The Real Reason Americans Are So Sick, with Jillian Michaels

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Real Reason Americans Are So Sick"

Conversations with Coleman
Guest: Jillian Michaels
Date: July 27, 2026
Host: Coleman Hughes (The Free Press)

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Episode Overview

Coleman Hughes welcomes fitness expert, media personality, and author Jillian Michaels for a candid and multi-layered conversation traversing topics from health, politics, and culture to personal stories of crime and the nuances of America’s obesity crisis. The discussion interrogates the rise of "wokeness" in health, issues in American politics, Jillian’s personal journey—including her exit from California—and a critical look at public health trends from body positivity to Ozempic. The episode carefully balances scientific nuance with personal storytelling and cultural critique.

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Jillian Michaels' Background, Family, and Upbringing

[02:31–06:27]

• Jillian shares her diverse heritage: Lebanese, Syrian, Italian, British, and Ashkenazi Jewish.
• Her upbringing was secular and colorblind: “My parents were liberal in the best possible ways... live and let live, Love is love, respect everybody's religion, don't differentiate between race.”
• Only later in life, via genetic testing, did she learn of her Jewish roots. Her Russian Jewish grandmother had concealed her heritage for safety, telling Jillian’s mother to “never tell anybody that you're Jewish.”
• Quote (Jillian, 05:21): “It was kind of a shock for me... My grandmother was actually a Russian Jew who ran down through Austria, was hiding in the UK, came over to the States, and then told my mom and my aunt, don't ever tell anybody that you're Jewish.”

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From Fitness to Culture Wars: Jillian’s Political Awakening

[06:48–13:45]

• Both host and guest share the way cultural and political shifts pulled them toward advocacy and commentary.
• For Jillian, the pivotal moment was “woke ideology” invading the fitness and health world, particularly body positivity taken to a denial of medical realities: “We could no longer discuss the fact that having too much body fat was dangerously unhealthy… only for them to follow it up with ‘You can be healthy at any size.’ And I started to think, all right, the world is inverting. This is absurd.” (Jillian, 08:58)
• Jillian became outspoken against puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors: “A child can't even comprehend. This could sterilize you for life. You'll have sexual dysfunction for life.” (09:45)
• She highlights the cost of voicing dissent, facing cancellations and demonization, but her expertise and LGBTQ identity gave her some authority in these discussions.

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Leaving California: Personal Safety and the State of Governance

[13:45–23:53]

• Jillian describes her move from California to Florida, now residing in Wyoming, citing deteriorating governance, rising crime, and personal victimization.
• Stories of violence and dysfunction, notably a bizarre burglary where law enforcement initially believed the perpetrator’s wild story over her own: “This is where I'm like, I don't know how racist the cops in Los Angeles are, because they legitimately believed him... The guy just got out of jail, so how does he know me? What's my phone number? What's the cont? It was crazy.” (22:07)
• She details policy changes—like delayed vote certification and legal changes enabling fraud and dysfunction—that compelled her to leave.
• Quote (Jillian, 16:08): “That's how absurd and extreme it had to get for me to leave home... I watched Gavin Newsom quite literally destroy home.”

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Colorblindness, Identity Politics, and Race in America

[23:58–35:32]

• A nuanced discussion on progress and race relations. Both acknowledge persistent but dramatically reduced racism: “America is probably one of the least racist countries on earth...If you look at studies … America does better on that score than Europe, does better than most of the world.” (Coleman, 23:58)
• Jillian recounts her CNN debate with Abby Phillip: She criticized Smithsonian exhibits for focusing on “white oppression of the world” while omitting essential abolitionist history and nuance about slavery’s global nature.
• She argues constant demonization of whites breeds backlash among young white men: “When you constantly demonize these young white kids, they become tribal, they become racist, and they vomit up this whole concept of, you're toxic, you're racist, you're this, you're that. And they start to lean into it…” (Jillian, 28:24)
• Jillian wants her biracial kids to see everyone as individuals, not reduce themselves to “victims” by race.
• Business perspective: Inclusion and broad appeal are pragmatic, not just moral: “As a businesswoman… I want everybody to buy my fitness videos.” (Jillian, 32:55)

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The Challenge of Historical Honesty on Slavery

[35:32–44:41]

• The hosts dissect why global context is omitted in American slavery conversations: “One of the deepest threats to this country in the long run is, frankly, racial and ethnic strife... If we are raising... generation after generation on the history that one group of people is responsible for pretty much all the sins in the world... that's a recipe for never ending racial strife.” (Coleman, 41:29)
• Both discuss Henry Louis Gates’ 2010 op-ed highlighting African complicity in the slave trade and the backlash it received.
• Jillian notes parallels between the comfort of victimhood in both race and health, and why she sees empowerment as essential: “If you can't appreciate that you chose to eat this or...whatever... it's also the same narrative of, well, society has victimized me...” (Jillian, 42:33)

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Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) and the Mixed Legacy of RFK Jr.

[44:41–52:51]

• Jillian criticizes overreliance on influencers: “Look for the ones that have an MD, a PhD, or an RD after their name… take the Maha. Influencers with a grain of salt.” (45:18)
• She enumerates successes (improvements in dietary guidelines influencing SNAP benefits and school food) and policy failures (e.g., Monsanto immunity, flavored vape legalization).
• Perspective on RFK Jr.: While critical of some of his stances and the movement’s excesses, she believes comparatively they are ahead of prior administrations: “…while we have a lot to be frustrated about… comparatively speaking, we're way better off…” (Jillian, 49:34)
• Coleman values MAHA’s anti-obesity frankness and RFK Jr.'s charisma, but is bothered by his handling of vaccine science: “a lot of what he said and wrote could verge on the sloppy and hyperbolic...”

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Vaccines, Nuance, and Public Distrust

[52:51–58:46]

• In-depth debate on vaccines. Jillian, not an "anti-vaxxer,” supports skepticism and parent choice, especially in rare or non-critical vaccines—emphasizing the need for nuance and trusted expertise.
• Critiques the historical corruption of pharmaceutical companies: “They are literally criminal cartels. It's not hyperbole. They've been convicted of criminal crimes…hundreds of millions of dollars.” (Jillian, 55:44)
• Advocates for informed case-by-case decisions, advising listeners to seek comprehensive information, pointing to Dr. Joel Warsh’s book Worth a Shot as a resource: “Just breaks down, what data is there? What data actually isn’t what we know, what we don’t know.” (Jillian, 57:05)
• Coleman raises the challenge of the "dumbest version" of vaccine skepticism influencing people unable or unwilling to do the nuanced research.

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Obesity, Ozempic, and the Food System

[60:38–69:13]

• Jillian explains why Ozempic and similar GLP-1 drugs are not pure wonder solutions, highlighting serious, underappreciated side effects: “It acts on the literal pleasure center of your brain...It can also result in a malaise, a depression, a suicidal ideation…”
• Cost-benefit calculation: For the seriously unhealthy, it may be worth it—under strict medical supervision and at lower, carefully compounded doses.
• Vanity use is condemned: “People that take this to lose vanity pounds are insane. It is a catastrophically bad idea.” (Jillian, 66:38)
• Warns that exogenous hormones (like GLP-1 agonists) can shut down the body’s endogenous production, as with testosterone.
• Advises working with qualified professionals, avoiding “gray market” drugs.

