Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Why both sides are missing the point and what actually matters inside your gym

There’s a video making its way through fitness spaces right now, with Jillian Michaels on one end and the body positivity movement on the other. I’m not picking a camp, and that’s intentional. Because neither side is actually standing where this conversation matters most, and that is inside your gym.

This is the part of the conversation that defines real CrossFit coach responsibility.

what’s missing

Here is what is missing from that entire debate. The person standing in your gym right now. The one who drove past three times before they finally pulled into the parking lot, sat in their car for ten minutes before walking through the door, and is now watching every single person in that room out of the corner of their eye, trying to figure out whether they belong there or whether someone is about to confirm the worst things they have always believed about themselves.

That person does not need you to have a philosophical opinion about body positivity. They need you to be a professional coach.

So let’s talk about what that actually means when we look objectively at what both sides were saying, and the harsh realities neither side is willing to admit about what actually happens inside your four walls.

claim 1:

Obesity is not healthy, and pretending it is puts lives at risk.

Jillian is right about something that should not be controversial. Health is real and excess body fat carries measurable risk, whether we are talking about lipotoxicity, ectopic fat storage, or inflammatory response. As coaches, we do not get to ignore objective data, and we certainly shouldn’t pretend that a blood panel showing fatty liver markers somehow translates into being “healthy for you.” That is not self-acceptance. Let’s deploy our BS-detector here. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of what health actually is. Your athletes don’t need you to skirt around truth. They need you to stop muddying it because that’s contributing to the problem.

One of the body positivity advocates pushes back, suggesting that weight is merely a “social determinant” of health, and later implies that despite having markers for fatty liver disease, she is “healthy for her.”

Their body fat percentage has zero bearing on their value as a human being, but it has a massive bearing on their all-cause mortality.

But here is where Jillian’s claim breaks down on the gym floor.

Where her argument breaks down is in how that reality is applied. She speaks as though people in larger bodies are unaware of the risks they are carrying, as though the problem is a lack of information. It’s not. Every single person who has walked through your door in a larger body already knows. They have been living inside that reality for years. What they need from you isn’t confirmation of what they already fear. What they need is a coach who can take where they are and move them forward.

This is where CrossFit’s framework matters. Health is not a binary. It’s a continuum from sickness to wellness to fitness. Your job is not to point out where someone is standing. Your job is to hand them a ladder and move them along that continuum. Can they move better than they could last month? Is their work capacity improving? Are they building strength and resilience over time? That is what health looks like in motion, and that’s something Jillian’s framework doesn’t account for. Ours does.

claim 2:

Large food companies are primary financial beneficiaries of the body positivity movement.

The second part of this conversation is the one that should make you uncomfortable, because it requires you to look at your own house before you point at anyone else. Jillian is right when she calls out the role of large food companies and the way they profit from the very systems they claim to support. She references Washington Post investigations showing registered dietitians with millions of followers using anti-diet language (“food freedom,” “ditch the diet”) while being paid by Big Food companies. She describes teams of scientists working around the clock to engineer the precise fat content in each chip so consumers never have to stop and take a drink of water. The engineering of hyper-palatable foods, the funding of messaging that removes friction from consumption, and the downstream profit from chronic disease is not conspiracy. It is business.

In response, one of the advocates literally says, “I don’t care who uses my movement… if someone wants to come and get on our coattails, that’s perfectly fine.”

Jillian states the body positivity movement has been weaponized into a free marketing arm for Nabisco and Coca-Cola. Big Food engineers chemically addictive, hyper-palatable junk to bypass human satiety cues. They fund “intuitive eating” influencers to tell people that restricting these foods is “diet culture.” Then, when the population inevitably slides into chronic disease, Big Pharma steps in to sell them GLP-1 agonists and lifelong medications. It is a closed-loop economic ecosystem that prints billions of dollars by keeping people sick and telling them it’s empowerment.

CrossFit coaches should find this argument deeply familiar. The foundational nutrition prescription (Meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar) was always as much a political rebellion as a nutritional one. Your affiliate is a lifeboat in a culture actively trying to poison your athletes.

But here is the part where you do not get to sit this one out as a coach. Look at what is inside your affiliate. Look at what’s in your fridge; processed recovery drinks, processed protein bars with ingredient lists that read like a chem lab and energy drinks built around artificial everything.

And it goes way deeper than the fridge. Look at what happens when the gym throws a community event, a Friday Night Lights, or a holiday throwdown. What is sitting on the folding tables right beneath the whiteboard? Boxes of donuts. Stacks of pizzas. Coolers full of the exact processed bull**** we are supposedly fighting against.

