Biggest Loser trainer Michelle Bridges' career aspirations outweigh her tumultuous love life

MICHELLE Bridges is back on TV's Biggest Loser this week training an entire town and attempting to shrug off gossip about her affair with fellow trainer Steve "Commando" Willis

HAS Michelle Bridges' love life derailed her career ambitions? Not if The Biggest Loser trainer has any say in it.

When I spoke to Bridges a year ago, she outlined her dream of building her fitness empire with husband-manager Bill Moore, with the ultimate aim of hosting her own Oprah Winfrey-style TV show.

The 43-year-old has penned a swag of best-selling books, launched a fitness apparel range through Big W, and has a successful online personal training service with thousands of clients.

"The Biggest Loser has given me a platform to fulfil my ambitions - to get my message across to as many people as possible," Bridges said last time we spoke.

Fast forward 12 months and Bridges has spent more time in the gossip columns than fitness pages, thanks to her affair with fellow Biggest Loser trainer Steve "Commando" Willis.

The on-again-off-again relationship is well and truly on again. Bridges has split from Moore. Willis and shocked partner Froso have also broken up. The pair have two young children, Ella and Jack.

All of a sudden, Bridges has gone from role model to "the other woman". If that bothers Bridges, she's not showing it.

"That's life," Bridges says of the upheaval over the past year. "Life changes and if it doesn't you should check your pulse. I still have businesses that are up and running so nothing there is going to change.

"New plans, new horizons - potentially there could be different pathways that I choose to take but ultimately I'm in this industry of health and fitness.

"Everybody has a personal life and a professional life and for the most part they don't cross over. I think the general public … know what I do and stand for and who I am."

Bridges hits local TV screens this week on the latest series of The Biggest Loser. The ninth season, Challenge Australia, centres on the Victorian country town of Ararat.

Bridges has been missing from the first couple of weeks but she is back with a vengeance in a big twist for the show.

"I'm sneaking in to train the entire town and also training the eliminated contestants on the quiet - and then we go back for revenge," Bridges says. "Shannan and Steve obviously softened the town up because I got a pretty warm reception.

"People were very welcoming and ready to go.

"The work we've (Bridges, Ponton, Willis) done there (in Ararat) is definitely something to be proud of."

The Biggest Loser, Channel 10, Sunday, 6.30pm, Monday and Tuesday, 7.30pm