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Metabolism, Aging, and Fitness Myths

[70:16–73:57]

• Mythbusting: Aging does not automatically equate to a dramatically slower metabolism but is linked to muscle loss, hormone decline, reduced activity, and other factors.
• Prevention is key: Regular exercise, nutrition, and (when needed) hormone replacement therapy can counteract this drift.
• Quote (Jillian, 72:08): “If you're maintaining your health along the way, you're exercising...maintaining your muscle mass...when the time comes, definitely explore hormone replacement therapy with your medical professional.”

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• “Surely we're going to call these things out. But. But when you did so, you were swiftly canceled and demonized, and that was deeply alarming for me.” (Jillian, 08:58)
• On progressive excesses and media: “The more you try to stop it, the more they would call you racist, transphobe, maga, whatever that means, to be honest.” (Jillian, 12:09)
• “America is probably one of the least racist countries on earth…if you look at studies … America does better on that score than Europe.” (Coleman, 23:58)
• “You cannot lay all of the evils of humanity at the feet of just one race.” (Jillian, 27:37)
• “Victimhood can be comforting because you don’t have to take accountability for where things went wrong.” (Jillian, 42:33)
• “If you’re doing this to lose weight for vanity purposes, you’re going to lose your hair and you’re going to age ten years.” (Jillian, 69:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Family Background & Heritage — [02:31–06:27]
• Political Awakening: Wokeness in Health — [08:58–13:45]
• Leaving California: Governance & Crime — [16:04–23:53]
• Debate on Race, Slavery, Identity Politics — [23:58–35:32]
• Historical Ignorance & Global Slavery Discussion — [35:32–44:41]
• RFK Jr., MAHA Movement, and Health Policy — [44:41–52:51]
• Vaccines: Risks, Science & Policy — [52:51–58:46]
• Ozempic & Obesity Crisis — [60:38–69:13]
• Metabolism, Aging, Fitness Myths — [70:16–73:57]

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Tone & Style

The episode mixes passionate critique with scientific literacy and personal storytelling, balancing deep skepticism (about institutions, fads, and political narratives) with practical optimism and insistence on individual empowerment. Both host and guest are unafraid of contentious topics, yet their rapport keeps the discussion substantive and respectful.

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For New Listeners

If you want a sharp, highly opinionated, and well-informed conversation linking health, social issues, media narratives, and real-world policy, this episode delivers—providing both practical advice (on fitness, parenting, health choices) and a frank cultural diagnosis. The blending of personal experience, medical expertise, and political critique defines both Jillian Michaels’ and Coleman Hughes’ approaches, making this a thought-provoking entry-point into the intersection of wellness and American public discourse.

Transcript

[Coleman Hughes]

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Jillian Michaels. Jillian is a fitness expert, author and TV personality best known for her work as a trainer on NBC's the Biggest Loser. She's written eight New York Times bestselling books and created an extremely popular fitness app. She also hosts the podcast Keeping It Real where she discusses health, wellness and politics. In this episode, we talk about how wokeness intruded on Gillian's life as a fitness instructor and and how that caused her to take a more general interest in politics and culture war issues. We talk about how Gillian left California, including the bizarre story of how her house was burglarized. We talk about Gillian's explosive slavery debate on CNN with Abby Phillips. We talk about the pros and cons of the so called Maha movement and in particular the mixed legacy of RFK Jr. We talk about America's ongoing obesity crisis as well as the pros and cons of using ozempic and other GLP1s. Jillian had a lot of wisdom to share on that issue that I hadn't previously heard. And finally, we talk about whether it's true or a myth that your metabolism slows down as you age. So without further ado, Jillian Michaels,

[Jillian Michaels]

I

[Coleman Hughes]

want to tell you about a podcast I think you're going to appreciate. It's called Unpacking Israeli History. If you follow the news about Israel, you're just getting headlines. But headlines are just a tiny slice of a long, complicated and genuinely fascinating story. One of the things I care about on this show is engaging seriously with complexity rather than flattening it. That's exactly what host Dr. Noam Weissman does on Unpacking Israeli History. He dives deep into the events, the people, and the moments that shaped Israel past and presented with genuine empathy and a willingness to explore multiple perspectives. And when he brings in guests like philosopher Micah Goodman or journalist Haviv Ratigor, they add real depth to the conversation. It's deeply researched storytelling for people who want to understand Israel rather than just confirm what they already think. In today's climate, that's rare and it matters. Find Unpacking Israeli History on your favorite podcast app or YouTube and subscribe today. Okay, Jillian Michaels, thanks so much for coming on the show.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, thanks for having me. I'm really excited. I just think you are brilliant and fantastic.

[Coleman Hughes]

Oh, thank you so much. I'm excited to dive into some of our topics of mutual concern. But before I do that, I have some questions just about your background. I've heard you describe yourself as Half Jewish and half Arabic. Was there some kind of Romeo and Juliet, west side Story esque thing going on with your parents, or what was going on there?

[Jillian Michaels]

It sure seems like it. What's kind of interesting is that I'm from a generation where you really don't know that much even about your grandparents. You know, the languages that the great grandparents used to speak were lost along the way. They weren't passed on. Family traditions kind of melted away as everybody became American. Nobody really educated me on any of this. I knew that my dad's parents were Lebanese and Syrian. I knew that my mom's father was Italian, and I thought that her mom was British. And she met my maternal grandfather during World War II in the UK. He was a soldier fighting for America. They got married, she was a war bride. She came over here. And I was raised really without any sort of religion. My parents were liberal in the best possible ways, in my opinion. You know, that classic liberal of live and let live, Love is love, you know, respect everybody's religion, don't differentiate between race. All of those things is how I was essentially raised. And of course, I grew up with a lot of Jewish kids because I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in California. Long story short, they're all having bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. And all I really know of at Coleman is it seems like a great party and everybody's getting cash. This is what a 13 year old knows of Jewish tradition. And I remember asking my parents, like, when's my party? Well, you're not, you know, you're not getting a party. You're not Jewish. So I grew up thinking, oh, okay, I'm not Jewish, whatever that means. Cut to, I'm in my 30s and do a genetics test only to find out that I'm 33% Ashkenazi Jew. And of course, go to my parents and I'm like, all right, who's the Jew? I'm just somebody. Can anybody fill me in on what is this? Like, am I the mailman's kid? And to make a long story short, my grandmother was actually a Russian Jew who ran down through Austria, was hiding in the uk, came over to the States, and then told my mom and my aunt, don't ever tell anybody that you're Jewish. And when I confronted my mom about that, she just sort of was like, yeah, well, honey, you know, we didn't raise you with a religion. I'm like, but it's an ethno religion. I'm ethnically Jewish, am I not? It was kind of a shock for me and I think my parents had felt like to raise me with religion and differing cultures, vastly divergent cultures could become an issue within and amongst both sides of the family. So they just didn't. And I didn't know any better and I didn't appreciate how very rare it was. Honestly, Coleman, up until very recently, people would tell me like, oh, there's a verse in the Quran about you being evil. And I used to laugh and think it was hysterical. I've never fact checked that, by the way. But I didn't really appreciate how truly rare and bizarre that mating, if you will, that pairing was until today.

[Coleman Hughes]

Well, 23andMe has given a lot of people surprises. I have a friend who found out that she was a sperm donor baby and has like 50 half brothers and sisters and found this out like in her 30s and like called her mom and had that conversation.

[Jillian Michaels]

So intense.

