TOUGH LOVE With the TV volume turned down, the woman in tank top and sweatpants seems diminutive. She’s in a gym, hands on hips. You can sense her intensity, talking a mile a minute at the grossly overweight man struggling on the treadmill next to her. Turn up the sound, and she grows larger than life. “Keep moving! Don’t you dare stop now! Last chance workout!” she shouts at the man as he gasps for breath, his sweat-streamed face contorted with pain. Meet Jillian Michaels, co-star trainer on NBC’s The Biggest Loser, best-selling author, and star of fi tness DVDs and interactive video games. Michaels is the face of 21st-century fi tness. She’s tough. She tells it like it is. She gets results. And here’s the kicker: She really cares. “I don’t do things for the sake of television, for the sake of hype,” says Michaels, 36. “I do them because I have a greater meaning behind my agenda, and that is to improve the lives of my contestants. So what might look mean or what might look crazy or what might look scandalous all has a deeper purpose for the greater good of my contestant.” In her fi rst book, Winning by Losing: Drop the Weight, Change Your Life, Michaels outlines her basic approach: “self,” “science” and “sweat.” And it’s the former that separates Michaels from her predecessors and equips her to stare down the nation’s mounting obesity epidemic: She views self-destructive behaviors like overeating as symptoms of underlying esteem issues. By confronting and dealing with that emotional baggage, Michaels helps contestants break out of their ruts and build happier, healthier lives. Anyone who’s seen The Biggest Loser knows that tears are common—and indicators of powerful change. 46 SUCCESS MAY 2010 © 2010 Success Media All rights reserved Jillian Michaels_Cover Feature_1005.indd 46 3/3/10 6:58:22 PM Personal trainer Jillian Michaels is kicking butt, taking names and changing the lives of overweight Americans— one by one. by Paulineuline EstremEstrem ©Joseph Puhy SUCCESS MAY 2010 47 © 2010 Success Media All rights reserved Jillian Michaels_Cover Feature_1005.indd 47 3/3/10 6:58:25 PM Walking Her Talk These success stories, widely broadcast through her eight seasons on The Biggest Loser, have served as a platform for Michaels to launch her one-woman wellness brand. Her books include the best-selling Master Your Metabolism and two books this spring, The Master Your Metabolism Cookbook and The Master Your Metabolism Calorie Counter. Her DVDs include the hits 30-Day Shred and No More Trouble Zones. The fact that Michaels stars in not one but two of the latest interactive fi tness video games (“Jillian Michaels’ Fitness Ultimatum 2010” and “The Biggest Loser”) is a testament to the trainer’s mainstream appeal. Up next, as the ninth season of The Biggest Loser draws to a close, Michaels will be debuting her own spinoff program, Losing It with Jillian, in early summer. WMany of these projects have been created through Empowered Media LLC, the wellness company Michaels formed in 2008 with business partner and CEO Giancarlo Chersich. Its motto is simple: “Inspired by Jillian, empowered by YOU!” And Michaels doesn’t take for granted the intimate role of coach, mentor, confi dante and therapist that contestants, clients and fans invite her to occupy in their lives. “I’m very lucky to be in this position,” she says. “And I try to be as responsible as possible with the power and the infl uence that it does provide.” Perhaps one of the strongest tools in Michaels’ motivational arsenal is the fact that she also walked that long, hard road herself. As a teenager, Michaels was about 50 pounds over- weight. Dealing with the psychological and emotional ramifi cations of her parents’ divorce, she masked her anger, overeating in private and hanging with the wrong crowd. Michaels’ mother suggested she try martial arts to channel her simmering internal energy into some- thing positive. “It became so much more than just that physical outlet for frustration,” Michaels recalls. “It became a means to rebuild my self-image and, therefore, my life.” But she didn’t embrace the ancient art completely at fi rst. She remembers one day when her instructor chided her for eating a bag of chips—and questioned her commitment to the practice and to her overall wellness. Fighting out of the Corner “He said, ‘Either you get with the program and invest in yourself as much as I’m investing in you, or this is a waste of my time.’ So he sort of gave me that rock-bottom moment, hit with the ultimatum…. I took a little time to think and process this, and I came back into my martial arts studio fully committed. And that’s really when I developed my understanding of fi tness and health as the platform the rest of your life sits on. That when you’re strong physically, Fyou’re strong in every factor of your life.” Michaels still draws upon experiences from those early days when she’s working with contes- “I don’t allow people to be tants and clients today. One technique she uses, stemming from an experience with an instructor victims, because if they’re when she was around 13, provides insight into her tough approach. She explains that while she victims, they’re not in control and her instructor were sparring, he gave her a of their own destiny.” sharp kick to the stomach that knocked the wind out of her. “And you think automatically that he’s gonna stop, and then you’d be able to recover, and you can be dramatic, and act like the victim,” she remembers. “And he was like, ‘Get up. If you don’t get up and fi ght out of that corner, I’m gonna keep kicking you.’ And he did. He was pounding on me. And so I realized that if I behave like a victim, life was going to treat me like a victim—and I was going to create that reality.” Caroline Greyshock/Corbis Outline 48 SUCCESS MAY 2010 © 2010 Success Media All rights reserved Jillian Michaels_Cover Feature_1005.indd 48 3/5/10 10:58:21 AM Next Steps SUCCESS CD Jillian Michaels takes her fi tness philosophies Listen to Darren Hardy’s to the next level: personal development. interview with Jillian Michaels Since making her debut as the no-excuses fi tness trainer in The Biggest Loser, Jillian Michaels has churned out numerous books and DVDs focused on fi tness and wellness. Next year, she’ll expand her message with her fi rst personal-development book. Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life represents a natural progression from her fi tness and wellness philosophies, she says. “When you take control of your physical health, it transcends. When you’re feeling strong physically, it transcends into your personal and your professional life. It transcends into every aspect of your life. “And that’s why when you take control of yourself, ultimately you can determine the outcome of any situation in your favor, because you’ll never control the other person. You’ll never control the outside world. But when you control your reactions and emotions, then you control your destiny—and that is the key to being happy and being healthy in every facet of your reality.” Fighting the pain and struggling to breathe, the young Michaels did, indeed, fi ght her way out of that corner—and she emerged with a new lease on life. “So one of the things that I do with the people I work with is I make them fi ght their way out of the corner,” she says. “I don’t allow them to be victims, because if they’re victims, they’re not in control of their own destiny.” Seeing Doorways to Opportunity At 17, Michaels became a trainer, but she shifted gears about fi ve years later to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. She worked her way up from jobs in the mailroom and as an assistant in hope of becoming a motion picture packaging agent. Then, she was fi red. “And I was like, ‘This is not in the plans,’ ” she says. SMichaels knew she could return to fi tness training, but she resisted at fi rst. “I thought of training as going backward in the world. But I opened myself up to the opportunities that came my way, and I pursued them with passion and intensity. And when you do that and you stay open, then you allow those opportunities to manifest in the ways that they’re meant to.” She encourages others to embrace those scary, uncertain moments that could provide doorways to new opportunities. You’re less likely to see those possibilities, she says, “when you cling to the past or you hold on too tightly to the idea of what you think life should be or what you think you must have. The key is to take that action and put that energy in the world and then stay open. It’s not about surrendering. It’s not about quitting. It’s about staying open. It’s about planting those seeds and seeing what grows, how it crops up and where.” As it turns out, the seeds Michaels had planted bore fruit when she was asked to coach the red team on the debut season of The Biggest Loser in 2004. She helped the fi nal winner, Ryan, drop 122 pounds— nearly 37 percent of his body weight—in nine weeks.