The Weight Of Beautiful With Jackie Goldschneider

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Speaker 10 Welcome to the shit show. Things are going to get weird.

Speaker 10 It's your fae villain, Kale Lower.

Speaker 10 And you're listening to Barely Famous.

Speaker 10 Welcome to Barely Famous Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us, Jackie.
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 10 I'm so excited because I was reading your book and I know that it came out in 2023, but there's a lot that we could talk about in here if you're okay with it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, everything. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 10 Well, first, let's start about, let's start with where you are today and then we'll go back. Right.

Speaker 2 In recovery?

Speaker 10 No, just in general.

Speaker 2 Like you did in the Real Housewives. Yes.

Speaker 10 You have two sets of twins. You're an attorney.
You have, you went to school to be an attorney. You practice law.
So where are you today? Do you still film the show?

Speaker 2 Do you still film? So my show is on pause. So we don't know what's going on with it.
The last time we filmed was a year and a half ago, so except for the one-off at Rails.

Speaker 2 We finished filming the last season in October of 23. So it's been a long time.
So the show is on hold, so not doing that currently. Okay.

Speaker 2 I am not practicing law anymore. Right.

Speaker 2 I am writing my second book, which is very, very exciting. I don't have the book deal yet, though.
Okay.

Speaker 10 You don't need one.

Speaker 2 Well, no, no, I'll get one. I'll get one.
Okay. Okay.
I'm not worried about that. But my first book that we're going to talk about today was a memoir.
So I sold that on proposal. Okay.

Speaker 2 But so I do have an agent already and I have a publisher who I did. My first book did very well.
So I'm sure that they would give me another book deal, but this one's a novel.

Speaker 2 So I have to write most of it first in order to sell it. So I'm almost there.
So I should have a book deal in the coming weeks.

Speaker 10 Do we have a genre? Are you willing to say what the genre is?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I went all over the place with this at the beginning, but it is, I think, like dark comedy. Oh, okay, it's a revenge fantasy, okay?

Speaker 2 But it's, I was gonna make it a drama, but the drama and revenge together made it too, it was just too sullen. So, it's uh, dark comedy is a little bit better.

Speaker 10 I'm a big fan of dark romance.

Speaker 2 Oh, I don't know dark romance, yeah.

Speaker 10 Dark romance is like falling in love with your stalker, falling in love with it's like dark.

Speaker 2 I'm a little bit dark, you know.

Speaker 10 Wow, yeah, so that sounds like that's right up my alley because I also love like a good rom-com, so the two of them together, I feel like, would be good. fun.

Speaker 10 So you are, you're, you're, you were just telling me that your twins just turned 17. They got their car.

Speaker 2 It's crazy. It's crazy when your little boys are suddenly men.

Speaker 10 Well, I just feel like I just read about them. So it's hard for me to like picture.
And then I saw on your Instagram that you had got them the car.

Speaker 10 And I was like, wait a minute, they just, they were just born.

Speaker 2 I know. Isn't that so weird?

Speaker 2 I know. They really were just born.
Yeah, my older boys turned 17 and they're fully men. It's crazy.

Speaker 10 And they're, they're in high school, right? High school.

Speaker 2 One of them is, they both play basketball. One's had a problem with his knees.

Speaker 2 So the other one, but the other one is just like, he's 6'1 and he's like a basketball star and looking at, he's getting recruited by colleges. How crazy is that? It's just wild.

Speaker 10 Does he have like where he wants to go?

Speaker 2 No, not yet, because they did a bridge year at a sports academy to get taller for basketball, but it was also like school. So that was between eighth and ninth grade.
So they're only sophomores. Okay.

Speaker 2 So they're finishing up their sophomore year. So it's all just getting going, but it depends what who asks him to play for them.

Speaker 10 So we became moms around the same time then.

Speaker 2 My first baby was, you have a 17-year-old?

Speaker 10 No, he's 15.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. So we were both sort of, yeah.
Yeah. And then my, my second set of twins are 14.
So almost the same. Wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 Well, I remember reading in your book that you had four kids under three, like three and under.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so you know.