[Coleman Hughes]

You know, you and I have something in common, which is that we came to this sort of career of political commentary and podcasting and YouTube via an earlier career that is seemingly very different. For you, it's fitness. For me, it was music. And I think a lot of us who are in that position have one moment where some political issue got under your skin enough for you to venture your opinion in public, and then you notice that a lot of people agree with you and enjoy how you make sense of the world for them, and then you start doing it more and more. And for me, that issue was when I was in college, the level of woke identity politics at Columbia University, where as a black student, I was being, I was not super interested in politics, but I was being told that, that I was a victim of racism akin to my grandparents who grew up in segregation. And this seemed to me totally divorced from reality. And then this was right at the time of Trump's first victory, where I was really shocked by that. I was like every other liberal, clueless. And I thought Hillary had a 90% chance of winning. And I was looking for explanations. And what I got back from my trusted left of center sources at the Atlantic and the New York Times was the theory that there was a sudden random spike in racism that has no conceivable explanation in the same country that elected Barack Hussein Obama twice in a row. And I thought that explanation didn't make much sense. And that became. That was like the beginning of my political awakening. So all that to tee up. What was the moment where you went from, okay, I'm this super successful fitness instructor, but this issue, I think I need to speak out on. And it becomes the basis of a second career, in a way.

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, as the woke ideology began to spread, it started to gobble up things in my wheelhouse. So we could no longer discuss the fact that having too much body fat was dangerously unhealthy and it had to be referred to as beautiful. And I started to say, okay, hold on. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but health is actually quantifiable. And there's a robust amount of data that shows us this is in fact, not healthy, only for them to follow it up with. You can be healthy at any size. And I started to think, all right, the world is inverting. This is absurd. Surely we're going to call these things out. But. But when you did so, you were swiftly canceled and demonized, and that was deeply alarming for me. And listen, I've spent the past 30 years of my career working with different doctors across different categories of health to put out different books for different people. And there was a book that I wrote called mastering your metabolism where I worked with a world class endocrinologist. Now, one would think that putting young children on puberty blockers and cross sex hormones would be a bad idea, simply utilizing your common sense, like, what could go wrong? Could it impact the way their brain develops, the way their bones develop? Like, what could go south here? But having the expertise to truly appreciate what happens to a child as they go through puberty, I felt uniquely qualified to speak upon the dangers of putting these kids through these medical interventions. And listen, if an adult chooses to be trans. Coleman, I'm a classic liberal. I don't care. I really don't. Live your life. I hope you're happy. But it is very different for an adult whose brain is already developed, whose bones are already developed to make these choices. You know, a child can't even comprehend. This could sterilize you for life. You'll have sexual dysfunction for life. So as this movement began to increase in how radical and fringe it got, and that was being condoned by establishment Dems, which we're now seeing again with the rise of the dsa, which is, you know, a separate conversation. But as it began to creep and I felt like, okay, this is in my wheelhouse, and technically I have some form of Teflon shield. I work in health and fitness, so there's an expertise there that gives me authority to speak on this and in this ridiculous acronym that I've never truly understood. Lgbtqia. Spirit animal. I belong to one of those Letters. So don't I get some sort of COVID here to say don't trans the kids. This is nuts. And then it went to everything from looting in the streets and watching the mayor of Seattle call the chop zone that took over her downtown. The summer of love. And everything that I knew and appreciated or thought that the Democratic Party was had just begun to rot from the inside out. And the more you try to stop it, the more they would call you racist, transphobe, maga, whatever that means, to be honest. And it began there and it continues. They're just not moving more to the center at all. And I'll say one final thing, and then I'll shut up. I have a black daughter, which I'm sure you know. And when I start to see these messages in the mainstream media from establishment Dems that all white people have a virus in their brain called racism. And that is a direct quote from Van Jones, who to this day I still love, he just constantly race baits and it breaks my heart. But when you start to see that I don't want my daughter to think all white people are inherently racist. And in any given minute we're gonna turn on her and the world is her enemy. And the only reason that we need police are for incoming Klan attacks, which is something that Van Jones just said. I'm like, the Klan is like a few thousand members now. It's almost extinct. Like, come on, can't we celebrate how far we've come as a country? So raising a white son and a black daughter, it has alarmed me for different reasons than you, but in a similar fashion, it's that and more.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. So I mean, everything you mentioned, from the identity politics to the total inability to distinguish between what adults with gender dysphoria should be able to do versus what kids should be able to choose for themselves. Right? To obviously the ultimate example of ridiculous wokeness, which I don't even think I've really ever talked about because I find it so silly the idea that you can be healthy at any size, which just everyone knows is not true. I mean, I think at least you'd hope everyone knows it, but certainly there are some people who drank that Kool Aid. Although in the age of Ozempic, you don't see so much of that anymore. In fact, you see a lot of those people and celebrities who said that have shown up 40 pounds lighter mysteriously. You're absolutely right. Sort of the revealed preference there shows you what they were just saying and versus what they actually believed. But all of these things you Know, all. All of these minor and major annoyances have plagued the Democratic Party for the past 10 years now. And what you see in some is people leaving blue states and moving to red states. And that's not an opinion, it's just a fact. Year after year after year, for at least the past 10 years, maybe 15, maybe 15 or 20 outflows from California, which is just a beautiful, amazing state, blessed with probably more natural beauty than any other state, better weather, and moving to Texas, you know, the weather in Texas is not nearly as good, especially this time of year. And, you know, moving from New York to Florida and all of this should ring alarm bells, I think, for Democrats about the consequences of their governance and ideals, but I'm afraid it's not. It's become a theme on this podcast that I'm interviewing guests who've, you know, moved out of California and are never moving back. I recently had Caitlin Flanagan on, who explained why she left Los Angeles after 25 years. And I think you've mentioned recently leaving California. Is that right? Can you explain that decision?

[Jillian Michaels]

I actually left in 21.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay.

[Jillian Michaels]

And I moved to Florida. Now I currently live in Wyoming, which I'll explain in just a moment. Not because I didn't love Florida. I did, honestly, just quite simply because it's closer to Los Angeles and I was not able to actually extricate certain members of my family and friends. And very unfortunately, I didn't spend 25 years. I spent about 47 years there. So all of my roots were in LA. That's how absurd and extreme it had to get for me to leave home. And to be truthful, that is another reason that I have become more politically inclined, not as an expert per se, but as a consumer of political content, because I watched Gavin Newsom quite literally destroy home. It did start with Jerry Brown, who was the governor before him, and became a rapid decline into madness. And I'll give you just one example of an issue that we're all currently aware of and watching. In 2014, in California, Coleman, you would vote, and they would certify your vote in 48 hours. So they passed a series of laws, all Democrats, Democrat, everybody. Democrats authored the bill. Democrats passed the bill. Democrat governors signed the bill. A series of bills that have now brought us to a system that cannot certify your vote for 37 days. So it just got so.

[Coleman Hughes]

Sorry, can I interrupt you for two seconds, please? I recently heard Nate Silver, I think, on the all in podcast, compare this to remote regions in either India or Nepal of, like, the Himalayas where they can, nevertheless, even in that circumstance, Certify votes within 24 hours of, like, mountainous, remote regions. Right?