You can’t stand in front of your athletes and talk about the sickness to wellness to fitness continuum while handing them the exact products that move them in the opposite direction. You don’t get to claim you are building a lifeboat while serving the same water that’s sinking them. Extreme accountability starts in-house.

claim 3:

The body positivity movement oversimplifies disordered eating and trauma.

What neither side is fully addressing is the complexity of what people bring into your gym. This is not just about body fat or food choices. There are biological, behavioral, and sometimes deeply rooted psychological factors at play. That is not your role to diagnose or fix. But it’s absolutely your responsibility to manage within your coaching.

How do you manage it? You lean on the methodology: Mechanics, Consistency, Intensity. You don’t load a barbell before the movement pattern is established. The exact same principle applies to human psychology. You build the relationship first (Mechanics). You prove you are a safe, reliable presence (Consistency). Only then do you earn the right to have harder conversations about health, body composition, and behavior (Intensity).

Contrary to the body positivity advocate’s assertion, you don’t heal trauma by telling someone to look in the mirror and chant affirmations. It doesn’t work. You heal it through the undeniable routine of doing hard things in a supportive environment. When an athlete realizes their body is an instrument capable of deadlifting hundreds of pounds, their psychology fundamentally shifts. Action precedes belief.

claim 4:

Marcy’s Counter-Claim. Shame is far more dangerous than body positivity.

The body positivity side of the argument gets one critical thing right. Shame does not drive change. It drives people to hide, avoid, and disconnect. It reinforces the worst internal narrative someone already carries about themselves, and it’s one of the fastest ways to lose an athlete for good.

But removing shame does not mean removing standards, and this is where the line gets blurred. There is a difference between attacking a person and addressing their current state. Shame says you are a crisis. Accountability says this is where you are, and we are going to move forward from here. Those are not the same conversation, and your athletes feel the difference immediately.

And before someone says it, yes… for some people, shame is the thing that got them moving. I’ve heard those stories too. It can flip a switch and create urgency. But let’s not confuse a reaction with a system. That kind of push usually comes with a cost (often much higher than they will ever admit to themselves) and most people are still paying for it long after the weight comes off. As a coach, I’m not interested in lighting a fire that someone has to keep feeding with self-hatred just to stay moving. That’s not the kind of foundation we’re building inside a CrossFit Affiliate.

the coach’s manifesto

So what does this mean for you and your affiliate:

It means you stop pretending health is subjective just because the conversation around it gets complex. Health is measurable, observable, and worth pursuing. You don’t have to agree that every starting point is the same destination, but you do have to take responsibility for helping someone move from where they are to somewhere better. That’s the job.

It means you take a hard look at your own environment before you critique anyone else’s. Your coaching starts long before you open your mouth. It’s in what is stocked in your fridge, what’s celebrated in your space, and what’s normalized at your events. You can’t claim to be fighting chronic disease while casually reinforcing the same behaviors that created it. Your environment isn’t neutral, it sets the example in every way. It’s either moving people forward or holding them in place.

It means you stay in your scope, but you take your craft seriously. You aren’t there to diagnose trauma or play therapist, but you are responsible for creating a space where someone can actually show up, stay, and do the work. That requires consistency, awareness, and patience. You build trust first, earn the right to push second, and you don’t rush that process just because you are uncomfortable sitting in it.

And it means you learn how to separate the human from the data every single time. You demand accountability in effort, consistency, and execution, but you never attach someone’s worth to where they are starting. Ever. The moment those two things get tied together, you lose them.

nobodys side

So where does that leave you?

It leaves you exactly where you have always been. Responsible for the environment you create, the standards you hold, and the way you deliver truth to the people who trust you enough to walk through your door.

Your job is to hold a standard without stripping someone of their dignity. To separate the human from the data every single time. To create an environment where someone can face the truth about their health without feeling like their worth is being questioned. And then to do the work, alongside them, over and over again. That is the part of this conversation that actually matters.

Love her or dislike her. Believe her claims or question them entirely. But CrossFit has been examining these exact issues longer, and the methodology already has answers she’s missing. 

The methodology is measurable, observable, and repeatable. Show your work and make sure every human who walks through your door is met with the one thing the rest of the world refuses to give them: the truth, delivered with the absolute fu***** certainty that they are capable of changing it. This assumes, of course, they want to. Not everyone will. Lovingly……let them go.