Look, I’ll be honest with you. Jillian Michaels has not historically been someone I’ve championed. The aggressive boot-camp energy, the “no excuses” rhetoric, it’s not exactly been my vibe. So when her Jubilee debate on body positivity started doing the rounds, I clicked on it ready to roll my eyes into next week.
Surprisingly, I did not roll my eyes.
I’m not saying I agree with everything she’s ever said or done. But in that video, she made three points that I think deserve a proper, thoughtful conversation. Backed up with science, not just hot takes. I also want to add some nuance she didn’t cover, including the part of the body positivity movement that I believe in deeply, and the thing that I genuinely credit with my own lasting weight loss.
Let’s get into it.
First, Let’s Talk About What Body Positivity Actually Is
Before we agree or disagree with anything, we need to be honest about what the body positivity movement was supposed to be, versus what it sometimes gets used as.
Body positivity started as a disability rights and fat acceptance movement in the late 1960s. It was never really about telling people that every lifestyle choice is equally healthy. It was about fighting discrimination, demanding dignity, and insisting that human beings deserve respect and proper medical care regardless of their size.
That part? I’m 100% here for it. More on that in a bit.
The movement has, over time, been co-opted, commercialised, and in some corners, simplified in ways that don’t serve anyone. That’s exactly what Jillian called out in the Jubilee video.
Jillian’s Point 1: Obesity Is Not Healthy, and Pretending It Is Puts Lives at Risk
This is the most controversial thing she said, and also the one that’s most squarely supported by research.
Obesity (defined clinically as a BMI over 30, though we’ll get to why BMI is imperfect in a moment) is associated with significantly increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers, sleep apnoea, and joint disease. This is not opinion. A landmark study published in The Lancet analysing data from almost four million people across 57 countries found that both overweight and obesity were associated with higher all-cause mortality.
In South Africa specifically, this matters enormously. Statistics South Africa has found that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) (the category that includes diabetes and heart disease, both strongly linked to obesity) are responsible for more than 50% of deaths in South Africa among people over 15. According to SANHANES, over 70% of South African women and 39% of South African men are either overweight or obese.
These aren’t numbers designed to shame anyone. They’re numbers that should be mobilising our public health response.
Here’s where I add nuance Jillian didn’t: BMI is a crude tool. It was invented by a mathematician in the 1800s and was never designed to measure individual health. It doesn’t account for muscle mass, bone density, fat distribution, or ethnicity, and research has shown that BMI-based health categorisations are particularly inaccurate for Black and Asian populations. Two people can have the same BMI with very different metabolic health profiles.
So, excess body fat, particularly visceral fat (the fat around your organs), does pose genuine health risks. Pretending otherwise is not kindness, it’s avoidance. But reducing every person to a number on a scale and declaring their health from there? That’s also not science. That’s laziness dressed up as medicine.
Jillian’s Point 2: Large Food Companies Are Primary Beneficiaries of Body Positivity
Oof. This one stings because it’s true.
This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s documented. Ultra-processed food companies have a long history of funding research, influencing public health guidelines, and co-opting social movements that could otherwise threaten their bottom line. A 2018 investigation published in BMJ Open found that Coca-Cola spent nearly $120 million funding researchers and health organisations between 2011 and 2015, with the strategic goal of shifting focus away from diet and towards physical activity as the primary driver of obesity.
When a movement that says “love yourself at any size” becomes a marketing tool for a company selling highly processed, nutritionally void food in feel-good packaging, something has gone wrong. “Body positive” branding on a product designed to promote overconsumption of ultra-processed food is not liberation. It’s exploitation.
This doesn’t mean the entire movement is corrupt or that anyone who supports body positivity is being naive. It means we need to be critical consumers, of both food and messaging.
The food environment in South Africa is not innocent here either. Research published in PLOS Medicine found that global fast food chains and large food manufacturers have invested heavily in South African markets, and that the marketing of ultra-processed foods is ubiquitous, particularly in lower-income communities where healthy food access is already limited. The body positivity movement, at its best, should be challenging these systems, not becoming their best advertising campaign.
Jillian’s Point 3: The Movement Oversimplifies Disordered Eating and Trauma
This is the point I think about the most, because it’s the most layered.
Jillian’s argument was that for many people, the relationship with food, body, and weight is rooted in trauma, disordered eating, and psychological pain, and that telling someone to “just love themselves” without addressing the underlying issue doesn’t help. It may, in some cases, actively harm.
The research backs this up. Studies have found that binge eating disorder (BED) (the most common eating disorder in adults) is frequently associated with childhood trauma, depression, and anxiety. The prevalence of BED in people with obesity is estimated at around 5–30% depending on the clinical setting. If someone is in a cycle of disordered eating that is causing them harm, and the cultural message they receive is “this is fine, love yourself,” that’s not the same as healing.