[Jillian Michaels]

Yep. Yeah. So you have to ask, what was the incentive for doing such a thing? And of course, it's like, oh, we just needed to. Everybody needed access to voting. I'm like, what are you talking about? We've been able to do this for decades, and you gotta question the intentions. And of course, they've made things that should be illegal legal, like registering people who are homeless to vote with no identification and no need for a Social Security number. They get a DMV number that tracks back to no federal database. And then they go, well, nothing illegal happened. Well, because you made something that should be illegal legal and then said nothing to see here. And that's the tip of the iceberg. And it was all of the COVID madness as well. I mean, Coleman, we could literally be here for hours. But I knew that Gavin Newsom wasn't reopening the schools, because, by the way, almost every other school in the country had reopened, but not California. It was the last to open. And it's because he was so captured by the teachers unions. That's a fact. At that point, we were far beyond, does this kill children? We already knew that kids were not at risk at that point. And I just started to feel that it was a terrifying police state with riots and looting and chaos that was being condoned. Criminals were being let out of jail. In particular, one guy that robbed my house with a video camera, duct tape, and a knife. Like, just. It wasn't. We'd be here all day. It was so crazy.

[Coleman Hughes]

Double click on that story for me. What happened there?

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah. So kind of amazing. My ex had just had my son, and we had just brought my daughter home from Haiti, and I had left the garage door open for the night nurse because the bell outside was broken. And we lived on Pacific coast highway, and so we're watching a movie, and we were very fortunate to live on the water. So the waves can make a lot of noise. I know this is a luxury. I get it. Like, I'm very blessed. Having said that, you really can't hear much is my point. Right. So all of a sudden, my dogs start growling, but my son is a newborn, and he's asleep in this little cradle thing next to us on the couch. And I'm like, you guys, shut up. Because I didn't want him to wake up the baby. I'm like. And they're like, they're going insane. Unbeknownst to me, There's a guy in my kitchen robbing us. He takes my keys, he steals my car, which, by the way, I had to park across the street that night and not in the garage because there was a woman who'd been blocking the garage to do my daughter's hair, blah, blah, blah. I wake up in the morning to go take out the trash and my car's gone. And I'm like, what in the. They tow my car, we go through the security cameras, and the guy had a bag with him, comes through the garage, down the side of the house, in through the patio, into the kitchen, grabs my bag with my computer, watch, keys, all the purse, whatever. And the dogs went so crazy that he got spooked and he took off. So, long story short, I called the police and they end up getting in a high speed chase with this guy in my car. He robs a bunch of people in my car, wraps the car around a telephone pole, tells the police that I was the one who robbed all. This is California. I was the one who robbed all of these people. And that I'd set him up for these robberies and asked him to bring me cocaine and that he was my secret lover. Coleman, I swear to God. And there's a reason I'm telling you all of this, and that I had set him up so I wanted cocaine, to meet him at the Chateau Marmont, because he was my secret lover. But I set him up by calling the police because I'm really the one who'd robbed everybody.

[Coleman Hughes]

And.

[Jillian Michaels]

But where this gets crazy is the police believed him and I got dragged in for questioning. This is where I'm like, I don't know how racist the cops in Los Angeles are, because they legitimately believed him. He'd just gotten out of jail a few days prior. It was his third strike. And I remember looking at these police, I'm like, number one, I'm gay, okay? That's my partner there. Number two, I'm a health expert. So I don't really, you know, indulge in hard drugs. Not for, I don't know, since I was maybe 17. So, like multiple decades at this point. The guy just got out of jail, so how does he know me? What's my phone number? What's the cont? It was crazy. And then he got a hung jury defending himself because the people in Los Angeles actually believed him. So we had to go back to court. And finally this guy gets put back in jail. And they found the camera, the duct tape, the knives, all this stuff in the car, which he said were mine, by the way. Why anybody would have a camcorder, I don't know. And this, God, this was early. So this is 2012. So this was really kind of probably the writing on the wall that I wasn't waking up to with how woke and how crazy California was. And to make a long story short, Newsom let all these guys out of jail during COVID under the pretense that they were safer in the streets committing crimes than risking getting Covid in prison, despite the fact that all the data suggested otherwise. I should have known then, but I unfortunately took me another eight years to figure it out.

[Coleman Hughes]

Wow, that's a crazy story.

[Jillian Michaels]

It's a crazy story. It's so silly.

[Coleman Hughes]

I want to go back to, you know, you talked about having two kids, one white and one black, and your perspective on colorblindness and identity politics and understanding that though, you know, as I, how I would put it is that the racism will never fully be extinguished because tribalism is a part of human nature and it's. It would be an unrealistic utopia to expect that you'll never find a racist person. Right. And that, that holds true for racism in all directions, not just against black people, but against white people, against Asians, against Hispanics. Nevertheless, we have made just so much progress in, you know, like my life is fundamentally unlike my grandparents life and even, even unlike my father's life in a way. And America is probably one of the least racist countries on earth. And I know that really shocks people to say that, but if you look at studies of, you know, job applications returned for having an ethnic name, America does better on that score than Europe, does better, you know, than most of the world and you know, go try your luck in China or India with being the wrong race. But you had this explosive debate on Abby Phillips show on cnn, which is a show I used to go on pretty often about the Smithsonian Museum, African American history and cultures and how it treats slavery and American history. And as I listened to that debate, you were making points that I have made almost verbatim. And I could, you know, but I can also see how the people who had never heard your perspective just thought you were saying something absolutely insane.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

Let me to actually, why don't you sort of explain what that debate was first and what point you were trying to make there.

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, Coleman, the problem is it started out as one conversation and turned into another. So very unfortunately the through line of the argument was not clear. And it also never got to finish. It never got to culminate to the ultimate point. So I knew one of the topics was going to be Trump's funding of the Smithsonian. And listen, it's Trump, so anything is possible. You know, I didn't know what he was hoping to defund. So I reached out to the administration, actually, because I knew the press secretary. And like, can you guys tell me what in particular before I go on CNN and run into a buzzsaw here, what in particular is the administration taking umbrage with? And they sent me this huge PDF with all of these exhibits and not one, not one of them was about slavery. And I'm aware Trump came out later and said, you know, we need to stop talking about this and start talking about things that unify us. But nothing in this list of exhibits had anything to do with slavery. And to give you a few examples, one was the, you know, now infamous white culture poster about how white people are aggressive. And there were many of them. One was about the statue of an art piece of the Statue of Liberty being a black trans person. One was about how Coleman. It's a lot.

[Coleman Hughes]

Long list.

[Jillian Michaels]

If you want to laugh. I still have the PDF. I'll send it over to you. Another one was about how America and its white imperialist tendencies were responsible for the Cuban Revolution with 0.0Mention in the exhibit of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. None, zip, nada. And it goes on and on and on about how white imperialism has destroyed the world. And the only thing, mind you, the only thing that actually did touch upon slaves was an exhibit about Benjamin Franklin and how he was a slave owner and the slaves were really the ones that were responsible for creating electricity. But zero mention of the fact that he fully recanted later in life and became an abolitionist. No mention of the fact that he.

[Coleman Hughes]

He was actually a part of the first abolition society in the world anywhere, which was founded in 1774 in Pennsylvania.

