Jillian Michaels and Pregnancy

I'm not a big fan of Jillian Michaels and I've ranted about her in the past.

I'm a little late to the show on this one but, she got into a bit of controversy over some comments that she made about pregnancy.



She's quoted in Women's Health as saying that she's not going to have biological children of her own and that:

"I'm going to adopt," and, "I can't handle doing that to my body."

Some media outlets took that and misquoted her as saying that she said something along the line that she "Won't ruin my body with pregnancy."

Okay fine. She was misquoted. But quite frankly, I don't think her actual comment is much better.

As someone who is in the spotlight, has had weight issues in the past, and has a rather large following of her weight loss programs from young women that do not have kids yet, she needs to be careful with comments like this that could greatly influence (or terrify) them into wanting to have a child.

Besides, just because you have a child doesn't mean a woman's figure is ruined. In fact I would almost go as far to say that for the most part, women that I know that had great figures before getting pregnant returned to that figure after a little bit of time after they gave birth.

Bottom line, I think she could have easily said "I'm going to adopt" and ended the sentence there and no one would have blinked an eye.

Thoughts?

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Another Fitness Rant

Sorry, last week turned out busier than expected so I didn't get in my normal blogging.

I read this article that talks about using plyometrics to burn fat.

We all know that walking and running can help sculpt legs, but the key to melting fat and building lean muscle is with plyometrics training, says übertrainer and new SELF contributor Jillian Michaels. Her favorite firmer? Jump squats.

Yes, it's true that plyometric movements (movements that involve high intensity jumping just as tuck jumps, jump squats, lateral jumps, etc) can burn a lot of calories because of the amount of muscle it needs to use from the entire body and the type of muscle that it needs to use to get that explosiveness. But to say that it is the KEY to burn fat and building muscle is a bit laughable as there are plenty of other options to reach those two goals.

ANS, it is COMPLETELY irresponsible of an article and a trainer to suggest that ANYONE can do these. That is just not correct. If someone who has never worked out before all of a sudden tries these out, it's almost a guaranteed knee blowout.

It's the same problem that I have with the P90X program that I mentioned here in the comments of the posting.

This is a major problem that I've had with celebrity trainers (and Jillian Michaels to be more specifically) when they make these off the cuff comments without taking one ounce of time to think about potential damage that their advice to people who are not ready for various exercise can cause.

I've stood by the concept of progression since the start of training people. Depending on what level of fitness you are at, you are going to start working out differently from someone else. If you're a beginner, you do basic exercises to slowly build up muscle and bone mineral density. If you're more advanced, then you can do more advanced movements such as plyometrics.

I just find it very disturbing that mainstream media trainers are just treating everyone the same, thinking everyone can do the same workout regardless of fitness level and have no problems giving this information out without a disclaimer. It's the one part of this business that drives me nuts.

End Rant.

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