racial division is getting worse by the day.
And my background is, I'm Gen X.
So we caught the tail end of only one black person on the magazine on the stand, right?
Only one black show on TV, the Cosby show.
Only, only, only.
But we were also the generation that cast the ballots, bought the tickets, bought the t-shirts, got rid of labels, one race human, you know, love is love.
Like that was, that's what Gen X was about.
And I think we still are.
So to see us go backwards in a way that I've never experienced in my lifetime, and to know where I think this is going is deeply alarming.
So I've got a 13-year-old white son who shares with me deeply alarming stories about kids that he knows, knows of, experiences that are leaning into more of an alt-right position and certain influencers, certain podcasters that are anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-gay, and you're just, you're like, okay,
that's scary.
You know, you've got high schools in the middle of the country renaming themselves Robert E. Lee and taking back the Confederate flag.
And what I think is happening there is that when you demonize an entire group of young white boys that don't have the ability to really process what's happening, they're going to vomit this back up.
They really are.
They're choking on it.
And I think they're leaning into, quite honestly, becoming more racist.
And I'm seeing it and it is...
Do you think that's because of how society has kind of just turned their back on white men?
And demonized them.
Absolutely.
And their answer is F you.
And it comes back of like, listen, the immigration problem is a real problem, obviously.
Illegal immigration is bad for people who are here illegally.
It's bad for people who are here legally.
There's got to be a pathway to racial.
It's bad for the black community.
It's bad for, it doesn't benefit anyone.
I'm sorry.
If you really care about these people, you would give them a path to citizenship so they don't have to always be your quote maid.
If I have to hear one more time, your maid didn't show up, I'm going to vomit on your shoes.
Like, because that's what you actually want is for them to stay your maid.
Because when they're here legally, they have tremendous upward mobility.
They're more likely to start small businesses.
Their kids do better in school.
They pay in more than they take.
So this whole wooz of illegal immigration.
It's a virtue signal, though.
Even women who have illegal help.
Bingo.
That's exactly what it is, to maintain their serf class.
But the point is that there's an empathy to that.
And I understand it uniquely.
I worked for the United Nations Refugee Agency because I think being an American is actually an inherent privilege that those of us who were born here did not earn.
So when I started to see a lack of empathy, a lack of nuance, a lack of understanding, a leaning into alt-right narratives, that is deeply alarming.
And there's a lot of that happening now.
Simultaneously, as the mother of a black daughter, two things worry me.
Number one, three, actually, and these are conversations she and I have had at length.
So one is the whole leaning into you, like I play for black Americans, I sing for black Americans, I this for black Americans.
I'm like, honey, I don't know where you're going to end up in life.
But if there's ever a moment where you're serving the public, serve them all.
Be the people's champion.
Sing for everyone.
Inspire all girls.
I'm like, this is a trick.
And I don't understand it.
I don't know what it's about.
I'm like, but why you would only profiteer off of 13% of the population is nonsensical to me.
It's some sort of a game.
Don't fall for it.
The second part of that is I do not want my daughter to look at a person of any color and be like, oh, white imperialists.
Bad.
Like that is unacceptable to me.
And I remember as a kid, you'd see a lot of bad things happening in the world.
And you're a little young for this, but maybe you'll be familiar.
So Mr. Rogers, right, famously, has this quote about, whenever you see bad things happening, look for the helpers.
So there's a whole second part of history here where the North did ban slavery, despite how profitable it was by the eve of the Civil War, not the border states, because they fought for both sides, but every state that fought solely for the Union had banned slavery.
And it's like Lincoln's top concern was preserving the Union, right?
But what was that rift over?
It was over slavery.
That's what it was about.
There are 350,000 Union soldiers that died to end slavery.
So I get it.
Yes, 30% of white households in the South owned slaves.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the South died to preserve it.
I understand all of that, but there were also good guys and the good guys won.
So I want my son to aspire to be one of those good guys.
I want my daughter to know that there are good guys out there and good and bad is not a matter of race, gender, color, orientation.
And I think the third part also is I am worried about a world where I am starting to see a rise in racism and a tremendous lack of empathy.
And the last point that I want to make here is that black people are constantly saying, why do I have to teach you?
Why do I have to explain to you racism?
It's like, well, because obviously you feel like we're not getting it.
Because if you're feeling like we aren't getting it, you've got to keep explaining it.
That's the bottom line.
And in a world where you need people to be empathetic, if you demonize them, that's not going to happen.
I was just on PVD's podcast the other day and I was talking to Vincent, O'Shana, O'Shana, and he's like, I don't get it anymore.
Like, my ancestors didn't own slaves.
I didn't own slaves.
We were immigrants.
We came here with nothing.
Like, what more do you want?
And you could tell he's sick of it.
And any hope of him listening, advocating, and being empathetic, you're losing because you're demonizing a guy who did nothing wrong.
So you're wiping out all of your allies.
And in this moment, it feels really good maybe because you're kind of terrorizing people into silence through this media narrative, which is basically what happened on CNN.
But this has got to be the point, because that's all it's driving is more hatred and more racial division, which is deeply concerning to me.
So I could lay out what happened on CNN, but that's kind of what's going on for me at the moment.
So when that happens and there is the media firestorm that ensues with everyone twisting it to try to make you look that, how do you handle that?
And how did you explain that to your daughter and your son?
Well, I sat down with both of them and I asked them to watch my daughter, you know, my daughter loves Megan Kelly.
How that happened, I don't know.
So this is a kid that...
So you somehow managed to raise children that share your values.
Conservative.
Especially in LA, right?
Okay.
This is not me, though.
Because my ex is very liberal and her wife is very liberal.
They didn't come to this conclusion because of me.
In fact, I would argue both the kids are more conservative than me, which I find myself constantly trying to bring them back to the middle.
Interesting.
I like guys.
Are there friends similarly?
My sons are all conservative.
And my daughters split down the middle.
These kids get left and right.
But we sat down and we watched it and the kids are just so kind of used to it.
My daughter dismissed it as being like left-wing, spin narrow bullshit.
Didn't even have the time to listen.
Wasn't interested at all.
Couldn't be bothered.
My son was bothered, though, because they went after him.
And that threw him off a lot.
Kids should be off limits.
I locked his page and everything.
But that he's like, couldn't wrap his head around how somebody could call him like a little Nazi and what those comments were.
It definitely bothered him.
What initially happened on CNN was not actually about slavery at all.
So I knew we were going to be talking about the Smithsonian and Trump's desire to, you know, they take like $60 million of taxpayer money, right?
Trump's desire to revisit some of these installations.
Now, in all fairness, it's Trump.
And I'm not a MAGA.
Have you walked around the Smithsonians at all?
Okay, well, ready?
So I did my homework on this.
So now I know what's in there.
I get it.
So I thought, like, okay, what could it be, right?
Let me educate myself so I don't look stupid getting into a fight about something that I don't actually know what we're fighting about.
So I reached out to the comms team.
Yeah.
And I said, listen, I'm going on CNN.
Do me a favor.
What are you guys taking umbrage with?
What are the issues?
I got like 53 pages.
