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"  Under most circumstances, the Santa Monica garden where Jillian Michaels is striking pose after pose would be a delightful place to spend an afternoon. But not today. Today, it&amp;#039;s 55 degrees with a fierce wind blowing. And for the past eight hours, Jillian has been prancing around \u2014 and shivering \u2014 in skimpy summery outfits designed to show off every muscle on her 5-foot-2\u00BD-inch frame. Her muscles are, after all, one of her trademarks, part of the reason America looks to her when they want to get fit. Even if Jillian, 36, insists that at the moment she&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;not in shape,&amp;quot; she looks as if she could arm wrestle Schwarzenegger \u2014 and win. Despite the winterlike weather \u2014 this is California, after all \u2014 Jillian jokes with the crew and drops obscenities with disarming humor. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a foul habit,&amp;quot; Michaels says happily. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s like \u2014 look, I barely drink alcohol, I never party. I swear. It&amp;#039;s disgusting. I&amp;#039;m sorry. I&amp;#039;m working on it.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s just this take-me-as-I-am attitude that has helped make Jillian one of the most popular women on TV today, not to mention a budding mogul. She&amp;#039;s got books. And exercise DVDs. And nutritional supplements. There&amp;#039;s a little TV phenomenon called The Biggest Loser, on which she&amp;#039;s still playing drill-sergeant-with-a-heart-of-gold. And now she has her own show on NBC, Losing It With Jillian, where she moves in for a week with families to help them confront all of their issues, not just the ones related to weight. &amp;quot;The new show is really about reclaiming your life,&amp;quot; says Jillian, now taking a break from the cameras and snuggled in a robin&amp;#039;s-egg-colored bathrobe. &amp;quot;Because when something is intrinsically off and when you right that internal wrong, things will fall into place.&amp;quot; Her approach quickly won over the Mastropietros, the first family Jillian met on Losing It. &amp;quot;At first, we were like, &amp;#039;What are we getting ourselves into?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Agnes, the family&amp;#039;s mom. &amp;quot;But after our workout, she&amp;#039;d put her arms around us.... Jillian is so compassionate. We&amp;#039;ve invited her to my daughter&amp;#039;s wedding, and she&amp;#039;s coming; she&amp;#039;ll be sitting at the head table!&amp;quot; Jillian&amp;#039;s philosophies are built on personal experience; she has spent her life trying to right her own internal wrongs. She&amp;#039;s publicly shared the story about her parents&amp;#039; traumatic divorce when she was 12, her subsequent weight gain \u2014 she was 175 pounds at her heaviest \u2014 and how martial arts slimmed her down. At 17, after endless fights, her mother kicked her out and Jillian had to fend for herself. She eventually became a certified fitness trainer, and at 30 auditioned to be a trainer for a new TV show about obese people shedding pounds. That show, of course, was The Biggest Loser, where her brutal but loving honesty has inspired millions.  Jillian prides herself on that honesty. She&amp;#039;s open about dating both men and women, for example, and about trying drugs as a teen (&amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t like it; I don&amp;#039;t like to be out of control&amp;quot;). No wonder she was so upset when comments she made earlier this year about not ever wanting to get pregnant caused a ruckus. (Jillian was quoted as saying that she couldn&amp;#039;t handle &amp;quot;doing that to [her] body.&amp;quot;) The full story is that Jillian suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis, both of which make conception and pregnancy difficult. &amp;quot;I make an effort to be so transparent \u2014 I say, &amp;#039;Live in your truth, that&amp;#039;s the way to happiness,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Jillian says. But in this case, she held back, and regrets it: &amp;quot;I thought if I talked about my personal limitations, people would say, &amp;#039;How healthy could she be?&amp;#039; This was my weakness and my bad,&amp;quot; Jillian says now. &amp;quot;I learned a hard lesson about feeling ashamed: Just be real. I&amp;#039;m human.&amp;quot;  And her fans wouldn&amp;#039;t want her any other way. &amp;quot;Jillian will walk up and say things like, &amp;#039;I love this butt!&amp;#039; even if you&amp;#039;re 261 pounds,&amp;quot; laughs Agnes. &amp;quot;She always knows how to make you feel good.&amp;quot; On Losing It, you move in with families for a week. Is that enough time to make a significant difference? You can create awareness in a week. The hope is that you identify problems: &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s wrong, here are the tools to fix it.&amp;quot;  Where do you sleep? On the couch?  