Speaker 10 Crazy. That is.
No, I do, but I'm just thinking like to start motherhood, like that was how you started and you didn't know any different.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I like that.

Speaker 2 like i'm i'm crazy i like every minute of the day having something to do which which also has to do a little bit with like my psychosis but i when i have too much leisure time i start to feel bad okay and i don't know what to do with myself right so for me having four kids under three worked and you stopped practicing law once you decided to get pregnant and start a family no no i stopped practicing law because i didn't think i'd move to new jersey so i only took the new york bar so i I actually liked practicing law and I was good at it.

Speaker 2 But when I left, when I had the first set of toys, I had this fantasy in my head that we'd be living in the city and I'd be a working lawyer and my husband in finance and we'd have this one little baby in the bugaboo.

Speaker 2 And then I had twins. Right.
And then I was sick and I was on bed rest and I didn't feel good. And when the twins came, I was like, I don't know how to do this like and work, you know? It's hard.

Speaker 2 And then the apartment got so cramped, I was like stepping over toys and i said let's get the hell out of here like let's go to new jersey yeah but in new jersey i didn't take the bar and i wasn't going to sit again for the bar with newborn twins at home so i just let the whole thing go but so could you still i could yeah i mean i could take the jersey bar you can't wave in um last i checked you can't wave into new jersey okay um but i could i could go back to work in new york yeah it's i don't know how passionate i i'm really passionate about writing books yeah well i read that in this book and i'm so excited to hear more about this novel because i'm a big big book girly yeah love to read and um that sounds like it's right up my alley so i'm excited for that but so you grew up in new jersey no i grew up in staten island new york but then you moved to new jersey as a teenager as a teenager and i had a horrific high school experience which really formed the basis of everything that came afterwards with eating disorders can we talk about it yeah okay so when i was reading i tabbed a bunch of stuff because even if you don't struggle with an eating disorder there were so many things in this book that were relatable to me.

Speaker 10 And so I tabbed a couple of the things. If we, if you don't mind, we can go over them.

Speaker 10 So you are first generation here from immigrants, right? Your parents were immigrated.

Speaker 2 My mother.

Speaker 10 Your mother immigrated. My dad was here, yeah.
Okay. And your grandparents were also

Speaker 2 immigrants and

Speaker 2 survived.

Speaker 2 Yeah, my grandparents, my mother's parents were Holocaust survivors. Right.
And my mother was born in Israel after they escaped Poland. Yep.

Speaker 10 And then when your parents came over here and

Speaker 10 your mom came over here, she sort of had it in her. I don't know, I don't know if I would call it genetics, but like it was.

Speaker 2 I call it generational food trauma.

Speaker 10 Generational food trauma because there was, you know,

Speaker 10 they were famished, right? Like there was no food. And so because of that, your mom sort of showered you with food.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So they had this mentality that was her mom had, which I didn't know because by the time they were my grandparents, they were like old and all they wanted to do was buy me toys.
But they had um,

Speaker 2 they had this mentality around food that was, you don't know when it's going to disappear. So when you have it, eat all of it, right? Eat every last thing.

Speaker 2 And then, even when that was not an issue anymore, when we had plenty of food, my mother's mentality around food was still, it's in front of you, eat everything.

Speaker 2 And she also had this like guilt because she was a working mom.

Speaker 2 And so when she was home, she would cook just like massive loads of food. And it gave her a lot of joy to see us like filled up with the food.
So there was just a lot of food pushing, a lot.

Speaker 10 And so you think that is sort of where it started, like the eating

Speaker 10 disorders came from?

Speaker 2 I think the disordered eating,

Speaker 2 it all started when I was a kid, like not.

Speaker 2 really knowing my hunger cues. Like hunger and eating kind of lost their connection because

Speaker 2 eating became about love and eating, eating,

Speaker 2 it wasn't really about hunger. You kept eating beyond the hunger to show appreciation and to show love.

Speaker 10 Right. And I think a lot of cultures are like that.

Speaker 10 I know I have been around different Hispanic cultures where, you know, it is sort of looked at as rude if you turn down someone's food and it's not meant to be rude, but there is that we should be able to distinguish between, you know, we're hungry or we're not hungry and not.