Not one thing on those 53 pages had anything to do with slavery.
Not one.
There was only one that even touched on it slightly, and that had to do with Benjamin Franklin.
And it was supposed to be about how he created electricity, but instead it was also like, by the way, he was a horrible slave owner who never freed his slaves when he actually became an avid abolitionist who did free his slaves.
So it was totally wrong and inaccurate.
But as with this segment begins, Julie Roginsky, who I guess is like a Democratic strategist, starts to speak with such authority.
And I know she has no idea what she's talking about, right?
My favorite.
So she's like, well, you know, we, Trump is revisiting these things in the Smithsonian because we don't want to offend parts of the MAGA base.
So it's like, okay, MAGA's racist.
Here we go.
Love this one.
And, you know, we don't want to upset dear leader.
So it's like a Kim Jong-un, a Hitler, like pick your authoritarian, Nazi, like, regime of choice.
I was like, right on time.
And then I'm like, okay, right.
I know she has no idea what's in there and what she's talking about.
So I go, I'm like, have you looked?
Just like you said to me.
Have you looked at any of these things?
I probably take the alternate view that there is very terrible things in there.
Sure.
Well, there are.
Yeah.
So she goes, well, yeah, slavery's bad and we should talk about it.
But I know that none of it is actually nothing in this list is about slavery.
So at that point, now I'm like addressing that comment.
And I simply say, you cannot.
This has been going on for thousands of years.
This has, every single race has perpetrated this against every single race.
Every single race has worn the whip and the chains.
So stop laying this at the feet of only one race.
Richie Torres and Abby Phillip were like, I can't believe you're trying to relitigate slavery in America.
And it's like, well, where did you get America?
I just said thousands of years.
Right.
America is 245 years old.
But then I'm like, I'm not.
But they continue.
So then I give a fact from the 1860 census, which whether you like it or not is a fact from the 1860 census that only 2%, less than 1.5% of white Americans own slaves.
And of course, everyone's outraged because the South built their economy on slavery and they all benefited.
But then again, you can continue that argument that yes, and despite that, all the North ben, well, the South died to keep, yes, but the North died to end it.
And throughout history with segregation, you've got white people alongside black people fighting for what's right.
It doesn't mean evil didn't happen.
It means there were also good guys that gave their lives to stop it that also had white skin.
And the next thing you know, I even clarify again.
Clarifying Weight Gain Myths00:11:15
Like I'm actually not talking about that.
I'm talking about these things.
Did you know in the minute this was going to be a thing?
In the minute I addressed it, I'm like, I even said that's not what I'm actually trying to do.
What I'm trying to show you is that every single exhibit blames white imperialism when it's not relevant.
And I gave a specific example involving Cuban emigration where they made no mention of Fidel Castro.
I was like, that's, wow.
I mean, I've lived in Miami and he's kind of a key figure in the reason Cubans emigrated to America.
And by the way, the vast majority of them are now conservative Republicans because of that.
So I gave that example.
I was very specific and clear.
And then literally she goes on Kara Swisher's podcast and lies and says, I just, we were just having a conversation about the arts.
And she just brought this up.
Out of nowhere.
I arrived nowhere.
I'm like, feel half the country racist.
You made a Nazi reference to Trump.
Your guest referenced slavery.
And like, I had no idea what was actually in the Smithsonian.
But what's even scarier is that that's their narrative so much so is it doesn't matter that it was like a white culture poster about how we're inherently aggressive and we have to win at all costs or this thing about Cuban emigration or another exhibit comparing George Floyd to Jesus that I don't know a lot of people might find blasphemous.
Like the list is extensive and long or gender testing in sports where they go on to talk about how athletes have had to expose their genitals to doctors.
Like this happened maybe once in a developed country decades ago.
It's a cheek swap.
Like it's all propaganda.
If you want to have a black overweight drag queen poses the statue of liberty, that should go in a gallery.
Not a museum.
That's fine.
That's freedom of expression.
do your thing, but...
Well, even in the National Portrait Gallery that's not far from where we're sitting, there's a plaque of President Trump from the first term.
And it is a complete, total, like, woke rewrite of history.
Right.
Despite the fact that she's not even honest.
That's not even what he had on the list that was sent to me.
Because I thought, is it all?
I honestly thought, okay, it's going to be that, right?
It's going to be a rewriting about Trump and he probably doesn't like it.
That's what I thought I was going to get.
So I was going to be prepared for it.
That's my own list that I found from walking into the museum.
Was not even on the list that they sent over.
So then she did a whole show on CNN about how I was misinformed about slavery and I tried to relitigate who benefited from slavery in America.
By the way, which I said twice.
Crazy.
No.
Once, this is thousands of years old.
Another time, I'm talking about the exhibits.
The third time, like, this has been going on throughout history with people of all different races and just blatantly lied.
Just like her guest was blatantly lying about.
That's what the legacy media does, is they rewrite it in order to serve their narrative.
None of it.
And they all are complicit in going along with it.
It's the craziest thing I've seen.
And when you see it up close and firsthand, and then the things that happen after it where you're going, I mean, here's proof that that's not what happened.
And they just throw away the proof and keep going.
So talking about the legacy media narrative.
Yeah.
You have another good one.
Which one?
So there's a Netflix documentary that my husband and I recently watched in which you're famously not in and they very aggressively go after the trainer that you were.
Isn't that interesting?
And so I read an article that said you were considering suing them, which we don't have to get into.
No, no, we can get into that.
But I'm very curious because you've been a trainer for so long, especially on The Biggest Loser.
And one of my personal questions is a lot of the contestants have gained their weight back.
Do you believe that's because they lost weight too fast and too dramatically?
Or is it that they didn't have healthy habits that lasted?
Because there is a, I wouldn't say in the maha world, right?
It's very important for what you eat in addition to working out, that there's often women in the gym who are heavy set.
And you see these people on TikTok and Instagram that are heavyset but can lift triple, quadruple the amount of weight I can lift.
But then they're not eating healthy in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Neither of these things are the answer.
So what is it?
Okay.
So first thing is I would say I didn't even know how about the fact that I didn't even watch this documentary, but the vast pieces of it that I've seen, I've probably seen 30 minutes of it.
The specific accusations against me are unilaterally false.
Now, I will, I never said to Ryan Benson, you're going to make me a millionaire.
I was wearing a microphone on camera.
He was wearing a microphone.
And both of the executive producers came out and they're like, she never said that.
Do you think anyone printed?
Harvey did at TMZ.
Bless his heart.
Like, I never starved the contestants.
I never ignored medical advice.
and I could give you literally hundreds.
I spoke to that doctor.
Every day there'd be a medical report from his staff on set, and every day we would all be on it.
There are hundreds of emails.
As for the- The doctor really laid the blame at like, the trainer's feet.
The doctor, by the way, that's because I was never a fan of his and he knows it because I felt that he acted unilaterally.
And I don't think anybody does that as a doctor.
You refer out.
So he would pull contestants off of their medications, whether it was something like Prozac or something like metformin.
And there would be all kinds of issues with that.
And I, and I could provide you with all the emails and I would ask for them to see specialists outside of the show.
