What Actually Changed Jillian Michaels' Mind | Sage Steele Show EP 124
What this video covers
A long, personal Sage Steele Show conversation (Ep 124) about what changed Jillian Michaels’ mind — politically and culturally. The fitness discussion comes first: GLP-1 drugs, the state of online health advice, and the Jubilee body-positivity debate. It then turns to her MAHA scorecard, her sharpest disagreement with the Trump administration (glyphosate immunity), grocery-shopping advice, leaving California, abortion, and why she feels increasingly unwelcome on parts of the right over gay marriage.
Key points
- On GLP-1 drugs, Michaels says the industry conversation is now dominated by them, and that she has “very begrudgingly” allowed them into the toolbox for very specific people — describing how she helps friends use a microdosing protocol alongside exercise and nutrition to limit side effects and avoid regaining weight after stopping.
- She argues the language of the body-positivity movement — “fat liberation,” “fat-bodied” instead of obese — comes from critical theory, drawing on interviews she has done with James Lindsay and others, and says the framing makes it ten times harder to help people.
- Recalling her own history, Michaels says her mother put her in martial arts at about 12 after her parents’ divorce, she had lost the weight by 17, and she went on to own a sports medicine facility by 30 and write eight best-selling books: “when you feel strong physically, you feel stronger in every facet of your life.”
- Her MAHA scorecard: wins include TrumpRx, Dr. Oz’s work on insurance pre-authorizations (“people die waiting for care”), and closing the GRAS loophole; moves in the wrong direction include glyphosate immunity “with no exit strategy” and legalizing flavored vapes that target kids.
- Her biggest disappointment is glyphosate. Michaels claims the weed killer causes cancer — non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in particular — cites a lawsuit payout she puts at roughly $7 billion, and criticizes the administration for granting Bayer/Monsanto immunity the next day on national-defense grounds; she says Kennedy promises an “off-ramp” but has not said what it is, and argues weed-spotting technology should be subsidized instead.
- Her grocery advice: buy produce from the “Clean 15,” avoid the “Dirty Dozen” unless it’s organic; if grass-fed, grass-finished beef is unaffordable, pick lean cuts (she says toxins sit in the fat) or chicken, and simply eat less red meat — or buy a cow share with family.
- On California, Michaels repeats her viral line — “I hold a million cards in your game of woke victimology poker” — calls the state she grew up in a disaster whose system is rigged beyond fixing, and says she would never run for office because winning requires taking money that would then own her.
- On abortion — the topic she says upsets the left most — Michaels describes seeing her son Phoenix moving on an eight-week ultrasound as the moment her view changed: she says she now believes abortion is murder, yet would still land pro-choice up to about 12 weeks because, she argues, women would otherwise seek unsafe alternatives, and the country has to settle somewhere in the middle.
- Asked what would upset the right, she points to gay marriage: Michaels, who is gay and married, describes conservative figures who once engaged with her now refusing to communicate, and defends federal marriage recognition for the thousand-plus rights that protect her family — concluding she has never fully belonged to any tribe, which she says keeps her from becoming tribal.