[Jillian Michaels]

0. Coleman. He was like the ultimate evil guy right? Now, I know a little bit about this, not to the degree that you do, but I knew that he turned around and became a good guy. It was like, this is terrible stuff. This has got to end. I regret all of it. No mention of that. So Julie Roginski starts out with Trump is Dear Leader, literally says that and maga, he must please the MAGA base. And I feel so bad for people who are MAGA because they're not racist. And the only thing that they want to get away from with regard to race, because I've looked into this pretty extensively, is they want to get away from this whole, like, victim oppressor narrative that they want to end. And honestly, so do I. So if that makes me maga, okay, great. And I basically turned around. I'm like, there are no exhibits he's going after that are erasing the history of slavery. All of a sudden, Richie Torres and Abbey Phillip changed the conversation to being about slavery. And they try to imply that I think slavery is a great thing. And of course, I go on to say, nobody is saying that. But the reality is that slavery has existed for thousands of years. Every single race throughout history has worn the whip and the chains, and you cannot keep making. You cannot lay all of the evils of humanity at the feet of just one race. And the reason this is so important to me, Coleman, is because I was already starting to see young white kids becoming racist. That was when Nick Fuentes was bubbling up, and Charlie Kirk, in my opinion, was the bulwark to that kind of woke. Right. Insanity. And when we lost him, obviously, you saw that stuff really start to rise and those kinds of characters getting platformed everywhere. And I was exceptionally vocal about how grotesque. I thought that was just the way I was exceptionally vocal about the woke left. But having said that, I started to see. In fact, it was an article in the Free Press about how a high school in the south had renamed themselves General E. Lee High School, or how people were starting to proudly display the Confederate flag, about how Nick Fuentes had a bigger podcast than Joe Rogan. And I started to feel that when you. Or think that when you constantly demonize these young white kids, they become tribal, they become racist, and they vomit up this whole concept of, you're toxic, you're racist, you're this, you're that. And they start to lean into it, which is why this narrative bothers me so much. On top of the fact, you know, I discussed it with regard to my concerns about my daughter, not wanting her to think that she's a victim. And a big part of that is because when you're a victim, you're fundamentally, fundamentally disempowered to make changes in your life. I don't want her to feel that way. That's not true. I also don't want her to carry that anger and that resentment when every opportunity should be presenting itself to her like any other child in a civilized society. And I believe that it is and it has been. And one other thing, I also, on some level, put on a tin hat here. And I think that this narrative of telling black people that all white people hate them and they should play tennis for young black kids and they should sing music for young black kids. Like, why are you going to alienate the other 83% of the population? Sell the tickets and the T shirts and, you know, get the votes cast from everybody. There is no universe where I'd say, not, by the way, because it's racist. From a financial perspective, as a businesswoman, oh, my God, I spent my entire career saying, like, all right, I want to have a really diverse crew behind me in this fitness video so that black women see themselves, Latin women see themselves, Asian women see themselves. Because I want everybody to buy my fitness videos. I am a businesswoman. It is a business. You want people to vote for you. You want all colors to vote for you. I don't want my daughter limiting herself to 13% of the population. Make money, be successful. Like, there are so many different reasons this alarms me. And so taking on that narrative on Abby, Phillip had so many endgames for me. And where I would have liked that conversation to go is if we're speaking on chattel slavery. Colin, I've never met the person in my life who doesn't think that's disgusting and hideous and a dark part of our history. And we can and have taught all of that. But what happened to the part about how guys like Benjamin Franklin wanted to end this and we went to war over ending this and 350,000 white guys died to end this. So when you look at white people, yeah, there are bad ones, but there's also really good ones. And how do we find our shared humanity again? Because I think that when they pit us against each other, and I mean the mainstream media and all the politicians, I think they've got a bigger agenda. And that bigger agenda doesn't serve any of us. And last thought, last thought. And I think you'll appreciate this. Fred Hampton from the Black Panthers was a 21 year old kid that was building a coalition of disenfranchised young white guys, disenfranchised native Americans, disenfranchised Puerto Ricans, as well as disenfranchised black guys. And they killed him in his bed because of the coalition he was building and how dangerous it would be. And we've seen that exact same pattern even since slavery began with white indentured servants. What is it? Bacon's Rebellion, where white indentured servants and black slaves came together to throw off their oppressors and they had to end that, so they gave the white guys, okay, you guys are a little bit better than the black guys. This Way you guys will hate each other and you'll never come together anyway. That's. All of this is on my mind all the time, probably because of my kids. And it's something that I just think has to stop. The race baiting has got to stop. And then we can't even eliminate threats where they really exist because we're so busy chasing racism that doesn't actually exist.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, I mean, the reasons that that point struggles to land on CNN is twofold. One, because you've got about 15 seconds before you're gonna be interrupted by three different people at once that are coming for your throat. And then secondly, because so many people on the left are deeply ignorant of the global history of slavery. So when you say something like, isn't it amazing that someone like Benjamin Franklin was an abolitionist, you know, by. By at least by the 1770s, I think earlier they say, well, no, there's nothing amazing about that. That should. That should be the default. Oh, well, that's great that in the year 2026, we can all agree that that should be the default. In the year 1776, slavery was the norm all around the world. Slavery was everywhere. In Africa, millions of black slaves in the Middle east, millions of slaves in China and India, tens of millions of slaves in Russia. Slavery, literally on every corner of God's green earth, slavery was legal and abundant. And so what was unique and interesting about the year 7076 was not that there also happened to be slavery in America. It was that there was a massive movement and spirit of liberty, this new concept that was sweeping England and America, which directly created a contradiction with slavery, a contradiction that was not in the Bible or the Quran or in any of the. Or in the Buddhist analects, really. It was the first time that there was a whole country based on a philosophy that directly contradicted slavery. And then people will say, okay, well, then we were born in hypocrisy. Well, yes, but we created the hypocrisy not by having worse practices than the rest of the world, but by having better principles. And ultimately, that hypocrisy created a tension that ended slavery much sooner here than it did elsewhere in the world, sooner than in Brazil, sooner than in Korea, which had slavery until, you know, the 1890s. And so that hypocrisy, which gets leveled at America as a charge, it's actually backwards, that that was a signal of America's virtue, that that hypocrisy existed. And, you know, that point is difficult to make on cable news without being immediately interrupted and saying, you know, you're minimizing slavery. But I want to get back to this point about, about ignorance of history because it reminds me of a. I don't know if you were paying attention to this. It was around 2010 when Henry Louis Gates wrote an infamous New York Times op ed that got him sort of proto canceled. Do you remember that?

[Jillian Michaels]

Absolutely not. I know nothing about it. Tell me everything.

[Coleman Hughes]

So Henry Louis Gates was and is the foremost expert on African American studies. Like universally respected, admired Harvard guy. There's really no one above him in terms of African American studies. And in 2010, he wrote an op ed called Ending the Slavery Blame Game. And his point was that, look, we all blame the white slave owners as we should. We all blame the white slave traders as we should. Why don't any of us blame the black Africans tribes that actually did 90% of the slave raiding and then slave trading to the Europeans? The way the transatlantic slave trade happened was not like the show, like the documentary Roots where white guys walk into the coast, the African interior, and rope themselves a couple of slaves. That was like at most 10%. And it was like just the Portuguese did that a bit before they realized we're all going to get malaria. Like, we can't, this is super stupid. We can't do this. It was African tribes intentionally dominating and slave raiding other African tribes and getting locally rich off of trading these people voluntarily to Europeans. That's, that's the historical fact. And he, as an authority on the subject, said, look, if we're going to blame people, I think we should blame everyone involved, including Africans. Totally legitimate point, totally logical point. As far as I can tell, the backlash to that op ed was so fierce that he said in a later interview in Newsweek that people wanted to kill him. Yes, I think he was like speaking a little hyperbolically, but he was like, man, black people wanted to kill me after that. He is black, obviously himself, so he's saying all his friends wanted to kill him for, for making that point. But why would that point be so grating? Why would that point be so, so undigestible to people? It's, it's, it's logical. It's colorblind apportionment of blame. Unless there is a deep seated desire when telling the history of slavery to blame one race in exclusion of the others. Even though it was a global slave trade. You don't hear anything about the Arab slave trade. Millions of black Africans taken to the Arab world and on and on and on. So I understood perfectly well, what you were trying to say there and why it mattered. And why it matters is that, that we're all in this country together, of every race. We're a multiracial country now. We always have been to some extent, but even more so today, we're a multiracial country. We're not like a white country with a couple of exceptions. Right? And we have to get along. It's in our interest to get along. Racial harmony is very much in our interest. One of the deepest threats to this country in the long run is, frankly, racial and ethnic strife. Right? And if we are raising, you know, people's picture of history influences their feelings in the present, that's just. It's just a fact of human psychology. And if we raise generation after generation on the history that one group of people is responsible for pretty much all the sins in the world and other groups are hapless victims, and you can identify who are the bad people by skin color, who had the bad ancestors by skin color, and who had the noble hero ancestors by skin color. That's a recipe for never ending racial strife. As the great Thomas Sowell once put it, we are giving babies prepackaged set of grievances against other babies born the same day. Right. And so I understood that perfectly well. It's a very difficult point to make on cnn, and I've been in a million of those debates. But I think it's really important that that message gets through to people.