But with that said, he didn't even do their diet.
That's a total lie.
There was a registered dietitian named Dr. Cheryl Forberg, who was the dietician on the show that I actually liked and worked with all the time.
Like that's a complete lie.
He wasn't even responsible for their nutrition.
She was.
And I would dialogue with her regularly and I think she's great.
Like we can talk about the nutrition.
I'm happy to talk about the diet.
I'm happy to talk about the screaming and the yelling and what that was about because all that's real despite the fact that it's manipulated.
Oh, it is real?
It's not just the producers told everyone to scream.
That's no.
So, okay, so first let me answer.
When you're in a gym with that many people, I feel like you're excited.
Nah.
So first let me answer why they gained the weight back.
Okay.
Let's start because I'm very fascinated.
When a person is 50 pounds, 100 pounds, 200 pounds overweight, this is not like a dad bod kind of a person, right?
This is not somebody who is one of the 74% of Americans that's suddenly obese or overweight by like 50 or so pounds because the system is rigged against them.
And 50 is enough to make you super duper sick.
So nevertheless, these are people that are 100, 200, 300 pounds overweight.
Statistically, 95% of individuals, not on Biggest Loot, just across the board that lose a significant amount of weight, put it back on.
95%.
So this is not only not a phenomenon that's unique to Biggest Loser, my contestants on Biggest Loser, 35% of them kept the weight off.
So it's actually unprecedented.
Sorry to interject.
Do you still stay in touch with any of the contestants?
Of course, there were 424 contestants on Biggest Loser.
I worked with over 150.
They had like six on this documentary, of which I worked with four of them.
Olivia and Hannah.
And Hannah just came out and was like, Julia Michaels changed my life.
It's in the Daily Mail.
She's like, she changed my life.
I'm forever grateful.
I didn't even, I've sent her.
I was like, and I messaged her and I was like, honey, thanks so much because I know you don't need it.
And I was like, it's not about needing it.
Feels good.
Like, I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
I talked to Tony.
Of course, Julia Adden, Michelle Aguilar, Danny Allen, Tara Costa.
Do they still come to you for training advice?
No, because they know they're, they know what to do now.
A lot of them work in the field.
But the point is, do you think, so one guy I trained 20 years ago on season one, Danny Cahill was trained by both Bob and I.
And the one who gave Danny the caffeine pills was actually Sandy Crumb, who worked for Dr. Heizanga.
I have all the documents.
I'll give them all to you.
You can put them all up throughout your show.
It's all bullshit.
All a lie.
There was one season where the doctor was like, we can't do this anymore.
And then also pulled magnesium and was giving them ambien, by the way, which I didn't agree with, and was giving them dip, which I didn't agree with.
And they were allowed to have unlimited amounts of coffee, which is why we were using the pre-workout in the first place to regulate how much caffeine they were allowed to get.
I have all the documentation to provide you.
This is all a crazy lie.
So all of that is complete bullshit.
With that said, why do the people that put it back on put it back on, whether it's the 65% of the people I worked with or the 95% of the people in GenPop?
And here's the answer.
Because for these individuals, the food is a defense mechanism.
it's a coping structure, it's a, it is something that at one point or another in their lives meant their psychological survival.
It is as powerful as a drug addiction, if not more so.
Well, yeah, when I'm having a bad day, I'm still eating pizza no matter what anyone tells me.
Worse than that, though.
And maybe worse is the wrong word.
far more intense.
So I'm sure you've heard this and I don't mean to sound cliche, but I'll give you two examples that I've famously given.
So for anybody who's heard this, you know, fast forward about two minutes.
One contestant on the show, she was about 500 pounds, biggest contestant, female contestant ever named Shay, who to this day I adore and speak with semi-regularly.
This poor girl, her mother was a heroin addict who would turn tricks for drugs while she was locked in a closet.
She was put into foster care.
And as you can imagine, a host of horrors happened upon this woman.
So for someone like that, when they're turning to food, is it control?
Sure.
Is it comfort?
Sure.
Is it potentially like desexualizing?
Very possibly.
There are a list of reasons people use food, but it's not because they're weak or they're lazy or they're stupid.
It's because for them at that moment, it's like, I'm terrified.
I need to desexualize.
I need a layer of protection.
So maybe that's why they put it on.
Here's another example.
I had a young kid who had lost about 100 pounds.
Dad loses about 100 pounds.
They'd come together.
I didn't even train this kid.
I worked with him tangentially.
He goes home for the holidays, comes back, all the contestants get on the scale.
Dad loses nothing, he gains six pounds.
And because I liked him, I sat down with him and I just walk me through what happened.
Leaves the ranch, there's no food at the airport, can't get my exercise in, you know, the usual bullshit excuses.
Training for Success Together00:15:57
And we get to his house.
The doors fly open and everyone's there.
And there's his mom.
And she breaks into tears.
But they're not tears of joy because she's also morbidly obese.
So upon seeing her much thinner son and her much thinner husband, they broke the contract.
This isn't the deal.
We all agreed we were going to co-sign this.
We were going to be in this together.
Now, you guys have lost 100 pounds.
You've abandoned me.
You've left me behind.
She becomes depressed.
She's in tears.
What does she withdraws from her son?
So what does the food provide her son?
An emotional connection to his mother.
When he loses it, what does he lose?
He has a primal abandonment.
It's not conscious.
It's unconscious, of course.
But this is why they put the weight back on.
It has nothing to do with, in fact, I can't stand this doctor.
He's a complete scumbag.
But with that said, he actually went on, because someone sent this to me, I think it was News Nation.
And he's like, yeah, that study about their metabolism is actually a lie and it's been debunked.
And I'm thinking, you're a day late in a dollar short here, dude.
Really?
Nevertheless, that's not it at all.
That's not what happened.
In the past, you've mentioned these fake friends from Hollywood and how you've learned over the years of who you can remain, who's loyal to you and who you can trust.
I know I have in my own experiences.
Yeah.
Does Bob Harper fall into that bucket?
Listen, here's the thing with Bob.
I don't think I've ever said a bad word about him publicly.
I defy you to find one.
I really do.
You know, we had a very difficult relationship, which is sad.
I mean, I could show you messages, pictures where it was like there was a lot of love there, but at the same time, there was a lot of unfortunately inherent competition.
And I posted the last message I ever sent, second to last message I ever sent to Bob, and it said, like, when you don't answer me, you don't return my calls, this is what always disappoints me about our relationship.
This is where I always feel let down.
I'm going to let you read into that what you will, and then I'm going to let you look at all the things that he has said about me publicly before the heart attack and ask yourself, he'd want to hear from her.
My answer is the phone works both ways.
If in fact you really wanted to hear from me, then my apologies.
You call me, I'll pick up the phone.
Did the producers encourage the competition?
Because it feels like if you're watching it, right, there's equal airtime.
Two teams, two trainers.
Seems very similar style, honestly.
I think, oh, God, I don't want to speak for him.
But when I was watching the parts of the documentary that I referenced, he's like, Jillian just gave them caffeine and they want and they want.
