54 November 14 2014 news@myweekender.co.uk / www.weekenderlife.co.uk

To Biggest Loser junkies Jillian Michaels will forever be the Red

Team trainer, the super ripped ‘bad cop’ to co-host Bob Harper’s ‘good cop’, writes Laura Burgoine...Today, she’s one of the world’s

most successful health and fitness personalities. Aside from starring in twelve seasons of NBC’s The Biggest Loser (USA), Jillian has released fifteen fitness DVDs, several best-selling books and has a podcast Jillian Michaels Show, which has pulled in millions of listeners since debuting in 2011. Bringing her live motivational tour

Maximize Your Life to the UK for the first time, the Los Angeles native tells the Weekender how it all just gets easier. Having already toured the show

across Canada and the US, next up Jillian is taking her tour to Australia then the UK. “If you are coming to the show because you’re curious about weight loss and how I’ve taken all this weight off people at such an accelerated pace, I’m going to talk to you about the most effective methods of fitness to accelerate results, how to maximize your time in the gym, and subsequently a great eating strategy that’s manageable, accessible and affordable so you can lose weight if you want, or maintain your weight in the healthiest, most cost effective way possible,” Jillian explains. She insists transformation is more

than skin deep. “If change is so simple – notice I did not say easy but it is so simple and straightforward - why are so many people struggling with it?” Jillian asks. “You may say eating clean has nothing to with your career but it’s not about clean eating, it’s about why you’re not eating clean, why we sabotage ourselves, hold ourselves back, engage in destructive behaviours and coping mechanisms and what’s at the root of negative self-image and damaged self-worth.” The 40-year-old suffered bullying

as an overweight child, but this all changed when she took up Martial Arts at age 12, upon her mother’s suggestion. “I remember going for my second

degree blue belt test and I had to break these two boards with a sidekick and I never thought I was going to be able to do this. I dreaded it. Sure enough I was able to do it and I remember walking into school the next day just wishing

someone would pick on me, I was like “c’mon” and no one did. Since that day no one has ever bullied me,” she reveals. “I appreciated at a very young age that fitness was transcendent. I understood it was the way I was carrying myself, the way I felt about myself; for the first time I respected myself and I saw myself as strong and capable and competent, and for some reason when I began to carry myself that way I commanded respect from other people. It was at that moment that I realised this is not actually about the sidekick, it’s about the accomplishment and it’s these small successes that beget more success.” Small successes redefine a

person’s identity, Jillian claims. “At the same time you have to teach someone to cope with failure and again it’s a perspective shift; instead of seeing failure as validation of incompetence, you begin to learn that failure is courage and an entry point for learning. All successful individuals fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough; the key to failure is not to make the same mistake twice.” The 30 Day Shred creator found

her calling as a teenager. While training for her black belt she was repeatedly approached by people asking her to train them. “I was making about $5 an hour delivering pizza, ironically. My Mom helped me to get my first little certificate and I began training people at 17; that definitely planted the seed,” Jillian remembers. Martial Arts training had a huge

impact on the trainer . “You get used to taking some hits. I remember a moment when my martial arts instructor was sparring with me and he was hitting me, actually hitting me. He knocked the wind out of me until I was in a corner crying and he said ‘you can keep crying but the more you cry the harder I’m going to hit you’ and honestly it’s a good metaphor for life. Life keeps kicking you, so are you going to get out of the corner or are you going to feel sorry for yourself?”“When you’ve had those huge

failures and setbacks, when you’ve gotten the wind knocked out of you, it just gets that much easier. You get comfortable with being uncomfortable; when you stretch your emotional fabric it never goes back quite as far. It just gets easier.”There’s no doubt the 5’2” fitness

guru practices what she preaches. Her own workouts range from yoga to Mixed Martial Arts, to

Parkour, calisthenics and spin classes. “I like things that are really aggressive and extremely athletic, that are predominantly body weight based with dynamic weights and dumbbells,” she says. “I’m a terrible runner. I hate running but it’s just convenient, for me; it’s a quick, easy calorie burn and it’s sort of mindless. I think you’re either built for it or not.”Working out four times a week,

for just 30 minutes, Jillian adheres to the ‘go hard or go home’ mantra. “I don’t need to do an hour; when you train efficiently, 30 minutes is enough. But you have to be training very intensely, so something constant where there’s no break and you shift from one move to the next. You’ll move from upper body, then do lower body so the other muscles can recover while the body is still working.”

Eating organic is also her “thing”. “At the end of the day, I’m sorry but if you eat more energy than you burn in a day you will gain weight. I don’t care if it’s whole food; calories are calories. Don’t eat too much food.”

Taking active to a new level, Jillian is juggling this motivational tour with designing a new athletic apparel and clothing range for Kmart in the US, her own healthy fast food line, creating a program called Body Shred, which will go into gyms across Canada and the US, a new book, her podcast, and a fitness network called Fit Fusion, which she describes as “the Netflix of fitness” where people subscribe and have access to hundreds of fitness videos online.

“I’m lucky; I love my work,” she reflects. “The TV thing has become hard because for me to be involved in a television show it needs to be something I’m passionate about, something that is a benefit to the world and of course it has to make any network money. Finding something with those three things is not that easy. I’m in no hurry, I don’t need to go rushing into anything, I’m quite happy doing what I’m doing now, and so we’ll see.”

Jillian’s Maximize Your Life tour is at the London Indigo Arena, the O2, Peninsula Square, SE10 0DX, on Wednesday 28 January. Tickets are on sale now: £25-£35. Phone: 020 8463 2730. www.jillianmichaels.com

Ahead of her live O2 tour, fi tness guru Jillian Michaels talks clean eating, taking hits and why she hates running