Where Is Jillian Michaels Now? All About Her Life Nearly 11 Years After Leaving The Biggest Loser

Jillian Michaels rose to fame when she starred as a coach on The Biggest Loser.

The Biggest Loser, which premiered with Michaels in 2004, followed a group of contestants working with fitness coaches to lose a significant amount of weight. The show was one of the first weight-loss competition shows and garnered millions of viewers each season.

Michaels was the coach of the Red Team and competed against fellow trainer Bob Harper on the Blue Team. She worked on the show on and off for 10 years before leaving for good in 2014. The series continued to air on NBC until 2016, before briefly returning for one season on the USA Network in 2020. Now, it’s the subject of the Netflix docuseries, Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser, which premiered Aug. 15.

Although Michaels was not featured in the docuseries, she has spoken openly about her time on The Biggest Loser and her life since leaving the hit show. Michaels has continued working in the health and fitness world while getting involved in podcasting and politics, including meeting with the Trump administration.

In addition to her fitness empire, Michaels is a mom to two children: daughter Lukensia and son Phoenix. Michaels later wed her wife, DeShanna Marie Minuto, in 2022.

So, where is Jillian Michaels now? Here’s everything to know about what the fitness guru is doing today, years after The Biggest Loser.

Who is Jillian Michaels?

Jillian Michaels is a professional fitness trainer, nutritionist, entrepreneur, podcast host and author. Michaels was born in Los Angeles in 1974, and her parents divorced when she was 13 years old. The divorce took a major emotional toll on Michaels, and she started eating more as a coping mechanism.

“I was definitely on the chubbier side growing up, but I hit my heaviest weight around age 13, when I was about 170 pounds,” she told Women’s Health in January 2019. “I used food as comfort, but I also used it as a way to relate to my dad — he was overweight too, so we bonded over food a lot. Back then, I really just ate without any regard for my health — pizza, French fries, Taco Bell, you name it.”

Shortly after, her mom enrolled her in a martial arts class as a physical and emotional outlet, and her passion for fitness and health began. Michaels clarified that she didn’t fully grasp her health until her 30s, when she found a “balance” between exercise and diet.

In 2004, Michaels became a household name when she starred alongside Harper as a trainer on The Biggest Loser. While working on the show, Michaels got her own NBC spinoff, Losing It with Jillian, which ran for one season in 2010.

In addition to being a personal trainer and fitness coach, Michaels is a black belt in martial arts, a certified nutrition and wellness consultant and the founder of Jillian Michaels: The Fitness App and Empowered Media, LLC.

How long was Jillian Michaels on The Biggest Loser?

Michaels and Harper were the first two trainers on the weight-loss competition series The Biggest Loser when it premiered in October 2004. They worked together in seasons 1 and 2 until Michael left ahead of the third season in 2006 and was replaced by Kim Lyons.

Michaels returned to the show as the Black Team trainer on season 4 in 2007, and stayed until season 11 in 2011. However, she briefly returned for seasons 14 and 15 from 2012 to 2013, but left for good ahead of season 16 in 2014.

Shortly after she announced her final departure, Michaels told PEOPLE she was “so grateful to the show and so sad to leave,” but she struggled with “some fundamental differences” between herself and the show’s producers. Since then, Michaels has had mixed feelings about the groundbreaking series.

“I actually had no idea the show would be the success it was. I was very fortunate to have had the platform early in my career,” she told The Reader in March 2014. “The show, like anything, has good and bad aspects to it and I think the good continues to far outweigh the bad.”

However, Michaels has also spoken about some of the issues she had with the show, including the contestants competing for spots and getting sent home.

“Nobody should have been eliminated. That was my No. 1 issue with the show,” Michaels told Today in December 2021. “But the producers gamified weight loss. It was weight loss on a ticking clock.”

She added, “The Biggest Loser needed a mental health professional. I think there was some random guy they could talk to if they needed, but these people needed deep work. When you have someone that weighs 400 lbs., that’s not just an individual who likes pizza. There’s a whole lot going on there emotionally.”

Although Michaels had some problems with the show, she defended other aspects, like the aggressive approach she took when coaching her contestants.

“The ones I yelled at are the ones that kept it off,” she said. “You need them to feel the pain of the way they’ve been living. You need them to have a rock bottom moment where they’re like, ‘I can’t take one more moment.’ “

What did Jillian Michaels do after leaving The Biggest Loser?

When Michaels left The Biggest Loser in 2014, she continued building her health and fitness business. In 2011, she launched her podcast, Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels, on which she still interviews guests and discusses “tough topics which matter the most in helping us better understand ourselves and the world around us.”

