14 DAY TRIAL // Jillian Michaels, one of the trainers on The Biggest Loser, is again addressing the controversy surrounding the finale of the latest season, which saw Rachel Frederickson crowned winner after losing almost 60 percent of her starting body weight.
Just like she said right after the show, when the entire Internet was arguing that Frederickson had lost too much weight, almost to an apparently unhealthy extent, Michaels is convinced that this was the case.
However, she tells Huffington Post Live in a Skype interview, she also thinks that Rachel’s dropping so many pounds was proof of her unhealthy relation with food, just like her starting weight was. The interview is available at the link in this paragraph.
Michaels admits that she was “stunned” when Rachel walked on stage for the big reveal because, while trainers usually keep in touch with contestants throughout the 3 months after they leave the ranch, she never heard anything from or of Frederickson.
“Nobody told me like, ‘Oh hey, Rachel is very, very thin.’ Bob [Harper] and I had no idea. Nobody had told us. Nobody had said anything to us. So yes, I was stunned. Obviously I thought she had lost too much weight. I was immediately concerned and wondering how this happened,” she says.
As it happens, the cameras zoomed in on her and Bob when Rachel walked on stage, and their reaction clearly revealed what they were thinking. Viewers at home say Jillian mouth “Oh my God” a couple of times, which was the strongest indication that she did not approve of what she was seeing: and what she was seeing was a Rachel who had gone from 260 pounds (117.9 kg) to 105 pounds (47.6 kg).
“In my opinion, this had fallen through those checks and balances. With that said, anybody who gains too much weight or loses too much weight, ironically these are manifestations of the same issue. It simply means that somebody is utilizing their relationship with food to manage emotions that are painful, hard, difficult to face or control,” Michaels continues.
Not that she has any reason to worry anymore: though Rachel looked too thin on the show’s finale, she’s already put on a few more pounds. She recently spoke with Savannah Guthrie on The Today Show, where she explained that she was learning how to do maintenance work on her figure now that she’d gotten back to her regular life, including work.
Still, Frederickson insisted, she had lost all the weight in a “healthy” way, during her time on the show. She had previously admitted to working out a total of 6 hours a day after she left the ranch.