[Jillian Michaels]

You know, I wonder also if part of the reason, and I say this because of my experience in my own work, there is something comforting about being a victim to an extent, because then where things may have gone wrong in your life, you don't have to take accountability for. And sometimes that accountability can be accompanied with shame. I'm ashamed because I should have been able to do this. I should have been able to accomplish this. I should have been able to lose the weight, but I didn't. And therefore, if it's not someone else's fault, it's mine. And that makes me feel awful about myself. Trying to empower people and change that narrative in health has always been my primary focus. Listen, I get it. At one time or another in your life, you had these horrible things happen to you and you responded in these ways. But if you can't appreciate that you chose to eat this or who knows, right? Whatever. However, it may apply to somebody of color who struggles and wants to blame the oppressor, it's also the same narrative of, well, society has victimized me. My parents have victimized me. I'm genetically overweight because they're so ashamed. And I find that if I can empower them to see they made these choices not because they're weak, not because they're lazy, not because they're stupid, because they were responding to a stimulus in a way that at one time or another meant their psychological survival. And then you show them the path out of it, the way to make different choices. You empower them to do so. They no longer relish in the victim narrative, and they see the ways in which it holds them back and it holds them down. I don't necessarily know how to apply that to the race conversation of victims and oppressors. I just know that it's exceptionally dangerous. And I lean on people like yourself to take it from there. The smarter, better, younger minds to take it from there.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, so pivoting topics a bit. I want to talk about Make America Healthy again. You're obviously, you have a. A whole career in fitness and nutrition and helping people become the healthiest version of themselves, but you also pay attention to Robert F. Kennedy. I think you've said some nice things about him. I'm curious, what is your overall assessment of. I hesitate to call it a movement. It's probably not really a capital M movement, but it's a vibe. Maha, what do you make of it?

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, okay. It's a patchwork of different things. Some good, some not so good, some ineffective. And I think the first thing to look at is there's a difference between. I was just having this conversation with Leland Vitter yesterday. There's a difference between influencers who are recommending things online in the administration. So it's important to make that distinction. Right. Influencers are going to be. There's going to be good ones, and there's going to be bad ones. My recommendation when it comes to influencers is look for the ones that have an MD, a PhD, or an RD after their name, and then check to see, is somebody being paid for this? Do they have the credentials to be giving you the advice that they're giving you? And if ever there's medical advice that I've ever given out on a podcast, it's with a doctor who specializes in that field of medicine. So that would be my first thing is take the Maha. Influencers with a grain of salt. I've seen some really crazy things coming out of there, and some people are true believers, I think, to their own detriment in some cases. Some are honest actors who spread tremendous information, and some are getting paid So I would deal with that faction of MAHA accordingly. With regard to the administration. It's very interesting. You don't hear much out of RFK these days. I don't hear much out of RFK these days. I have some theories. I can tell you that some of the work they've gotten done I think is tremendous. We lost a few pretty big battles, like giving immunity to Monsanto for glyphosate, which is a pesticide we know is linked to non Hodgkin's lymphoma. And this was given to Monsanto I think the day after they lost a lawsuit with damages in the billions of dollars. Which is why I'm sure that they went to the President and asked for this. And the conversation was, well, you know, the whole food system would collapse. And we're gonna find a way out of this over time. But you have to present the overtime plan when you're going to do something like that. So huge failure, you know, forcing Marty Makary to legalize flavored vapes, which we know is about targeting our kids. We know this. But then you've seen the change of the dietary guidelines. And while a lot of people think that it's insignificant and tie it back to an infographic, it actually guides billions of dollars in subsidy flow and it now is forcing 250,000 locations that take SNAP benefits to provide more healthy food. So to help solve the food desert problem, it determines what feeds our kids in public schools, what feeds our military. It is a big deal. And there were a host of other things accomplished in that vein that were wonderful. Trump RX is actually great. They're working to cut out the pharmacy benefit managers, which essentially are the reason your drug prices are so frickin high. Dr. Oz is working on the pre authorization problem with insurance, which people die waiting to get authorized for surgeries therapies they desperately need. Like they're doing some really good stuff, they're doing some really not doing, they're facilitating some really bad stuff. But if I could put this in perspective for you for just a moment. If we were to look at the previous head of hhs, this man will be the governor of California. So if you haven't left California yet, now's your chance to really consider it. Xavier Becerra was the head of DHS during the Biden administration. This is the guy that effectively. I'm sorry, thank you. HHS. This is the guy that effectively trafficked like 250,000 kids for the cartel cuz they would come over with an address written on them, and then HHS was responsible for them. There's even quotes where he talked about how he wanted it to be like an assembly line and he had to get the kids out of the detention centers and they would just deliver them with no genetics tests, no background tests. They've lost tens of thousands of kids, sometimes delivering 40 children to the same address. And he is also the guy that wanted to remove age restrictions for gender affirming care on children. So while we have a lot to be frustrated about to this day in regard to what Kennedy has accomplished, what he hasn't accomplished, comparatively speaking, we're way better off if what I just told you puts any of it in perspective at all.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. So I'll say that the part I really liked about Maha and rfk, back when he was more vocal, before he was HHS head of hhs, was taking seriously America's, you know, for starters, obesity epidemic, because so much of, whether it's clogged arteries or cancer, I mean, so much of that is downstream of the fact that we are such an obese country. And to take that seriously and be honest about it and not shy away from emphasizing nutrition and exercise and whatever smart things that we know work just because there's an aspect of it that could be seen as victim blaming if it's said in the wrong tone of voice. I like that. I like the symbolism of having a guy that took his fitness really seriously and looked great leading that charge. And, you know, I, I dis. I also personally liked his charisma. As a politician, I found him, I still do find him very charismatic, despite the vocal problems and everything. And I felt that the media treated him pretty poorly in terms of, you know, pinning him to positions that were not quite what he was saying. But I also felt, having read his books and looked at the footnotes, that a lot of what he said and wrote could verge on the sloppy and, and, and hyperbolic with respect to vaccines and failing to separate the legit critiques of the, you know, the, the COVID vaccine and the, you know, I could, I can, I can go for five minutes about the problems with COVID vaccines and the way that they were forced down people's throats in really unnecessary ways. But the net result of that has filtered down to the public as a general skepticism of even the good vaccines, like, you know, measles. And now, you know, we had declared that over, like 20 years ago, and pockets of it is, are coming back. And I don't think, I'm not sure he has walked the Right line on that issue. And so in the final assessment of him, you have to. I think those are black marks on his record.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, I want to push back a little and I'm not an anti vaxxer. I actually see all of your points and likely agree with almost all of them. However, what I would say first is let's look at what he's actually legislated. He replaced the acip, which is the group that approves or disapproves of vaccines. Put simply. And do you realize these guys never rejected one frigging vaccine? Not one. Even when there were alarm bells and research suggesting that they could cause harm. In addition, forgive me, I did not brush them.

