JILLIAN MICHAELS'S SPINE INJURY: 'I'VE GOT MY LIFE BACK'

THE CELEBRITY TRAINER OPENS UP ABOUT A DEVASTATING FREAK ACCIDENT AND HER GRUELING, SIX-MONTH PATH TO RECOVERY 

- LANAE BRODY and DANA ROSE FALCONE 

Jillian Michaels doesn’t do anything half-heartedly. So, in April 2021—not long after she and her wife, DeShanna Marie Minuto, started following cryptocurrency—Michaels saw the prices spike and raced to tell Minuto, who was just getting out of the shower, that she had to “sell, sell, sell! So I tear into the bathroom and the floor’s wet,” recalls Michaels, 49, who slipped and fell, slamming into the edge of the bathtub with her back. “It was like a Garfield cartoon with the banana peel. I went sailing into the air, horizontal. I get up and, in theory, I think I’m fine. But I had no idea I had just fractured my spine.”

For Michaels—best known for her tough-love approach with contestants on TV’s The Biggest Loser—it was the beginning of a nearly yearlong ordeal that left the high-energy fitness and nutrition expert in excruciating pain and barely able to move. “I thought, ‘Is this the end of my career?’” says Michaels, who also struggled with bouts of deep depression. After months of trying to fight through the pain, Michaels was finally diagnosed with three herniated discs and a fractured spine. Since then she has made a steady recovery and is ready to share her story in hopes of helping others. “People do all the wrong things and make it so much worse. The important thing is to listen to your body,” says the mom of two, who now lives in Miami with daughter Lukensia, 13, and son Phoenix, 10 (whom she shares with her former partner, yoga instructor Heidi Rhoades). “I’m just happy I’ve got my life back.”