And I'm just there trying to help these people.
And I'm thinking, like, you, what do you, Danny Cahill trained with both of us, and Danny Cahill was given caffeine pills that you actually chose.
Stacker was his choice.
I had my own brand that I had created, actually.
And the funny thing is I got sued because the lawsuit was, they don't work.
I'm like, so which is it?
I cheated like crazy because they work so well or they didn't work and I'm a total fraud.
And the reality is caffeine is an athletic performance enhancer.
It's totally legal.
It's a great way to control the amount of caffeine you're taking in.
And a lot of these things have other stuff in it, like capsiaicin, which is cayenne, good for metabolism, ECGC from green tea, beetroot extracts for nitric oxide.
Like they're legal, healthy performance enhancers.
But as I'm watching Bob say this, and I'm thinking like, you don't realize I have the email.
Like this is a total lie.
But he was trying to say, well, Jillian only won because she gave them caffeine pills.
And in that moment, I felt it the most strongly like, oh, you're still pissed because I won.
It's crazy.
It's like a TV show.
Like a TV show.
Sounds like a TV show.
Yeah.
So the screaming, it was real.
Okay.
I need to know this because like I need someone to scream at me in the gym.
So last chance workout, that's not real.
Not at all.
And the running joke is that, you know, they'd make us come in and scream last chance workout, but you never wanted to beat the shit out of them before the workout because they'd be swollen and they'd hold water.
So the weigh-in was the next day.
The last thing you want to do is beat the crap out of them because they'll swell and they'll retain fluid.
So I would just have them do the walk to China.
I'd have them do slow, steady, easy cardio.
Right.
And they'd come in and they'd need this kind of last chance chaos.
That was all fake.
What was real is the, you know, your father's going to die.
Get on the fucking screaming yelling.
Get on the treadmill.
I swear to God, I'll put you through the wall.
Now, what you have to ask yourself is why.
So you're seeing, I don't know, you're seeing what, 30 minutes of me on a show?
Maybe 30 minutes, maybe 20 minutes of me, maybe 10 minutes of me on a show that's 90 minutes.
I was there all day, every day, every episode.
So let's say an episode was seven to 10 days and I'm there 12 to 14 hours a day and you're seeing 10 minutes of that.
Yep.
Now, This would be a tool that anybody would have in their toolbox, or I had in my toolbox, but it was one of a million different tools.
So if I have a sledgehammer, I also have a screwdriver, a suite of screwdrivers, screws, wrenches, this, that, the other.
Sledgehammer makes the best TV.
Why do you use the sledgehammer?
So you've got people that are there for a life or death intervention, and I took it very seriously.
I didn't see it as a TV show.
I was not a producer.
I didn't partake in the biggest loser brands.
I took that job very seriously.
They go home in a week, in two weeks, in three and four.
Just depends on when they get voted off.
I have no say-so in that.
Hence the reason if I had to critique the show, the gamification of weight loss is exceptionally unfortunate because the people that are working the hardest are the ones they want to get rid of because it's the biggest threat.
I can't, I didn't create this format.
Arguably that's what made it a hit show.
I benefited from that, regardless.
So what needs to happen before they go home for there to be any hope of success?
Number one, they need a rock bottom moment.
It must happen because they have to feel the pain of the way that they've been living and it has to be more painful than the work and the fear associated with where they need to get to.
So in other words, if I can make being 300 pounds more painful than your mom crying when she sees you skinny, we've got a chance.
Okay.
It has to not be comfortable.
It has to not be comforting.
Because the psychological thing.
It has to be horribly painful in order to get them to keep moving out of it.
But if it's like, nope, this is my happy comfy.
This is my comfortable nom.
This is where I feel good.
This is my safe space.
Well, you're fucked.
It has to be the opposite of that.
It has to be terrifying.
It has to be painful.
It has to be scary to be that overweight.
So you won't desire to move out of it.
Second piece, they have to take responsibility, which nobody wants to do nowadays.
So when you are that victim in the closet while your mom is turning tricks for heroin, you're a victim.
A lot of these people are victims, but the defense mechanism that they chose is no longer serving them.
So, you know, that whole saying of, listen, bad things are going to happen to you, but how you choose to respond makes all the difference.
So how they chose to respond worked at the time.
It kept them alive.
It meant their psychological survival, but it's no longer serving them.
So if you can't get them to take responsibility, they're fundamentally disempowered to make a different choice regardless.
That's why this victim mentality that they sell to everybody nowadays about everything, whether it's weight or whether it's race or whatever, gender, whatever the hell it may be, this is all a trick to like strip you of your body.
Do you think at the time if GLP1s were available, they would have put people on GLP-1s?
No, because that's not the point, right?
Anybody can lose weight on GLP-1s.
Is it safe?
Is it lasting?
Is it affordable?
Different conversation.
The question, I think, is, can you do it or not?
You know, can you maintain it or not?
Getting them to say, all right, I see how I've perpetuated this cycle of abuse, that's number two.
And number three, they need an experience of success.
So if you come to me and your whole life experience is, I was the funny fat kid, or I was the one last picked in pee, or I was born without any physical prowess, this narrative, the way you think, affects how you behave, which dictates the outcome of your reality.
I got to have some sort of success in that gym.
And the reason is because the minute they do run the mile, they never thought they could, do the push-up they never thought they could, do the pull-up they never thought they could, it simply opens up an infinity of possibility with regard to everything else they didn't think they could do.
So if I've tried every other tool in that box and none of it's working, sledgehammer.
And I don't expect people to know.
I don't expect them to understand.
I don't expect them to have an opinion one way or the other.
And if they're upset about it, like I could see why when you really don't even know what's going on.
And that I'll speak to you all day long because that's true.
And I'll tell you why I did it, whether you like it or not.
But the other shit is just a complete lie.
It's insane.
Do you think the show could have done a better job about food education?
Or was that done and no one saw it?
It was absolutely done.
A lot of people would say, I want to know what's going on.
I think the show's goal was to put out Biggest Loser books to try to get people to buy into it.
I don't know that they felt it was the most entertaining television either, but they were absolutely taught what was going on.
And we could sit here and talk about diet all day long.
And there were days they would have low calories.
What I used to do, actually, was vary their caloric intake.
It's a strategy I've written about.
Because if you actually just keep their calories so consistently low, it's counterintuitive.
The body adapts to that.
I would throw in high calorie days, low calorie days.
There would be minimums, though.
So for example, they were always allowed unlimited greens, unlimited.
Eat as many as you get.
Leafy, cruciferous, broccoli, spinach, mushrooms, onions, all the unlimited.
Peas, this, that, the other.
Starchy vegetables, not unlimited.
Fruit, not unlimited.
Unlimited.
So we get the micronutrients and the fiber.
Then if it came to starchy carbs and protein and fat, there would be a calorie allowance for that, and that would fluctuate over the course of the week.
Like this, this doctor didn't even, he's not even a dietician.
He didn't even use their diet.
He had nothing to do with their nutrition.
There was a dietician on the show, as I mentioned, that I would consult with regularly.
And by the way, I work with a suite of people with a PhD in nutrition science that have my entire career.