Speaker 10 But I think so many cultures, not just Hispanic or, you know, your culture, but I think that that's pretty common.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and just to be clear, I'm not judging my mom. No, she just, of course, she did the best that she knew how to do.
It was just really ingrained in her.

Speaker 10 No, and I think that makes sense because when you, when you live like that for so long, and she, that's how she grew up is that you have to eat everything in front of you.

Speaker 10 And so I immediately reading this book, like the first 20 pages, you're already just absolutely invested because of your story and like even just that alone. I was so

Speaker 10 invested.

Speaker 10 And I highlighted a couple other parts because then when you moved from New York to New Jersey and you had a really, really challenging high school journey, I could relate to that.

Speaker 10 And I, I wouldn't say that I had disordered eating, but I could relate to a lot of the things that you said.

Speaker 10 And so you encountered a girl that was really popular and she was like what you wanted to be. And she was thin and she was popular and all of these things.

Speaker 10 And it's, you wrote in here that she made you feel inadequate by doing absolutely nothing at all.

Speaker 10 And I thought that that could be relatable to a lot of people, not just anyone that is struggling with disordered eating.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, I just compared myself to everyone, and that lasted way into adulthood.

Speaker 2 And it's really only in recovery that I stopped doing that because I had the therapy that taught me, you know, you have to, when you recover, which I'm jumping to the end, when you recover, you sort of have to have both a dietitian and a therapist, ideally.

Speaker 2 Okay. Because the dietician is going to teach you like how to eat food again and, you know, how to feel safe eating food.

Speaker 2 But the therapist is really gonna go after the reasons why you would choose to starve yourself in order to solve something in your life. Right.
Right.

Speaker 2 And what I was doing was just comparing myself to every single person that I saw. And body size was what I used to compare a lot.
And that really led me down a very dangerous path.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I remember this girl. in high school and just how perfect she appeared.
And

Speaker 2 she was thin, very thin. And I thought being thin would solve all my problems, but I just didn't know how to get there.

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Speaker 2 In my house, nobody dieted.

Speaker 10 But were your parents

Speaker 2 average or

Speaker 2 my dad? My dad has always struggled with

Speaker 2 eating issues as well.

Speaker 2 And he has talked about it on my show. So I know he's not secretive about it.
I would never share someone else's secrets, but he struggled for a very long time. Then he had lap band surgery.
Okay.

Speaker 2 And then he was tightening it so much he couldn't eat anything. And now he's on Ozempic.
So he's happy,

Speaker 2 which, you know, is a whole nother challenge for me. But

Speaker 10 a challenge in what way?

Speaker 2 It's hard to go out for me now in recovery. It's hard to go out to meals with people who aren't eating.
It's hard for me to hear how great it is not to have an appetite.

Speaker 2 And I'm strong enough to let those things roll off my shoulders now, but a lot of people in recovery aren't. But I used to get a real jolt out of not eating.

Speaker 2 Like the longer I could go without eating and the lighter I felt, I felt good. I felt clean, which was, it was all in my head.
It was a mental illness. There's nothing good about not eating.

Speaker 2 But when, but like my dad will say, God, I haven't even eaten yesterday and I'm not even hungry. And I will get this like little spark of jealousy of how like a little piece of me will miss it.

Speaker 2 And then I'll be like, no, no, no, there's nothing to miss. It's part of, it was all part of a package of me being sick.

Speaker 10 That's so interesting.

Speaker 10 I also think it's interesting that your dad was willing to share his struggles as a man because I feel like eating disorders are constantly thrown on women and nobody talks about men struggling with it or a males' body image.

Speaker 2 Teenage boys who are athletes struggle a lot. I know a lot of young men who just don't eat for their sport.

Speaker 10 I know, I'm familiar with that with wrestling, but I don't, I'm not super familiar with it in any other capacity.

Speaker 2 No, and actually there's like this new,

Speaker 2 like the new hot like persona in Hollywood. If you look, they did a whole thing on it last year about, remember the guy who was in Anora? Did you see Anora?

Speaker 2 No, the real skinny Russian um star of Enora, and they did this whole thing on all these like skinny Benson Boone, like all these skinny young men with like these little mustaches, and how like that's the new aesthetic.