[Coleman Hughes]

Many of them had conflicts of interest.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's what I was just about to tell you.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, it might be out of date, but when I checked two or three years ago, it was still the case that it was their burden to. If they wanted to self report, basically, you couldn't find out publicly what their conflicts of interest were. And they had the ability to sort of wave and say it's okay.

[Jillian Michaels]

Which is exactly problematic. Exactly. So that was of deep concern. Then Kennedy took five vaccines and I'm going to butcher this, so forgive me, but he put them on. I want to say it's called shared consent, but essentially it allows the parents to make the choice of whether or not they want their child to receive the vaccine with the doctor. And I know that Covid is one, hepatitis B is another. There was one for a stomach bug. I can't remember the name of it, but they were essentially things that are either exceptionally rare or non fatal, not particularly harmful. Now the states of course jumped in and blocked all of that, so it became irrelevant when it comes to measles in particular. It was my understanding that it wasn't the measles vaccine alone, that there had been some flags on the security of the combination measles mumps rubella vaccine and he wanted them to be administered individually. And so that part I don't take umbrage with. And it did seem. I haven't looked into this in a while again. So it's been about two years since I looked into that data. But it did seem that there could potentially be some concern there. And having said that, if you're just going to mandate they're given individually, I don't see the harm in it outside of the fact that your kid will need a couple more shots. The one thing that really threw me for a loop is the fact that after the drug companies were given Blanket immunity with regard to vaccines. I think it was Reagan, to be honest. It was like, in 1986, I think.

[Coleman Hughes]

I think it was Reagan.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah. All of a sudden, the schedule becomes significantly more robust. And the one that really does simply illustrate that I wouldn't have a blanket trust. I would talk to your doctor. And the five that Kennedy pointed out, I think are legitimately questionable. When you look at something like hepatitis B, for example, this is a disease that is passed through unprotected, risky sex and needles. Newborns are not engaging in that behavior. Can they get it from mom? Yes. But in the developed world, we can test mom. And a person who speaks far more eloquently than me on this and can articulate these points much better is actually Dr. Drew. And he's like, there's no universe where they're not going to test mom for hepatitis B. If they missed it, it would be. It would be a huge lawsuit, an egregious catastrophe. It just would not happen. And you're giving this to a baby within the first 24 hours of life, and this is really a conversation. Where do you want your kid to have that within the first 24 hours of life? And one other thing is that. But could you potentially vaccinate a child for this later in life? And the clinical environment, as he has put it to me, meaning the child's body pre 5 versus post 5 is very different. And they run significantly less risk of a vaccine injury, which is real, although rare. And that's where I'd say, like Coleman, I get what you're saying. And he's created a fear of things that are modern miracles of medicine. But I would say, you know, also, don't give your blanket trust to these drug companies. They are literally criminal cartels. It's not. It's not hyperbole. They've been convicted of criminal crimes. They have had penalties to pay in the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. Don't give them your blanket trust. It's something as apparent that I would do a deep investigation on. There is a doctor that I really like named Dr. Joel Gator Warsh. And he has a degree. He has a double major. He's a pediatrician, and a degree in epidemiology. And he wrote a really good book called Worth a Shot. And he just breaks down, what data is there? What data actually isn't what we know, what we don't know. How to have these conversations with your doctor. And I just feel like a nuanced approach is important. So while I know Kennedy Made some people skeptical. And I agree that that can be dangerous. Simultaneously, I would also say maybe he woke people up to some concerns, like myself, who was always like, don't be ridiculous. Stop being anti science. The earth isn't flat. Like, get your kid vaccinated. You, you, you cretin. And now I'm like, oh God, you know, I wish I hadn't given my kids hepatitis B or my son, my daughter I didn't get until she was 2 on the first 24 hours of life, if that makes sense.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, I mean, I think the ideal public conversation about this would acknowledge all of the excesses, the vaccines in history or the present that probably aren't necessary or aren't necessary for the whole population and distinguish that from the general sense that vaccination is a bad thing. And sadly, I do think that. I think someone like you, you, you like, have more than enough intelligence to look into the literature of each one and like, make good individual decisions. But I do fear that there is a type of person who, either because of intelligence or time, even more likely just like, gets the dumbest version of the argument and then can't distinguish between the hepatitis, hepatitis vaccine and like measles or much, much worse ones. And, and, and, and you know, if you read the 600 page RFK book, then you're probably like, you're gonna get more of those nuances because his books are with, with exceptions, they're like better than the 32nd version of the argument that you've like, I don't know, probably got on a podcast. Yeah, but, but yeah, I mean, it's a difficult conversation. And that's, that's, that's how I feel about it. But I want to, I also want to ask you about Ozempic. I think I saw you maybe had a video about Ozempic. You know, like we said earlier, so many of America's problems are downstream of obesity. Is Ozempic just not the best thing to ever happen to this country? Like, why should I feel anything but positive about it?

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, great question. And again, I think all of this comes down to the ability to hold nuance. So first of all, our problem with obesity did not exist 50 years ago at all. If we were to go back to the 70s, when I was born, 5% of the adult population was considered obese or overweight. Type 2 diabetes was called adult onset diabetes because children did not get it. There was no childhood obesity statistics to even track. It didn't exist. So what has happened from 1976 to 2026 is not a quantum leap in genetics where we now have 74% of our adult population obese or overweight. And I can't remember the exact, exact statistic, but something like 14% of teens are struggling with fatty liver disease. It's just horrific. The statistics. And what's happened, quite honestly, is that Big Ag, big food, Big Pharma and big insurance have rigged the game, period. End of story. I actually have a book coming out about this in February and it is truly disturbing. And the long story short is that food has become far more toxic, far more addictive and healthy. Food has become far more expensive and far more inaccessible. And people are obese and overweight. And that of course, has a halo effect on their overall well being. Even if we set aside just excess body fat is devastating. And I could explain to you all those mechanisms, but it would probably bore the crap out of your audience. And just trust me, carrying too much body weight is devastating for your health, your metabolic health, your hormonal health. And that goes without looking at all of the chemicals that are in these ultra processed foods. Because skinny people also get cancer. They also get type 2 diabetes, they also get Alzheimer's. They're not immune to all of the garbage and the chemicals in this food. So when you take something like Ozempic, what is the mechanism that is facilitating somebody's weight loss? It is a loss of appetite. And it works in two different ways. One, it acts on the literal pleasure center of your brain, so it will curb cravings. It can also result in a malaise, a depression, a suicidal ideation, anecdotally, but, you know, it's been looked into unquestionably. And if you think about what it's doing, it's kind of numbing down the pleasure. It's making you less sensitive to dopamine to a certain extent. And food is not providing you with the same pleasure. It's also delaying gastric emptying, which means food will sit in your stomach for a significantly longer period of time. Now, okay, there are side effects as a result of those two mechanisms that are pretty, pretty real. And if you look at the side of the box, it will say everything from, you know, medullary thyroid cancer, which they like to say, oh, no, you know, it's just a, it's rare. Well, there was a safety flag that came out of Europe and that's the reason it has a black box warning, because it wasn't that rare. And the way that the different countries do the research is a different conversation. But that's the Reason? It has a black box warning for medullary thyroid cancer. It's intestinal blockage, stomach paralysis, spontaneous blindness, depression, pancreatitis, gallbladder problems. Like, it's not a joke. It's a very serious medication with very serious side effects. So if we could facilitate an individual's ability to simply eat less food and to simply move more often, and I use the word simple, I'm not suggesting it's easy, but that is the simple science of weight loss. We would get all the benefits that these medications provide with none of the side effects. Now, because the game is rigged and the food is addictive, and it is designed quite literally to make you overeat. And we are stressed and we're sitting all day long and we're overworked, all of these factors come into play. Can you tackle that for someone? Well, I said it's simple, but I didn't say it was easy. And if we have a cost benefit analysis where an individual is overweight or obese and they're already experiencing several comorbidities, elevated blood sugar, their inflammatory markers are high, you name it, right? They've got plaque in their arteries. All of this can be seen with calcium score and so on and so forth. But the long story short is your doctor's going to know if you're in fact unhealthy. Even with the basic blood work that they do once a year, they can see it. It's insufficient, but good enough. So if you've tried everything and you can't lose weight, and these medications will help you lose that weight, but they have these side effects. You're now in a cost benefit analysis that should be weighed out with your medical professional and done under medical supervision. People that take this to lose vanity pounds are insane. It is a catastrophically bad idea.