Couches, sometimes futons. Sometimes, when things are particularly heated with a family, I&amp;#039;ll sleep in a trailer attached to the house. Day one, the families hate me. Day one is screaming and confrontation. Day one is Biggest Loser Jillian. Day two is a little bit of Biggest Loser Jillian, and Day three she pretty much disappears. But I have to \u2014 these families are like, &amp;quot;Oh, my God, this bitch is crazy!&amp;quot; No one knows what they&amp;#039;re getting into. What do they think they&amp;#039;re getting into? I think they presume it&amp;#039;s a fitness show. And the next thing you know, I&amp;#039;m in your marriage, I&amp;#039;m going to school with your kids. I&amp;#039;m, like, in the middle of everything, and it&amp;#039;s just like, &amp;quot;What the hell, what&amp;#039;s happening?&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m lying with one eye open in the middle of the night, waiting for the mom to come in and put a knife through my heart. It&amp;#039;s brutal. It is brutal.  What was the show&amp;#039;s inspiration? I love The Biggest Loser, I&amp;#039;m so grateful for The Biggest Loser, but I was antsy. I told executives at NBC, &amp;quot;I want to get out a bigger message. I love this, but there&amp;#039;s more to me, there&amp;#039;s more to what I do.&amp;quot;  What&amp;#039;s the biggest misconception people have about you? That I&amp;#039;m a bitch. I really don&amp;#039;t have a mean bone in my body! Do you know how easy it would be to tell people what they want to hear? It would be heaven! But, unfortunately, it doesn&amp;#039;t get the job done.  I&amp;#039;ve always felt that people crave structure in their lives, especially when it comes to weight loss. They really want someone to give them that. Here&amp;#039;s the bottom line: When people are being self-destructive, it&amp;#039;s usually unconscious. And so I create confrontations, interventions, where they can become aware of unhealthy choices they&amp;#039;re making and the reasons they&amp;#039;re making them.  Let&amp;#039;s talk about you and your weight struggles as a teen. How did that experience shape you? Oh, my God, it was pure hell. I spent all of eighth grade in my classroom because God forbid I ever left. I was terrorized. And karate saved my life. It all stopped the day I broke two boards with a kick. Have you gone back to any of your school reunions? Not a one. Isn&amp;#039;t there a part of you that&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Ha ha! Look at me now!&amp;quot;? Oh, sure. Honestly, that&amp;#039;s why I&amp;#039;m always with the underdog, because I&amp;#039;m always avenging that underdog part of myself. You&amp;#039;ve helped so many transform. What do you want to change in your life? Hmm. How much time do you have? I&amp;#039;m impatient. I&amp;#039;m demanding. I&amp;#039;m neurotic. I&amp;#039;m high-stress. High-anxiety. Perfectionist to the point of impossibility. Nothing&amp;#039;s ever good enough. I&amp;#039;m never happy. Do you compare yourself to others? No. But I&amp;#039;ll look at other people and I&amp;#039;ll see where they were and what they&amp;#039;ve done, and I&amp;#039;ll use it as a source of inspiration. I&amp;#039;m reading this book on Oprah, and I&amp;#039;m like, Okay, by this age she was here, and I need to do da da da. I study people I admire to see what they did right, what they did wrong, what I can learn from.  You say you started therapy when you were 5. That&amp;#039;s pretty young. I was a really disturbed kid. You know how kids have night terrors? Mine were really bad. I thought sharks were coming out of the drain in the bathtub. I couldn&amp;#039;t sleep at night, every night, waiting for aliens to come. I&amp;#039;m not kidding you: I. Was. Traumatized. And Mom got me into therapy. You also had a rocky period as a teen.  My parents got divorced when I was 12. They were married for 18 years. They were kind of midlife-crisis-ing, and I was sort of the afterthought. I became pretty angry \u2014 no one wanted to deal with me \u2014 so when I was 17, my mom was like, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re not living here.&amp;quot; We were fighting. But I learned a lot being on my own. I grew up. I had to make money. I learned how to make decisions that are right for me. What would you like to be known for? I&amp;#039;d just like to be known as a friend to people. Somebody who wants to see the world do better. Somebody who wants to see people live well. I really don&amp;#039;t give a [bleep] about anything else.  What&amp;#039;s your ultimate goal? Ha. I could never answer that without looking like a total monster. Okay, [bleep] it: I would like to win a Nobel Prize. In a perfect world I&amp;#039;d like to get to that place where I walk away from everything. And then I can be pure Bill Gates. Cure smallpox. I want to turn around and be like, &amp;quot;I cured smallpox. How about those apples?&amp;quot; You know what I mean? Or, like, &amp;quot;I reversed global warming. How &amp;#039;bout that?&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a6290/jillian-michaels-interview/>