Jillian Michaels, personal trainer and former host of NBC’s The Biggest Loser, came under fire after sharing her thoughts about the keto diet during an interview with Women’s Health. Her response has everyone from The Today Show host Al Roker to the Keto Guido himself, aka Vinny from Jersey Shore, firing back. Michaels’ opinion on keto? She’s not a fan.
Her full statement on the diet, which you can hear in the video above, was as follows:
“I don’t understand. I don’t know why anyone would think this is a good idea. You know what we need to do? Eat all fat and animal protein! No, bad plan for a million reasons! Let’s start with the first one, your cells, your macromolecules, literally are made up of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids. When you do not eat one of the three macronutrients, those three things I just mentioned, you’re starving your cells. Those macronutrients serve an important purpose for your overall health and well-being, each and everyone of them. Period, end of story, you don’t eat processed sugar, you don’t eat processed grains, and to make a very long story short—avoid the keto diet.”
Those are some strong words. Naturally, because it’s the Internet, people had a lot of thoughts on this, and things got very heated very quickly. Al Roker, Today Show host and avid keto supporter, was one of the first people to jump into the fray.
So @JillianMichaels says #Keto is a bad idea. This from a woman who promoted on camera bullying , deprivation, manipulation and more weekly in the name of weight loss. Now those sound like bad ideas
Roker’s keto clap-back got a lot of people talking on Twitter about the effectiveness of the keto diet and what grounds Michaels has to be commenting on it. Michaels has not publicly responded to Roker’s tweet but did send him a private response.
Jersey Shore’s Vinny Guadagnino, who is an avid supporter of the keto diet, posted these before and after photos to his keto Instagram account following Michaels comments. The caption says it all.
Michaels has been open about her dislike of the keto diet in the past but has never received such a backlash. In April of 2018, she even posted an article on her blog outlining her issues with the diet.
Ultimately, in a discussion on The Today Show, Roker stepped back his argument and stated there are arguments and research on both sides about whether or not keto is a productive diet. Whether or not keto is right for you varies per individual body and lifestyle.