[Coleman Hughes]

I've seen that a lot. I mean, I've seen people that I categorize in my head as already thin, take Ozempic to lose another, like, 15 pounds that I didn't think they had to lose.

[Jillian Michaels]

And they're losing their hair and it's accelerating their aging because there's actually some evidence to suggest that it dampens stem cell production in the subdermal layers of your skin. And you see it and they're like, oh, it's rapid weight loss. I've taken thousands of pounds off of thousands of people around the world and gotten their before and afters. They all look younger, not older. There's something that it's doing to the skin that's accelerating aging. And they've interviewed plastic surgeons about it, by the way, and they just say people aren't healing properly. It's scary stuff. It's no joke. And this is where I would simply say, if you are going to do this, I would also strongly recommend a microdose. And your doctor can compound these medications for you and deliver them to you at a significantly lower dose that I have seen deliver equally beneficial results, and you greatly mitigate their risk of side effects. There have even been some friends. I've said, okay, you know what? Here we go. Let's do this. I'm gonna send you this doctor, we're gonna compound this. And instead of being on 20 milligrams a week of tirzepatide, they're on three. One and a half on Monday, one and a half on Thursday. It's working great. They're not getting. They're not essentially adapting to this medication so that they need higher and higher doses. You can cycle them off of it and on it. So you keep them essentially sensitized to the drugs. There is a much better hope of pulling them off of it down the road. Because think about this, Coleman. These are replicas of satiety hormones that already exist in our body, right? So GLP1, for example, one of the hormones that we all know about, is in your system. After you eat for about 15 minutes, these drugs facilitate a version of this hormone to circulate in your body for seven days. So when you're supplementing a, you know, super version of this hormone exogenously from the outside in, instead of endogenously where the body makes it, your body's going to stop making this. So when you get off of these medications, should you ever hope to do so, you've lost a ton of muscle. You've destroyed your body's ability to make these hormones naturally.

[Coleman Hughes]

Oh, is that right? I didn't know that.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

Testosterone or. Yeah, Bingo.

[Jillian Michaels]

You got it. Same exact mechanism. Identical mechanism. So this is where if you do it just the drug. It's a long story about why the drug companies have such. It has to do with reimbursement and all of these things. I would just tell you, you certainly lose nothing by starting at a lower dose. If it doesn't work, you can always skyrocket it all the way up to 20, 25 milligrams a week. Start lower, start under a doctor's supervision. Do not buy this stuff on the gray market online. That is insane and unnecessary. And again, make sure that there's a reason if you're Doing this to lose weight for vanity purposes. You're gonna lose your hair and you're gonna age 10 years. Take a look at some of the celebrities whose names I will not mention because it's classless to do so. But I think we all know who I'm referring to. And they look 20 years older than they did last year.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, two more questions. Sort of fitness related questions. I had my mind blown recently reading that what I had grown up believing my whole life, was an urban legend. And this is the idea that your metabolism starts slowing, you know, in your late 20s or even 30s. You know, I've always been blessed to be. I think I'm literally the same weight I was as a senior in high school. And my, my thing is I struggle to gain weight. I try to put on muscle and it's like tough for me to put enough food down my throat. And that is, I understand, that's like world's smallest violin for people out there trying to lose weight. You know, like, I don't. I'm not asking for sympathy. It's actually a great hand to be dealt genetically. But, you know, everyone's been telling me, you know, like, you'll hit 30 and then you'll start gaining weight because that's just what happens. Your metabolism slows down. But apparently there was a big science article recently or in the past few years that sort of debunked that notion. What is actually true about your metabolism, quote unquote, slowing down as you age?

[Jillian Michaels]

Well, I remember interviewing Dr. William Lee about this when that came out. And what it doesn't really take into account is the fact that we do lose muscle as we age at a more rapid rate, that our hormones do decline as we age, and that will impact metabolism over time. There are different factors. It had to do with pure energy expenditure, but it becomes a bit of a snowball. And what I mean by that is as you get older, you lose more muscle, you're less physically active, you're lifting less weight, maybe you're going to the gym a little bit less because you're fatigued and it kind of, maybe your

[Coleman Hughes]

joints are, your joints are hurting, you're not playing basketball.

[Jillian Michaels]

They sure are.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

50s comes with something called 50s shoulder, which is frozen shoulder. And it has to do with. Men apparently get it too, but it's mostly women and it has to do with declining estrogen levels. So then of course, like, you're not doing the push ups the way that you used to be, you're not going to yoga anymore. Because your shoulders killing you. So it sort of begets itself. And this is where I would say, take that with a grain of salt. It does get a little bit harder as you get older, for the reasons I mentioned. But if you're maintaining your health along the way, you're exercising along the way, you're maintaining your muscle mass, you're preserving your body, you're supporting your hormonal health when you get to a certain age and you're doing your routine blood work at the moment, the general medical consensus is that hormone replacement therapy is exceptionally beneficial for the vast majority of Americans. Of course, there are some exceptions with histories of maybe testicular cancer or heart disease or breast cancer that you will want to evaluate with a medical professional, like what your risks might be. But engaging in that when you hit middle age and the blood work shows that it's necessary or the symptoms you're experiencing reflect that is also a great way to maintain hormone replacement therapy. We're not trying to put superhuman levels of hormones in somebody's body. Doctors are trying to bring them back to baseline, and this has been really beneficial. So engage in prevention. Eat well. Don't take your health for granted. Maintain your muscle, because you will lose it at an accelerated pace past 40. And when the time comes, definitely explore hormone replacement therapy with your medical professional.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay. Jillian Michaels, thank you so much for coming on my show.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, my gosh, it's such a pleasure. I just. I'm so honored to be talking to you. And I'll say it one more time just so you really comes across. I watch you constantly, and I think you are such a force for good in the world. Thank you for all you do, Coleman.

[Coleman Hughes]

Oh, thank you, Jillian. Right back at you.