And if you don't think that I was consulting all of them all the time, you're deluded.
So do you still train people now?
I don't train people now.
When did you stop training?
Gosh, I stopped training the minute I started Biggest Loser because I only could afford the time to train there.
And then when that stopped, I have fitness content.
Books or DVDs or apps or TVs are gone now, but apps or online streaming programs, sure, for fun.
But it's almost, it's hard to explain.
I love it and I think it's fun, but it's not where my heart is at at the moment.
So what's your personal workout routine?
Oh, gosh.
Given that you travel so much.
I know, I know.
People are so disappointed in me.
Every time I check into a hotel, they tell me where the gym is and I'm like, I've got to be up at 6 and I'm probably not getting to bed until 11, so I don't know if this is going to happen.
They're like, what time can I come watch you in the gym?
If you don't see me on your neurosecurity cameras, that's why.
I'm really good at controlling my food.
So I eat clean, I eat healthy.
I'm really controlled.
So what do you eat in a day?
Gosh, okay, so today I had yogurt and berries.
I had two hard-boiled eggs for a snack.
Same.
And then I had hummus and grilled artichoke for lunch.
And I have no idea what I'm going to do.
So you're ordering takeout, though?
Here.
Because I'm in DC, but I know how to do it in a way where it's like, we went to Preda Manja or whatever.
I got the two hard-boiled eggs.
I got a sparkling water.
I got yogurt at the hotel with berries.
Is it the perfect quality food?
Are the berries organic?
Yeah.
No.
But at the end of the day, it's better than bacon and eggs and oatmeal and all this other crap.
Okay, so now we're going to do the only thing I've wanted to do this whole episode.
I want you to rate the top fitness trends over the last 20 years.
Okay, I'll take it.
I feel like you have some hot takes.
All right, I'm ready.
Give me what you got.
Okay.
Where does CrossFit fall?
This is a tough one for me.
And here's why.
I want people to move their body and I want them to move in a way they're going to show up for.
If they love it, they love the community.
They love the challenge.
I think that's great.
And I don't want to poo-poo it.
But at the end of the day, you have chosen the most advanced modalities in fitness and you're doing them for time with coaches that have been certified over a weekend course.
Like.
Have you ever done a CrossFit class?
Yeah, and I didn't understand it at all.
Like I'll give you an example.
One was, it was like a 10-1 workout where 10-box jumps, one push-up.
Nine box jumps, two push-ups.
This, that, the other.
But by the time you were done, I'd like jammed my toe and my shoulder.
What is your trainer logic?
Explain to me the logic of this.
Like, this is sloppy.
It's a lot of fun.
Why am I doing this for time?
Like, what is the concept other than like, you just made this up in your head?
Why, though, am I doing that?
I've yet to meet a person who didn't tell me that even Josh X, he had this crazy back procedure done and almost died from it.
And I'm like, Josh, what?
And he's, well, I injured myself in CrossFit.
Josh X. You know, the heart attack that Bob Harper had, I think it happened in a CrossFit classroom, just to be clear.
So I'm almost sure.
So it's like, if you're there with a coach who has a degree in exercise science, great.
And if they can modify everything that's coming down from on high and they can watch everybody in perfect form, fantastic.
But taking literally the most advanced modalities in fitness and giving them to a layman to do for time, which is unheard of and unprecedented, from a guy who got certified over the weekend is just a horrible idea in general.
But a great coach, you're getting, I will, you know, there's a guy who wrote Supple Leopard.
I cannot freaking for the life of me remember his name and he's fantastic.
Maybe we could Google it.
He has a degree in exercise science and like, I think he's fantastic.
I would defer to someone like him.
Next is going to be Orange Theory.
Totally fine if you like it.
Just cardio.
Berries.
My only issue with Berries is it kind of falls under the, it depends on the instructor.
So berries, like you could be doing push-ups for three minutes.
And that's when I just, I'm like, why am I doing push-ups for three minutes?
Finding Your Perfect Class00:04:08
But if you get a great instructor, like it's a great way to sweat.
If you love it, wonderful.
And if you have the ability to kind of police yourself throughout the class, that's going to be great.
The trainer logic, I don't know, that stuff matters to me when you're training that aggressively.
So I think it depends on the instructor.
But if you're responsible and you can take agency and you can handle it and you know your limits, like go and have the best time.
Get your burn on.
Soul cycle.
Totally fine, just spin class.
What do you think of that?
The trainers have all become famous.
And everyone loves them.
I think that's wonderful.
Same with Peloton?
I think also great.
I think if you, if you like to show up and hang out with that coach, that's really important.
That's why you're showing up.
I would hope that the trainers, that's kind of the point is you want to hang out with them.
You like them.
You want to spend time with them.
You enjoy their humor, their personality.
It's spin class.
You could get into, like, if I was to be a real bitch, it's like, should we really be dancing on the bike?
I mean, but I've taught spin classes.
I'm like, and then up and down and bounce around and spin.
Like, cause you just get bored.
I mean, is it like the best bike riding?
No, but so what?
You know, people love it and like you have a great burn and that's, that's awesome.
Have you ever gone to any of these classes?
And do people then are like, Jillian Michaels is in my spin class?
I have.
I have gone.
And when there's a great instructor, I love it.
And I, for years, would work with great teachers in different modalities, whether it was yoga or whether it was, God, I hated Olympic lifts.
I wanted to understand or whether whether I ended up seeing somebody for kettlebell.
Because I think a great teacher is a great student.
Dude, I don't love classes simply because, again, I'm the person thinking, why did you put me in push-ups for three minutes?
Why am I doing this like 10, 1, 9, 2, 5, 7?
Like, what is the logic here?
That drives me crazy because I'm very logic.
So today's workout I did was 21-15-9, 20-20-20, 21-15-9, 20-20-20.
Do you love it?
I do.
I do.
So that's all that matters.
You showed up for it.
I do.
You love it.
And that's awesome.
Anything that gets people to show up.
But there was a lot of those similar to what you're making fun of here.
And I get it.
I'm like sitting there not remembering, like falling over dumbbells.
Don't worry.
No one was harmed in the making up.
It's better than nothing.
And it is.
I agree.
You know, if you're asking me to be a fitness person and critique it, I'll critique it.
What do you think about the girly training for the marathons and marathon culture?
Okay, first, a lot of respect.
Here you go.
Hot take.
A lot of respect.
The only thing with marathon cultures, you got to remember, like the guy who ran the first one dropped it.
Does this fall also for like the 300 milers and you see those other guys running those like 200 milers?
That is not fitness.
When you see the Cam Jones and the David Goggins.
I love that guy on TikTok though.
This is not fitness.
This is something else entirely.
These guys are trying to, I don't know, reinvent what it means to be human.
David Goggins will tell you, like, I run from my demons.
It keeps me alive.
But that is not a workout.
That is a whole different, Goggins was a seal, wasn't he?
Like the most elite warrior in the world.
Like just drowning those guys and bring them back to life.
Like this is not a normal typical person.
So I mean, do I have incredible respect for the discipline that they have, the work ethic?
