Jillian Michaels: Being Fat as a Teen Was 'Pure Hell'

By PopEater Staff Posted Jun 17th 2010 12:24PM

It's hard to believe that Jillian Michaels, the trainer on 'Biggest Loser' and star of 'Losing It With Jillian' was ever overweight.

But Michaels has been open with her struggles as a kid, and talks to Redbook about her problems.

Of being 175 pounds when she was a teen, she says, "Oh, my God, it was pure hell. I spent all of eighth grade in my classroom because God forbid I ever left. I was terrorized. And karate saved my life. It all stopped the day I broke two boards with a kick." Read more about Jillian, her childhood and what she thinks the biggest misconception about her is >>>

Biggest misconception that people have about her: "That I'm a bitch. I really don't have a mean bone in my body! Do you know how easy it would be to tell people what they want to hear? It would be heaven! But, unfortunately, it doesn't get the job done."

She was in therapy at the age of 5: "I was a really disturbed kid. You know how kids have night terrors? Mine were really bad. I thought sharks were coming out of the drain in the bathtub. I couldn't sleep at night, every night, waiting for aliens to come. I'm not kidding you: I. Was. Traumatized. And mom got me into therapy."

Her troubles continued as a teen: "My parents got divorced when I was 12. They were married for 18 years. They were kind of midlife-crisis-ing, and I was sort of the afterthought. I became pretty angry -- no one wanted to deal with me -- so when I was 17, my mom was like, 'You're not living here.' We were fighting. But I learned a lot being on my own. I grew up. I had to make money. I learned how to make decisions that are right for me."

Tags: biggest loser, Jillian michaels

Comments

(121)

Friday 18 June

By Sandy and Sue

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Whine, whine, whine. Most of us had terrible childhoods but
somehow we made it through. Now we have children of our own
to terrorize and screw up. Life goes on.

By Kellye

Jillian is a motivator. A short 175 pound junior high school girl will surely get teased by the mean kids. She had bad parenting and a bad school life.....So what did she do? She turned her life around! She helps people and she looks great!I think she is fantastic,beautiful and strong!

By Gerald Slaby

maybe that's why she's F***ed up, today......

By Lloyd

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Uh. Do the side by side. Good old Jillian has had a nose job and cheek work. In other words, she's a phony.

By rominakatz

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Does she know that we have souls to care for too, not just bodies?
She needs to focus on herself from the inside and stop her obsession with weight. BAD EXAMPLE!!!!!

Tuesday 22 June

By peter Dolbey

you go girl......

Is she an only child? I wonder if she has siblings who also have image/self-esteem problems, and if they blame their parents' divorce too.

By Barry Doubleday

I think she looked better before, more natural. Now she looks like a woman body builder and she really isn't even good looking!

Saturday 19 June

By RAR

What's wrong with being a woman bodybuilder? I'm really strong and I still like how I look. Honestly I think it's gross for anyone to be really skinny.

By kluji

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I bet her b u t t is tasty!

i agree, very tasty, mmmmmmmm.......

I guess you like the taste of trapped sweat.

She didn't look bad as a teen, just like a typical pre-rhinoplasty JAP. Is she a JAP? She needs therapy for her image obsession.

By lee

Oh man.....she calls this 'terror'...??? Survive something truly terrorizing then I might feel something for you. As it is now you....whatever your name is....gillian? sorry it's not worth scrolling up to see.....are just an attention-seeking crybaby. Terror? You don't know the meaning of the word.

oh, poor you, boo, who, boo, who.....

By Carrie

Consider my subscription to Redbook cancelled. I won't watch this heartless, egomaniacal witch demean people on the Biggest Loser (or her new vanity project) and I sure as hell don't want her face delivereed to my doorstep. Does the Redbook story cover that fact that she is now hawking useless magic weight loss pills, too? The only thing she motivates me to do is hurl.

By Jamie Jones

I think that Jillian Michaels is an awesome and strong woman; and to everyone who wants to bad mouth her, you are just jealous.

Tell me Jamie, you live down South???

By Vivian M.

FYI:

The word "jealous" means that you feel resentment towards someone because of that person's success or advantage.

I am not jealous of Jillian Michaels, I DON'T LIKE her BECAUSE:

1.) She feels that she has to degrade and humiliate and curse at people to help them exercise. I find that behavior reprehensible.

2) She screams and curses at people on The Biggest Loser who DON'T have huge, unhealthy weight losses every week. I find that attitude dangerous.

3) She has a new show where she is supposedly fixing psychologically and physically damaged families in 5 days and she has no formal schooling or training. I find that irresponsible.

4) She has her own line of diet pills when she had apparently written in one of her books that people who sold diet pills were taking advantage of people's desperation to lose weight. I find that hypocritical.

5) And now she is trying to get everyone to believe that she can relate to people with serious ongoing weight problems because she was 50 pounds overweight for a year or two when she was a teenager in the throws of puberty.

To be jealous means that you envy someone.

I find absolutely nothing about Jillian Michaels to be envied.