Jillian Michaels Seeks to ‘Get the Poison out of Our Food’ to Address Obesity, Chronic Disease

Fitness expert and certified nutritionist Jillian Michaels is speaking out against the harmful chemicals found in food and the detrimental impact it has on the overall health of Americans.
“It is very difficult to try to spend all of your time avoiding heavy metals, microplastics, food colorings, glyphosate. I mean it’s absurd,” she said. “We can take all the agency in the world, but until there is a systemic change, it’s going to be virtually impossible for Americans to get healthier. We need help.”
“The hope is that we would have a change with regard to our food system, and people’s habits around food, and empower them to start making some simple changes,” she said, noting the elimination of soda as an example.
Michaels followed with the financial and physical effects of weight-loss drugs: “They cost hundreds if not thousands a month, they plateau, they come with a host of other very serious side effects.”
“So unless you’re very ill and very advanced with things like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, chronic kidney disease, I don’t think you really want to be looking at stomach paralysis, pancreatitis, the potential for thyroid cancer–albeit rare–nausea, vomiting, intestinal blockage,” she said.
“The statistics are horrifying,” she said. “It’s not a question anymore. It is not nuanced. It’s simply right or wrong, good against evil. And the reality is, I can sit here, and I can tell everybody, ‘Hey, guys … eat less and move more and use common sense with your food choices, but the reality is that you can be thin and still get cancer and still get type 2 diabetes.’”
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve watched my friends jabbing themselves every day with fertility drugs, praying for a pregnancy,” she said. “My friends getting up at the crack of dawn to get radiated where the lump was found in their breast. My friends swallowing fistfuls of pills to manage their debilitating anxiety and depression.”
During the testimony, Michaels revealed her struggles with facing clinical obesity as a child. Despite suggestions to go on medication, “The Biggest Loser” star joined a martial arts studio, where she was “educated, insulated, and nourished” before dedicating her life to “waking up the others” throughout her fitness career.
“While I have been fortunate enough to pull many back from the edge, over the course of my 30-year career, I have lost just as many, if not more, than I have saved,” she said. “I have watched them slip through my fingers.”
Michaels got her big break when she was cast as a fitness trainer on the NBC reality television show, “The Biggest Loser.” In the series, Michaels coaches overweight and obese contestants who compete to lose the highest weight percentage relative to their starting weight. She appeared for multiple seasons throughout the show’s airing, her final being season 15, which concluded in February 2014.