Speaker 2 Like being very thin and linky is like the new aesthetic. And Timothy Chalamay, it's like the whole new like look.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I'm not interested.

Speaker 10 No, it's my oldest son has made a couple comments about, you know, body weight, body image, and things like that.

Speaker 10 And I, I take it so seriously because I realize that, you know, how his dad, how he perceives his dad or how he perceives me and what I'm doing really do affect him.

Speaker 10 And I, I think that when you wrote in your book too, and I'm sort of jumping around, you know, there was a section of the book where you talked about how your kids just knew that you just don't eat when they go to, when you guys go get ice cream or you just don't.

Speaker 10 And that was just how it was. Do you think that they ever picked up on it later on?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So throughout their whole lives, I would take them for ice cream and get a Diet Coke.
I would take them for pizza and get a Diet Coke.

Speaker 2 And I didn't care because the eating disorder controlled my life and it was mine. So I was very possessive of it and nobody was allowed to say anything to me about it.

Speaker 2 But I also felt like they were really young and like, who cares if they notice? Like they don't know the difference between what I'm supposed to be doing and not. And then

Speaker 2 when I did come clean to my husband, who was the first, it was the first time I ever openly admitted that I had a problem, my husband told me that the kids notice it.

Speaker 2 And that threw me because I just didn't think that they ever noticed it. And once I realized that my children were picking up this stuff, I realized all the things.

Speaker 2 that I carried from my childhood into

Speaker 2 where I am right now.

Speaker 2 And I

Speaker 2 really like got sick over it. I felt like I had to undo it all immediately.

Speaker 10 What was the turning point for you in telling your husband? Because for a good, I think the first half of the book,

Speaker 10 you drop a couple hints that he sort of knew, but he didn't want to, he didn't want to talk about it because of the one time that he said something and you were very upset.

Speaker 10 So what was the turning point for you to want to actually admit it and say it out loud?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I knew that the minute I said it out loud to somebody, there was no turning back, especially my husband, because he'd want to help me.

Speaker 2 That's why I never said anything because I never wanted to like go back to being overweight because I had so many trauma connections between being overweight and being unhappy and like objectly lonely.

Speaker 2 So I had a, I hit a rock bottom. My, it was sort of, it was a lot of mental, I was punishing myself for something that happened.

Speaker 2 Um, I felt really bad about something that happened and I stopped eating. When I want to punish myself, I'll stop eating.
Even today, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, never.

Speaker 2 I never play with food anymore back then.

Speaker 2 So I wasn't eating and I also had a hamstring injury and I wouldn't let myself eat anything if I didn't exercise that day. So I had to exercise.

Speaker 2 So I was running through an injury and my body was just in so much pain and I was so hungry and I was also so overwhelmed emotionally and I sort of collapsed on the floor and I had this moment where I was like, what would happen?

Speaker 2 What would happen if I stopped? Like, what's the worst thing that could happen? Because I don't think I can go like this anymore. I'm going to actually die.

Speaker 2 And I was super thin, like breakable thin. And

Speaker 2 I knew that if I told my husband, that there would be no turning back. So I literally marched upstairs and I was like, I have to talk to you.
And he, he was very relieved. He was very relieved.

Speaker 2 Not that I made any moves that day, but it put in motion my entire recovery.

Speaker 10 When you say relieved, what does that mean? Like he was happy that you finally acknowledged it?

Speaker 2 It means that not only was he scared that I was going to die eventually, because anorexia is the number one most deadly mental illness and a lot of people die from it.

Speaker 2 So not only was he afraid that I would die,

Speaker 2 but this eating disorder not only controlled my life, but it controlled our family schedule.

Speaker 10 Well, right, because you talked about, not to cut you off, but you talked about counting your baby's calories and making sure they ate and controlling and monitoring every single thing that they were eating.