It’s also worth noting that eating disorders affect people of all sizes. One of the genuinely important contributions of the body positivity movement has been drawing attention to the fact that eating disorders don’t “look” a certain way, and that people in larger bodies are frequently not screened or treated for disorders like anorexia because clinicians assume their restriction is something to be encouraged. That’s dangerous.
A 2018 review published in BMC Medicine found that weight stigma in healthcare settings actually increases psychological distress, disordered eating behaviours, and avoidance of medical care. The opposite of what we want.
So here’s where I land. The movement oversimplifies when it flattens complex psychological realities into a slogan. The health world oversimplifies when it treats weight as the symptom and the cause and the diagnosis, all at once.
The Part Jillian Didn’t Mention: Medical Discrimination Is Real and It Is Killing People
Here’s where I diverge from Jillian’s framing, because there’s a side of body positivity she didn’t address in that video, and it’s the side I care about most deeply.
One of the most important things the body positivity movement has fought for is basic medical dignity, the right to walk into a doctor’s office with a broken arm, a sore throat, a concerning mole, and have that treated without being told to lose weight first.
Weight bias in healthcare is not a fringe issue. A systematic review published in Obesity Reviews found that many healthcare providers hold significant negative attitudes towards people with obesity, and that these attitudes translate into less time spent with patients, less thorough investigations, and poorer quality of care.
In South Africa’s healthcare context, where resources are already stretched and patients may have limited access to specialists, being dismissed or de-prioritised at a primary care level can have serious, sometimes fatal, consequences.
People deserve to be investigated properly. Symptoms deserve to be taken seriously. A woman going to her doctor with fatigue, joint pain, or irregular cycles should not simply be told “lose weight and come back.” She deserves blood tests, a differential diagnosis, and a clinician who sees her as a full human being with a full set of possible causes for what she’s experiencing.
This is what I believe body positivity is for. Not to deny the health risks of obesity. But to insist that the person carrying that body is still deserving of care, thoroughness, and respect.
Now, the Part That Changed Everything for Me
Here is what I know to be true about my own experience with weight loss, and why I believe it’s backed by psychology:
I didn’t lose the weight, and keep it off, because I hated myself into a smaller body.
I lost it when I genuinely, actually learned to love and respect my body.
I don’t mean the Instagram version of body love. I mean the quiet, unremarkable daily reality of it, choosing food and movement from a place of care rather than punishment.
Here’s the psychology behind this, research in self-determination theory, developed by Deci and Ryan, consistently shows that intrinsic motivation (doing something because it aligns with your values and makes you feel good) leads to far more sustainable behaviour change than extrinsic motivation, which includes shame, fear, and external pressure.
When I was in diet culture mode, the internal conversation sounded like: I shouldn’t have that. I’ve failed. I’ll start again Monday. I’ll be good today. Food was a morality system. My body was a project I was failing.
When I actually developed self-respect and body love, that conversation changed entirely. It became: I don’t actually want that because it makes me feel sluggish and bloated and it doesn’t serve how I want to feel in my body. Not “I can’t have it.” I don’t want it. Because I care about how I feel.
That shift, from restriction to respect, is not a fluffy concept. It has real psychological mechanisms. A study in Eating Behaviors found that self-compassion was significantly associated with more intuitive eating (eating in response to actual hunger and satiety cues rather than emotional triggers or external rules). The people who were harshest on themselves after a dietary slip were the ones most likely to keep slipping. The people who responded with kindness and got back on track? They did better.
Shame is not a sustainable motivational tool. Love, it turns out, is.
I know this has been a lot. So here’s the short version:
Jillian Michaels was right that pretending obesity has no health risks is not kindness, it’s avoidance. She was right that corporate interests have co-opted body positivity in ways that don’t serve the people the movement was meant to help. She was also right that “just love yourself” is not a treatment plan for complex psychological relationships with food and eating.
But body positivity at its best is not about any of those things. It’s about fighting for dignity in medical settings. It’s about demanding that people not be reduced to a number on a scale before they’re seen as worthy of care. It’s about recognising that the shame-based approach to health has failed, catastrophically, and that there might be a gentler, more sustainable path.
That path, the one where you respect your body enough to take care of it, where healthy choices feel like acts of love rather than punishment, where food loses its moral charge entirely, that path is real. I’ve lived it.
You can hold Jillian’s valid points and body positivity’s core truths at the same time. They’re not actually in opposition. They only seem that way when we flatten complex things into slogans, and all of us, on every side of this conversation, are guilty of that sometimes.
Have thoughts? I’d love to hear them. This is one of those conversations that needs more nuance, not less.
