Jillian Michaels pushes back on claims made against her in Netflix’s ‘Biggest Loser’ docuseries

Jillian Michaels is pushing back against claims made about her in Netflix’s newly released docuseries, Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser, which began streaming on Aug. 15. The series delves into the history of the NBC reality show, The Biggest Loser, which the fitness trainer co-hosted for 12 seasons.

Among the claims made in the docuseries is that Michaels put extreme restrictions on contestants’ diets, bragged to one season winner that he had made her “a millionaire” and broke show rules by giving contestants caffeine pills to help them lose weight. The docuseries features interviews with Michaels’s cohost Bob Harper, the show’s medical consultant Dr. Robert Huizenga and former contestants, cast and crew members.

Michaels shared four Instagram posts on Tuesday that she says challenge the accusations made against her in the Netflix series. Her screenshots include statements attributed to The Biggest Loser’s executive producers Mark Koops and Dave Broome, emails with producers and a former contestant, and an email from former NBC Entertainment chairman Paul Telegdy.

In addition to the Instagram posts, Michaels said she’s also considering filing a lawsuit against Netflix, telling TMZ that she’d already scheduled a meeting with Bryan Freedman, an entertainment lawyer who is representing Justin Baldoni in his legal battle against Blake Lively.

In one of her posts, Michaels shared a screenshot of an email from 2010 to a contestant on the show telling her to eat 1,600 calories the following day, as well as screenshots of emails with show producers and medical staff, which, she wrote in the caption, show her “emphasizing the ongoing priority of ensuring contestants were adequately nourished.”

Michaels also posted screenshots of text messages that she said were sent to her business partner but the screenshots themselves do not show who they are from. In one exchange, the unidentified messenger sent a quote attributed to Broome saying he did not “hear any comment from Jillian about becoming a millionaire during the live finale.” In the second screenshot, the sender says Koops said the cast was wearing microphones at the time and that “no one is aware of any recording capturing such a comment.”

Michaels specifically took issue with the claim that she broke rules and gave contestants caffeine pills — an accusation that had been made prior to the current Netflix series. In a 2013 Biggest Loser episode, host Alison Sweeney confronted Michaels on-air: “Last week Jillian broke the rules and gave caffeine supplements to each member of her team without a doctor’s permission.”

In the Netflix series, Huizenga said he had banned coffee because “people were abusing it.” However, multiple former contestants who were interviewed said they were given these caffeine supplements while filming the show.

“Dr. Huizenga did approve caffeine pills on many seasons,” Michaels wrote on Instagram. “Bob Harper not only knew about the caffeine pills the ‘stacks fat burner’ were actually his suggestion. I wanted to use my brand instead because they were cleaner and had no more than 200mg of caffeine.”

The Biggest Loser debuted on NBC in 2003 and aired for more than a decade. On the show, contestants competed to lose the highest percentage of body weight within 30 weeks, often using weight loss methods including “strenuous exercise” and “caloric restriction,” which were criticized by doctors and nutritionists outside the show at the time, the New York Times reported in 2009.