Speaker 2 Everything. But beyond that, so i ended that

Speaker 2 when i got really admonished by a nutritionist um

Speaker 2 but when i say it controlled our lives like we couldn't go on vacations that were more than three nights because i felt too uncomfortable eating out more than three nights in a row we couldn't choose a hotel that didn't have a state-of-the-art gym because i wouldn't go there everything we did had to start after a certain time in the morning so that i could get in my morning workout every restaurant had to be pre-approved if they didn't have things on the menu that I could eat, we did not go there.

Speaker 2 Like every single thing that had to do with food or exercise was controlled by my eating disorder and my family just had to fall in line. And that was, it's a lot for my husband.

Speaker 2 He wanted to take longer vacation. Like he was, he was also kind of tired of like, if we were sitting on the couch on a Saturday night, you want to order in with me? No.
Eat your own stuff.

Speaker 2 Like I'm eating my stuff. And like that's, you know, it's part of a marriage.
Like we didn't share anything ever.

Speaker 10 I remember you talking about that in the book where

Speaker 10 you were wanting to travel before you guys started a family, but at that point, you didn't want to travel. And I highlighted, I think it's on page 90 or something.

Speaker 2 Yeah, traveling was so hard.

Speaker 10 Something along the lines of, you know, going to Mexico and, you know, you brought 36 cans of

Speaker 2 tuna fish.

Speaker 10 Did he know that you brought that? Did he know that you did that?

Speaker 2 He says that he did.

Speaker 2 He says he noticed everything After the fact, he told me that he knew everything, but I'm not so sure he knew about that. I was very, very sleuth.
Like I was very secretive with everything.

Speaker 2 So I would take the cans of tuna in my bag. I had a big bag.
And then I would excuse myself and go eat them in the bathroom and come back and pick up my food.

Speaker 2 So I don't know if he noticed, but he certainly noticed I wasn't eating at the meals.

Speaker 10 Instead of like moving it around.

Speaker 2 I moved it around. Or I would order things that were so plain and take like bites.
Sometimes I would, when I'm home,

Speaker 2 I would, not anymore, but back then I would cook stuff at home, bring it in tinfoil, and then open it under the table and put it on my plate so that I could eat that instead of what they served me at the meal, but still look like I was eating my meal.

Speaker 10 How did your parents react to all of this when they found out?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So my parents, when they saw me losing weight, at first it was like, oh, wow, great. I know your dad was really happy.
Yeah, they were so proud of me.

Speaker 2 But then when it ventured into like the scene at my wedding,

Speaker 2 then they were kind of hysterical. And that lasted for a while.
I don't know if you looked at the pictures.

Speaker 10 I did. I got you.

Speaker 2 But that look where I was just like a floating head, like a big floating head with like a tiny little skeletal body.

Speaker 2 They got very, very nervous. But my dad has always had a very strange relationship with weight.
He feels like if you can lose weight, then you won. It doesn't matter how thin you get.

Speaker 2 Like if you go from big to small, you win because that's what everyone's after.

Speaker 2 And that was really hard for me because if somebody thinks that you're killing it, it's hard to be like, no, actually, I'm not. I'm struggling.
It's bad. Yeah.
It makes it harder to admit.

Speaker 10 At what point do you think that your kids really did notice and say something to your husband?

Speaker 2 I think in like they started in like year 2020, like during the pandemic when we were all home together and eating became like the the thing to do

Speaker 2 i think they really started noticing that like i didn't partake in anything like we were ordering in all the time i never ordered in we were getting these homemade pizza making kits i never tried the pizza we were baking cookies i never had one of their cookies i think they started noticing a lot then and plus at that time i really had a lot of habits around the house that i thought nobody would pick up on, but I wouldn't eat anything if I couldn't measure it in a measuring spoon.

Speaker 2 So like there was just my whole kitchen was just, there were measuring spoons everywhere because that's the way I lived. And I think they started to pick up that that's not normal.

Speaker 10 Okay. Did they notice that you were freezing food?

Speaker 2 I think they did. Yeah.
And now I see them sometimes like stick stuff in the freezer and it bothers me because I don't want to do it.

Speaker 10 Do they know why they're doing it?

Speaker 2 They do it because they like things like they like to like make things into popsicles and stuff. Right.