Michaels also founded her company, Empowered Media, LLC, in 2008, which she used to invest in a variety of health and lifestyle brands, including Thrive Market, Flywheel and Lucky Jack Coffee, per her website. Her company also created FitFusion, a fitness video membership website.

In 2017, Michaels launched her own app, Jillian Michaels: The Fitness App. Over the course of two decades, Michaels has written nine bestselling books on health and wellness.

Does Jillian Michaels still talk about fitness and health?

Michaels has continued speaking about her fitness and health beliefs in the press, on social media, television shows and her podcast. Throughout her career, Michaels has reiterated her messages, including focusing on a balanced diet.

“You don’t want to eat processed foods — that’s obvious. Foods with a ton of chemicals; that goes without saying,” Michaels told PEOPLE in December 2018. “Use common sense with your food choices. No chemicals; nothing overly processed. Things like fake fat, fake sugar, processed grains, processed sugars; essentially wreak havoc on your body chemistry.”

In addition to advising people what to eat and what to avoid, Michaels has expressed her concern over the FDA-approved prescription weight-loss medication, Ozempic, and its side effects.

“I have taken at least eight family friends’ parents off of this drug,” Michaels told PEOPLE in February 2023. “They’re getting heart palpitations, they’re nauseous, they feel like s—. They feel so awful that it’s motivated them to reverse their type 2 diabetes.”

Michaels urged people to research the side effects of Ozempic and similar weight-loss drugs and consider natural lifestyle changes. She added, “The truth of the matter is, Ozempic has some pretty significant side effects. Do your homework on it.”

Why was Jillian Michaels invited to the White House?

While Michaels initially focused on speaking about health and wellness topics on social media and her podcast, she began discussing her political beliefs and support for President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In May 2025, Michaels visited the White House for a press briefing as a “new media” member (a person granted press access by Trump). Michaels specifically attended the briefing to support Trump and Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again Commission’s report on childhood chronic illness.

“As a MAHA mom yourself, how do you interpret the significance of this report in terms of delivering measurable health improvement for Americans and their kids?” Michaels asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. “And what specific actions does the administration plan to take in response to it?”

Leavitt, who called Michaels a “renowned personal health expert,” responded by emphasizing how Trump has kept his promise to “make this country healthy again.”

Michaels later reflected on the moment by posting a photo with Leavitt on Instagram and wrote in part, “Big day for MAHA. The MAHA Commission Report is out.”

Where is Jillian Michaels now?

Over 20 years after being introduced on The Biggest Loser, Michaels has built up her fitness empire. She continues to release weekly episodes of her podcast, create new content for her fitness website and app and write blogs and recipes for her website.

However, in 2021, she suffered a spinal injury from a slip-and-fall accident that left her out of work for a year. After living with the pain — that felt like “a lightning bolt down my leg” — she checked into a hospital where she learned she had a “nerve impingement.”

“The pain at night was so bad. I truly thought to myself, ‘The only thing I think would be worse than this would be burns,’ ” she recalled to PEOPLE in March 2023. “It was so crazy. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t stand. I was having to crawl on the ground. I’m like, ‘My life is over.’ ”

After seeing several doctors, Michaels learned that she had to rest and couldn’t even stretch. Eventually, Michaels was able to use the assisted squat machine DB Method and recovered six months later.

“I’m riding horses,” she said. “I’m riding jet skis, I’m snowboarding. I’m just super, super careful.”

As for her personal life, Michaels co-parents two children with her ex, Heidi Rhoades. The former couple welcomed their daughter, Lukensia, via adoption from Haiti, and their son, Phoenix, just days apart in May 2012.

Michaels told PEOPLE that September that simultaneously becoming a parent of two was “hectic, chaotic, confrontational,” but also “magical, meaningful and rewarding.”

The fitness personality went on to marry DeShanna Marie Minuto, after meeting on Raya in 2018. Michaels proposed three years later, and they got legally married at a courthouse in Miami in July 2022. The couple eventually celebrated with a private ceremony with their families in Namibia, Africa.

While the family of four previously resided in California, they moved to Miami for political reasons in 2021. In August 2024, Michaels explained to Fox News that her family was building a home in Wyoming.

“First of all, it’s gorgeous. Second of all, I don’t think you could be surrounded by nicer people,” she said. “They’re so lovely and cool. And it’s like there’s something about the Americana peace … You find that sort of patriotism and Americana in Wyoming, and I tend to love it. And I’m also a big outdoors person. Ride horses, go hiking. Love nature.”