A former coach on “The Biggest Loser” is swatting back after a Netflix docuseries about the wildly popular 2000s-era weight loss show portrayed her in a less-than-flattering light.
In a flood of Instagram posts Tuesday, Jillian Michaels posted screenshots of emails and texts between her, former co-host Bob Harper, the show’s medical consultant Dr. Robert Huizenga, and producers on the show, seeking to clear her name.
Among other claims, Netflix’s “Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser” alleges Michaels plied contestants with caffeine pills even though they were supposedly banned, restricted competitors’ calorie intakes to dangerously low levels, and denied medical care and medicine to some.
The evidence doesn’t seem to fully exculpate Michaels of any wrongdoing so much as it implicates everyone else as well.
One email from a coordinating producer appears to show them discussing obtaining a fat burner called “Stacker,” for instance, which contains sources of caffeine, in addition to other ingredients.
“Caffeine was NEVER banned on The Biggest Loser,” Michaels wrote in the caption. She then threw co-host Harper under the bus and claimed “the ‘stackers fat burner’ were actually his suggestion.”
At the end of that post, Michaels also shared a screenshot of a text Harper sent in June 2014 where he complained that she never replied to his messages.
“I really think it’s shitty of you to not even respond to my texts,” the message reads. “It’s this kind of thing that always makes me so disappointed [by] our relationship.”
The screengrab is limited to just Harper’s (alleged) message, so there’s no context whatsoever for the rest of the conversation. Michaels said the text was “my second to last text ever to Bob Harper. Take from it what you will.”
In another post, Michaels said she has correspondence proving she didn’t force contestants to dangerously restrict their calories.
“I have an example of a direct written correspondence with a contestant, while she was home for the holidays during filming, in which I explicitly instructed her to consume 1,600 calories per day,” she wrote.
Many of the docuseries’ more shocking moments went unaddressed, however.
Season 8 contestant Tracey Yukich told Netflix she almost died after the trainers made her and other contestants run a mile on a beach to open the season. Yukich developed a life-threatening muscle condition known as rhabdomyolysis and collapsed before the finish line.
“I don’t remember a lot,” she told Netflix. “I remember hearing the helicopter. I just felt like I was floating. And then my grandpa was there. And then I saw darkness. But then I saw light. So I knew, I knew I died that day.”
Dr. Huizenga said he was unaware of the challenge before it happened.
The 51-year-old trainer, who now appears as a conservative commentator, told TMZ she plans to sue Netflix, Harper and Dr. Huizenga.
Michaels has been on a media tear recently. Earlier this month, she appeared on a CNN panel hosted to discuss Trump’s efforts to literally rewrite history at the Smithsonian. Why CNN would seek out the opinion of Michaels, who has no background in either history or museum curation, is unclear.
The fitness guru proceeded to offer a vigorous defense of white people during a discussion about slavery.