Unbelievable.
Yes.
But I would say with a marathon, make it a bucket list thing and switch to perfecting your half.
It's just a lot of flexion, extension, flexion, extension, pound.
It's a lot.
And not everybody is built for that.
Some people can do it definitely and they're built for it, but not everybody is.
So I would simply say, do it once, get it off your bucket list, and then perfect your halftime or maybe move to like a triathlon.
And there's all different sets of difficulty there, class like sprint, so on and so forth.
What big fitness and trainer counts do you follow?
Gosh.
I don't anymore.
Supplements and Doctor Advice00:10:37
I think, I don't know.
And it's not because there aren't incredible people out there.
There are.
I think it's just because I feel like I know it.
I've seen it.
I understand it.
There's not a whole lot really for me to learn there.
With that said, I do love to follow different doctors, PhDs, MDs.
I think I love to learn about stuff I don't fully have a grasp on yet.
So somebody who's going to break down peptides for me and stem cell therapies and gene editing.
That fascinates me.
I want to learn about it and understand it, whether it's safe or not.
It's a different conversation.
But that stuff I'm really at, that new frontier.
In your algorithm, though, when you're scrolling, I'm sure you get some fitness counts.
You ever see someone you're like, this is not correct?
This is not the right form.
Every now and again, I get those.
But, you know, gosh, there's a bunch of great trainers out there that are just fantastic.
I'm just killing you that I cannot remember the name of the guy who wrote something.
It's like, it's just driving me.
We'll find it.
We'll put it on the screen.
For everyone who wants to know, we will find it and we will get it up for you.
Kelly Starrett!
There you go.
Wow.
There you go.
There we go.
Like, I, like, you know, I would shout out to Kelly at this point, look to people that have their degree.
I know we've become very, it's a lot of glute trainers on the internet.
I know, but they have inserts.
Those are not real.
Like, no one's asked.
Like, no, that's not real.
There's like an insert you put in your pants.
Don't, come on now.
You can't fall for that.
That's ridiculous.
Are there any products or supplements that you swear by?
Oh my God, I take everything, dude.
Do you really?
You don't believe in like eating your vitamins?
There's a problem with that.
So I do eat my vitamins, but here's the problem.
And it's twofold.
Number one, is your diet varied enough?
Like how much wild-caught salmon did you eat in the last three days?
Honestly.
Zero.
Zero.
Maybe you should consider omega-3.
Did you have sardines?
Like, what did you eat?
Right.
No.
So I have neither.
Not that I don't like those foods.
I do.
I don't.
But I don't even remember the lot.
Okay.
So even if I'm out, they likely don't have wild-caught salmon.
I can't stand sardines.
So it's like, I know I need omega-3s.
All right.
When you look at micronutrients, antioxidants, polychanic, and all this crap that we're reading about all the time.
I say crap in the most loving way.
Is your diet that varied?
Mine is simply not.
And on top of that, we know that the soil is depleted.
So here's the problem.
If we're overfarming the soil and it's depleted, then the fruits and the vegetables are depleted and the animals that get their nutrients from the soil and the fruits and the vegetables, they don't have as much nutrients.
And these are the two reasons that I supplement.
And I just, I take all kinds of crap.
So much.
You're taking creatine?
It's not relatable.
I do take creatine.
How much are you taking?
I know you're supposed to take a huge amount.
It makes me nauseous.
Does it make you bloat?
No, but it makes me sick to my stomach.
Really?
So I can only, like, I can only do the scuba and I kind of have to hold on for dear.
Like, I don't know why, but it does make me nauseous, which is a real shame because I want all of these cognitive benefits that supposedly it helps provide.
I take, dude, do you really want the list?
Yes, go for it.
I really want it.
Okay.
All right.
Brace yourself.
You want the supplements of the peptides.
Let's go through the full list.
What's Jillian Michaels taking?
Okay.
Now, I take pharmaceutical grade fish oil.
Okay.
And there are plenty of PhDs who would tell you that's not the ideal form, but the problem is I simply don't trust the quality of the supplements out there with fish oil because it can go rancid.
It could have mercury.
It could be all kinds of problems with it.
And I don't really want to risk it.
Whereas I know the pharmaceutical grade form doesn't have that stuff.
And as long as you have it with fat, it's more bioavailable, more easily absorbed.
I'm butchering that, but nevertheless.
I take 5,000 milligrams of D3 with K2.
Okay.
Because I don't go in the sun as much as I know you're supposed to.
It ages the shit out of me and I see it right away on my skin.
So I just don't.
You should.
I'm aware of this, but I don't.
So I take D3 and K2.
I take collagen.
I take creatine.
I take collagen for my skin.
I take creatin for cognition, mostly, to be honest.
I take a methylated B complex.
I also do B12 shots once a week.
I do glutathione shots twice a week.
And I take a higher dose of that, like, well, high is relative, but like 500 grams, micrograms.
MGs.
Sorry, not MCGs.
Okay.
I take, I vary my multivitamin.
I actually started taking a multivitamin from a company that has something called lithium orotate in it, which is, again, controversial, but it has to do with brain health and cognition because I have an Alzheimer's gene and Parkinson's is in the family.
So I can't, all of this is like not medical advice, talk to your doctor.
I don't even know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I explore it and mess around with it.
And then I take a regular multi from Allian Naturals, which is a company that I've invested in.
So do your own homework on all your own supplements, full disclosure.
Let's see.
So I take magnesium L-freonate and bisglycinate and I alternate those before bed.
What am I missing here?
Okay.
I think I got those.
I sometimes take a greens powder.
I get a little bit lazy on that one.
Peptides.
So I do NAD plus injections subcutaneous on Tuesday, Friday.
I do glutathione intramuscular twice a week, as mentioned.
I do vitamin B12 once a week, intramuscular.
And then I take a lot of stuff for brain health.
So I take something called cerebralizin.
I do that quarterly.
I cycle that with cortexin and pinealon and epitalon and a slang and smacks nasal spray and dihexa.
And I do it over the course of a year.
So I cycle them and then wash them out and cycle them and then wash them out.
And the funny thing is I couldn't begin to tell you what actually helps because I'm on so much.
I'm going to say the line.
You said a lot of words that I have no idea what they are.
I know, I know.
I am very shocked and impressed because I A could not remember everything I take.
It's not relatable at all.
And I've never seen it.
No, but you know what, though?
There's a lot of people out there who would be fascinating to know what you are taking.
And maybe they're taking a few things and maybe they switch it because they just heard you say that.
You know what I'm supposed to say though?
Here's what I'm supposed to say.
And I mean it.
Focus on the big rocks.
Get your sleep.
Don't overeat.
Use common sense with your food choices.
Even if you're doing all those things and you want to level up, I think there's a good space for what you're taking and informing other people that that's what you feel is safe and good.
Because I think a lot of people will take that and say.
Safe and good is a strong word.
The vitamins, yes, of course.
Talk to your doctor.
The supplements short.
Peptides, safe and good, it's a very, it's the Wild West.
That's the problem.
And it is for a lot of the obvious reasons.
We don't have the data that we should.