Speaker 2 But I get nervous i don't think they're doing it for the same reasons i did it i did it because i wanted my food to last and it's takes a lot longer to choose something that's frozen right right so i would freeze everything for that purpose but um and i think that's a really common um habit among anorexics really yeah

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Speaker 10 I

Speaker 10 have also struggled with body image a lot to the point that I'm like mutilating my body and getting surgeries and crying about it and then doing it again.

Speaker 10 And so I really struggle with that, but I thought it was like if you froze it, it maybe burned more calories to like

Speaker 2 finish up. Because I didn't like, so if I was going to eat a yogurt, there were so few times during the day that I could eat that I wanted it to really last.

Speaker 2 That's why I would also eat like 20 bags of salad a day because it makes a meal last. If you're just going to eat like a, like an egg, right? That takes 40 seconds to eat.

Speaker 2 But if you pair it with four bags of salad, like you could dip the salad into the egg yolk and like make it last an hour right right like but it's disgusting it's disgusting so like let's be honest i mean you put salt on your lettuce i think i read too oh i mean the things i used to do i used to make a bowl of corn flakes and take a water bottle and spray the water bottle until they were like soggy enough and pour sweet and low on it and eat it like that's i would do anything to just have food in my stomach that was the lowest amount of calories possible because I had convinced myself all starting back when I was 14 years old that if I could just be thin I could be as happy as the thin popular girls in my high school and so that became my life goal I wonder if I have that same struggle I don't starve myself but I just constantly get surgery and I just constantly am like looking I didn't even know that oh yeah yeah I've had two full mommy makeovers liposuction everything

Speaker 10 And then I just put a little gym in my house.

Speaker 10 It's been a little rough, but it's like, and you, I would, you know, learning about everything in your book and learning that that you have you know three sons and a daughter i have six sons and a daughter i don't know how to talk about this with my kids yeah well i have i have some info on that too if you want yeah absolutely anything i mean because especially for my daughter because that was one of the things i had surgery in december um and that was after the fact i started you know thinking oh my god like what if my daughter wants to mutilate her body and like is struggling with image and you know we think you know your mom probably thought the same thing of you you look great doesn't matter what what you look like, you're still as your mother, she loves you no matter what.

Speaker 10 Yeah, and so, how do we tell our daughters that when we look in the mirror and hate ourselves?

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I know. Um, and I had a mommy makeover also when I was sick, which I think there's some ethics in that.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know why you're giving an anorexic woman who weighs 90 pounds a tummy talk,

Speaker 2 but um,

Speaker 2 I think I make a really,

Speaker 2 I am constantly telling my daughter

Speaker 2 about how different bodies are beautiful and her body is beautiful. And that when I was really, really sick, remember when mommy was sick, remember when mommy couldn't go out to eat?

Speaker 2 That's what it takes, like to be thin. Like you have to, you have to really deprive yourself to be that thin.
And I think she wants to know part of it.

Speaker 2 I also make sure that they know that no foods are good or bad. They're just food, right? And like just eat in moderation and like forget the rest and really just be physical.

Speaker 2 Like I try not to make anything a big deal around food.

Speaker 10 Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think it's really hard.
When I, before I had the surgery, I was talking to one of my girlfriends who had a surgery similar to what you said that your dad had.

Speaker 10 And she was, you know, telling me how incredibly difficult it was because a lot of social things happen around food. Parties, dinners, birthday parties.

Speaker 10 You just, any, everything was surrounded by food. And so even after she had her surgery, she was saying how, you know, she would want to go and

Speaker 2 not indulge, overindulge, but eat it. Yeah.
A lot of people do out eat their lap band. Some people are even out eating the diet drugs.
Like Ozempic? Yeah.

Speaker 2 They're just eating until they feel sick and it's not working because they just eat. They enjoy the eating part, which is why people go off the diet drugs.
So I deep dive.

Speaker 2 I deep dive on everything, but I did deep dive on Ozempic type drugs. Can we talk about that? Because I don't know.
And that's been a whole thing for me because I don't care in the micro.

Speaker 2 I don't care what individual is on diet drugs. Like you have your reasons for doing it.
And like, I have to respect your reasons for doing it.