A lot of it's observational.
A lot of it's animal studies.
This is a conversation for you to have with your doctor and where you get peptides is really important because right now the FDA is not legalizing these for compound pharmacies to make.
So when you buy them, it's going to say, you know, for research only, not for human use.
But then, of course, there's people like me that like, that know what that really means and know how to reconstitute the peptides and know how to dose them.
And it's, could I grow a third nipple?
Yes.
So this is, I, you know, very new stuff.
Talk to your doctor.
And one of the things that they say all the time is the people who get the best health care.
I'm sorry, the worst health care are the people that have the least access and the most access.
You see Brian Johnson.
It's like, I've drained all my blood and I added it in my genome off the coast of Nicaragua.
The crazy shit.
You know, and I just wait to see.
See what experimental scope.
It's like, is he alive?
Oh my God, he made it.
Okay, great.
So on every episode, we've played, Would You Rather?
Okay.
Would you rather lift weights that scream motivational quotes at you or run on a treadmill that insults you when you slow down?
Treadmill.
Would you rather be the token conservative on a CNN panel every night for a month or compete in the U.S. Open against Serena Williams?
The first one, but I don't think they'll have me back.
I mean, what more damage can they do at this point?
Would you rather eat nachos made out of seaweed or cupcakes made out of cauliflower?
Nachos made out of seaweed.
Well, that at least sounds like it could be edible.
The second one just sounds like torture.
I feel like it could make a cauliflower cupcake and just taste like a cauliflower.
Yucko.
Yeah.
Would you rather be stuck in a spin class with a horrible instructor who's super cheerful?
Or in a yoga retreat with reality TV stars?
Spin glass.
Would you rather have a six-pack where you have to watch what you eat or eat whatever you want and have a big ass?
Oh, I never had a big ass.
So I get to eat what I want and have a big ass?
Well, that's the whole name of the game, right?
Like abs are made in the kitchen, but like the glutes are made from like all the trash you eat, right?
That's like what they're saying.
See, I don't get like a big ass.
That's what they tell me.
Like a juicy booty.
I don't get that.
I just get like flab everywhere.
If it's going to my ass, that would be amazing, actually.
You can't spot reduce or spot gain, but if you've created this magic world that I can eat all this crap and it just makes my ass grow, that sounds like incredible.
I wanted to go this way, though.
Like I don't want it to grow towards the ground.
Is there like a levitating component to this giant ass?
Because I'm sorry.
I think it's like those glute bridges.
Hell yeah.
I like it.
What's your number one pump-up workout song?
Debunking Spot Reduction00:11:29
Oh my gosh.
I change it all the time.
This is so cheesy.
I want to give you something cool and try to pretend like I'm better than I am.
I don't know, some random metallic.
I have no idea.
The truth of the matter is just like old EDM, like rhythm is a dance.
like circa 2011 like eric pride's gonna if every day goes i'm like jumping my rope yeah like i can keep going tragic tragic EDM, Ibiza, circa 2011.
What's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
Coffee.
I know you're like, oh, get your sunlight.
Such grass.
Get the sunlight in your eyes and ground yourself.
No, no, no, no.
Although now at the moment, we have this little rescue kitten.
So this little creature is still bottle feeding.
So I become covered in scrapes all over my entire body from this thing.
So first thing I do is bottle feed this wild cat.
And then now I have coffee.
Are you a planner or you go with the flow?
No, going with the flow.
No.
Plan.
Planning.
Not having a plan is planning to fail.
My wife is a go-with the flow and it makes me insane.
Those people find each other.
What is that?
Those people find it.
Like the thermostat people.
Yeah.
You know, the ones that like the room cold and the ones that like the room alley.
It could be a fucking Arctic tundra in there.
And I'm like, I'm developing hypothermia and my wife is like pushing the down button on the thermostat.
And the no planning.
She's like, I don't know.
I just don't want to commit to that.
I'm like, well, you're not going to get a reservation if you don't make a phone call and make a plan.
It drives me insane.
And then when she decides she wants to go somewhere, they don't have a reservation.
And I'm like, I told you they weren't going to have a reservation.
Should have called when I told you.
On Wednesday.
Drives me crazy.
I understand it.
Yeah, reservation culture is real.
What is that?
Just pick up the phone.
You got to wait like 30 days in advance than refresh on some website.
Gosh, it drives me insane.
You have to have a plan.
What's the last thing you were influenced to buy?
Oh, God.
Hold on.
It would definitely probably be some, like, the pep diet, something like that.
I'm not highly susceptible to this shit though.
Do you operate your own Instagram, TikTok, or do you not, what do you have?
X account.
I don't love social media.
And I hate to say that because it's like, of course you would want someone to follow you on Instagram, but the reality is I don't, I'm not that generation.
I don't love it.
I don't even use it really.
And what's unfortunate is people message me on there.
And then they don't see it.
And like a month later, I'm like, oh, God.
Sorry, Miss.
No.
I don't relate to it.
So I wish I, I really, it's just not, I don't get it, dude.
It just, this is my family and this is my, this, and this is my vacation.
This is what I'm eating.
And I don't, it's just not how I grew up.
It's weird.
I don't relate to it.
I wish I did.
I like X.
I think that's fun.
That's a really underrated form of cardio with sparring on there.
I enjoy that a ton.
Underrated form of cardio.
Yeah, like sparring with people on there is such a good time.
This one guy's like, sounds like you're quoting Chad GPT.
And I was like, Thomas Sowell.
Like, people are so dumb.
It's staggering.
And I do enjoy exposing that in this sort of witty back and forth.
But outside of that, like, I just don't, I don't really relate to it.
The occasional cat meme.
Gets you.
I don't know.
I just don't, I don't follow it.
It's not my generation.
What's your biggest pet peeve?
People like don't make a plan.
God.
Who does that?
There's no groceries in my house.
You can't give it, like, can't get tickets to anything.
You're sitting in the worst possible seats.
Like, it just, it just makes me insane.
I get that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, dead or alive.
Who's sitting at the table?
Okay, mom.
What are you eating?
And what are you eating?
Oh, Mayajlu, Einstein.
The third one, you know, is always tough for me.
It's always rude.
Those are my two sort of regulars, but it depends on the mood I'm in.
So now I would have to say Ozzy.
I'd like to see Ozzy again.
That bummed me out.
That was very sad, even though he did have a huge, incredible life.
I also think that would be so interesting to watch talk to Ozzy Osborne.
What are we eating?
Oh my God, whatever we want.
If I get to have those three guests, I'm sure that the calories don't count at this dinner, right?
No.
So for sure, french fries.
For sure, red wine.
For sure, peanut butter.
I love peanut butter.
Peanut butter, red wine.
Hot sauce is important.
As I mentioned, french fries, some sort of like ice cream situation.
And I think that's all we need.
What's your guilty pleasure food?
Don't eat a ton of that.
So a ton of anything that's like not considered great for you, but I will have an occasional drink.
And so that would be it.
So when you go out to dinner and they offer you dessert, you say no.
No, I never touch it.
Really?
Do not eat it.
There's nothing that ever looks like man.
Never touch it.
Never.
I stopped years ago.
And what does your wife do?
She's like just or just this bitch.
And my ex is also this big.
Does she eat it though?
She can eat whatever she wants.
So you sit there and she'll eat it and you're like staring at them?
You get past it.
It's really weird.
How many years?
Okay, so.
How many years did it take you?
Mind you, I was an overweight kid.
So when you start to realize that this stuff does have some sort of power over you, that's annoying.
And my ex's mom used to make these cake balls.
And one of my low points is when I ate all the cake balls.
And I think it was my daughter.
I was like, mom, where's grandma's cake balls?
And I'm like, I was just, I don't know how.
I'm like, honey, sure, grandma.
I don't think grandma brought cake balls this time.
She's like, she did.
Hang on.
That's when I was like, all right, you know what?
I'm going to give this stuff up for a month.
And then after I did it for a month, it's like, how far can I go?
And now I think I'm on like seven years.
But what if there was like an organic like oat flour with cacao and like a stevia or like something that's like a healthier version of it?
Do you still say no?
It's not necessarily like the oat flour or the cacao.
It's this concept of some sort of treat that I resist now just because it's been so long.
I don't want to give up my sobriety, if you will.
I would tell any normal person though, we're getting into your calories.
You know, follow the 80-20 rule, make 20% of your calories, stuff that you like, foods that you enjoy, and 80%.
So you subscribe to 80-20?
I am the total middle-of-the-road normie in my advice.
It's the big rocks.
It's the get-to-sleep.
It's the drink your water.
It's the go-for-walk.
All those things are going to make a big difference.
When you look at me, I personally am a bit of a weirdo.
So whether these suite of peptides gives me a third nipple or I lift to 200 remains to be seen.
This is just a gamble that I'm having fun with on my own, but it's not advice I would, you know, I would give people.
Okay, last one.
What's the craziest advice someone's given you when it comes to health?
Oh my God, there's so much bad advice out there.
What's the craziest one?
Someone's come up to you and they're like, but Jillian, you only have to know.
Yeah.
I mean, okay.
Colonics are exceptionally bad advice.
Who came up with that, by the way?
Stick a fire hose up your butt.
Turn it on.
Sure about that?
Like, who discovered that, by the way?
You know what we need to do?
You can perforate your bowel.
You completely disrupt the microbiome down there.
Like, who in the world was like, and a coffee enema?
Like, somebody squared that fucker.
It's like, let's take an enema.
Push the up button on that.
No pun intended.
Like, that just, to me, was always a big, a big, a hard no.
And again, like, no pun intended on that.
It was just bad advice.
Like, blow fluid up your rear end as high as you can.
Terrible advice.
I think also some of the, honestly, if I, some of this stuff is just super questionable.
I'm not on the methylene blue team.
Does not make sense to me for healthy people.
Could be wrong.
Remains to be seen.
But you know, we went through this with metformin and you had all of these really awesome doctors who I respect immensely that were taking metformin for longevity.
And I remember thinking, like, this does not make sense.
Why are we giving healthy people who are healthy metabolically metformin?
And the whole concept or pretense was that it's anti-aging.
And long story short, the data didn't bear out.
And so then all those doctors got off of it.
Now, it doesn't mean they're not amazing doctors.
It means they do what I do and they're trying it out.
You know, they're putting themselves out there.
They're making themselves their own study, so to speak.
But with things like that, even though I did just talk all about these peptides, they've been using these things in Russia for like three decades for stroke victims and so on and so forth.
Like there is, it's not completely off-piece to do that.
But some of this is very fast follower.
And what I mean is, if you guys want to drink fish tank cleaner, go for it.
I'll let me see how that pans out for you.
I just, some of this shit, dude, just does not, from a common sense perspective, you're drinking fish tank cleaner and you're healthy.
Like I get it if you're metabolically unhealthy.
If you're not, and to give you an idea of what I mean, and here's an extreme example.
Chemo's bad, right?
Can we, okay, chemo, it's going to kill everything in your body.
Now, if you have stage four cancer, you're going to do chemo.
Everything is going to be a cost-benefit analysis.
So my question with methyl and blue is like, if you're metabolically unhealthy and we're borrowing this, you know, like it's a whole chemistry lesson when you watch people break it down.
But the bottom line is if you're metabolically unhealthy, they can make a decent case for it.
But if you're healthy, then it comes back to my kind of chemo, no cancer conversation.
Like you're drinking fish tank.
I just can't, I don't know.
I'm not there.
And there are a lot of people that will kill me over this and they all take it.
I just, I'm not there on it.
So we'll close on this one.
And thank you so much for joining, but we will close on this.
If you would have known that 20 years later, from when you started Biggest Loser to, is it 20 years?
15?
20.
Okay, 20.
I was rounding.
That you'd be here in Washington, D.C., you know, with going to the White House where President Trump is there and this is the turn your career has taken.
Would you have believed it?
I think I would have.
Launching with Purpose00:02:30
And the reason is because I worked to make this happen.
And I remember when I got the opportunity on Biggest Loser, I actually thought that I was going to brand my gym.
I owned a sports medicine facility and that's when things like curves were just starting and they were franchising these models.
So I saw myself doing something of that nature.
And then I ended up becoming the brand.
But nevertheless, when I looked at people who I respected and admired that did what they loved and built a business out of it, whether it was Cesar Milan, who's a guy that really loves dogs, or this is so unfortunate.
I just found out she was a Nazi.
Coco Chanel.
It's like an orphaned seamstress who loved fashion.
Then I'm like, now that she's a Nazi, I must come up with a new example.
But my point is simply, if you do what you love, this guy really, Martha Stewart ran a catering company out of her basement.
That's a better one for you.
So if somebody said, I'm going to be going to the White House or I'm going to be doing this or I'm going to be doing that.
What do you do?
Oh, I'm a seamstress.
Oh, I'm a dog trainer.
Oh, I'm a caterer.
Oh, I'm a fitness expert.
I'd be the first one to say, like, I can see it.
Because when you do what you love, the universe conspires on your behalf, right?
It's when you do the things you think you should that it all falls to shit.
That's very motivational, I think, for a lot of women who are watching it and men.
I think it's a challenge to want to put yourself out there and follow your dream because if you fall flat on your face, then either a lot of people are watching or maybe that's just your friends and your family.
But it's something where it's like, get back up and keep trying.
Because to your point, if you do what you love, success is a matter of attrition as well.
You got to learn from those mistakes.
And of course, educate yourself as best you can.
You want to mitigate it.
You don't just jump out of a plane without learning how to pack a shoot, for God's sake, or figuring out what's the ideal altitude or what is topographically, is that even a word, the best place to go jumping out of a plane, not into a forest, clearly, or an open ocean.
But the point is that if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough and you have to adopt that mentality.
And once you do, as mentioned, it's all a matter of attrition.
Wait them all out.
Or launch a podcast.
Or launch a podcast.
And with that, thank you for watching this episode of the Katie Miller podcast.
We're available every Monday at 6 p.m. where you get your podcast.
Thank you so much for watching this episode with Jillian Michaels.