Speaker 2 But in the but in the macro, I wonder a lot about these drugs and people go off of them, I think on average after two years because they really miss food is one of the main reasons. They miss eating.

Speaker 2 They miss enjoying food without getting sick. They miss like a lot of people go off when they go on vacation and then come back on when they come home because they miss eating.

Speaker 10 I wonder what the psychology is around like wanting to eat though, right? Like growing up, we were just talking before you walked in. We were talking about how I just

Speaker 10 love to eat, right? Like, I didn't have generational traumas or anything like that that would cause me to want to eat, but I just love eating and I could never fight it.

Speaker 10 So, when you talked about if you didn't eat, you were the strongest-willed person that you knew. That's how I would have felt, but I never could be strong enough to not eat.

Speaker 10 I would just overeat and overeat and overeat.

Speaker 2 Well, I have something else to say about that. Now, this is controversial.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I strongly feel like if you took a group of 100 people who went on Weight Watchers in the 90s, you would find that about 90% of them probably have disordered eating or eating disorders from it.

Speaker 2 Because Weight Watchers in the 90s, and you'll see that was the first diet I went on. Yep.

Speaker 2 My senior year of high school, my doctor shamed me, told me I could not go to college fat because I would not have fun.

Speaker 2 And I was very overweight at that point, but not like morbidly obese, you know? I mean, the pictures I thought you looked like.

Speaker 2 I was overweight. I was over 200 pounds, but

Speaker 2 he sent me to Weight Watchers straight from his office. I went to the Weight Watchers at the mall and I registered.
And I,

Speaker 2 in the first week, I lost nine pounds. Weight watchers in the 90s was a starvation diet.
I probably barely had 900 calories a day. For a 17-year-old's body, that's not even close to enough.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I lost 50 pounds before I went to college. And then I wildly yo-yoed.

Speaker 2 And every time I would go back up, I would go to Weight Watchers and go back down and then go to, and then be on my own and go back up and then Weight Watchers and go back down.

Speaker 2 And so Weight Watchers taught me what Weight Watchers did for me was, I think it was a perfect storm of like developing mental illness, this desperate need to be thin and fit in.

Speaker 2 And Weight Watchers taught me to use food as a game. and that eating was math.
It wasn't about hunger. It was about exchanging food and

Speaker 2 finding the lowest calorie exchanges and maximizing your points.

Speaker 2 And that taught me how to eat. So I stopped looking at food as nourishment, which made it easy to hate food.
I've never loved food because I felt like food betrayed me.

Speaker 2 And I felt like food, I felt like my body was just dying to be fat. And anything I ate, it would just like compound.

Speaker 2 So I had no problem giving it up because I felt like food was my enemy.

Speaker 2 And when I went on Weight Watchers and learned how to diet from Weight Watchers and food became just numbers, I lost all connection to it.

Speaker 10 And that was the end of it for you?

Speaker 2 That was the end of it. The day I went on Weight Watchers, the first time at 17 was the last day of my life that I ever wasn't on a diet until I recovered.

Speaker 10 I don't know what the rules are for Weight Watchers today because they've also done Weight Watchers in the past. I don't know if you can do Weight Watchers at 17 at this point.

Speaker 2 Now it's 18. Yeah.
But back then, I mean, I know people whose parents put, I'm almost 50. Okay.
I know people whose parents put them on it at 12 years old. It's bad.

Speaker 2 And I actually would love to, so I was a journalist before I was on the Housewise and I would love to do a deep dive investigative thing.

Speaker 2 I mean, Weight Watchers is a behemoth, so I don't know that I really want to take them on.

Speaker 2 But I bet you, if you looked into all the people that went on Weight Watchers in the 90s, it's not, their eating habits were all messed up.

Speaker 10 Have you ever connected with other people that have the same sort of struggle?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, I got a lot. Well, when I wrote the book, I got thousands of messages, thousands, and a lot of them were about Weight Watchers.

Speaker 2 You know, but then again, do you want, do I really want to take on Weight Watchers?

Speaker 10 I mean, we could all take them on together.

Speaker 2 No, let's do it.

Speaker 2 Class action.

Speaker 10 And then, so you struggled with, and I've never really talked to anyone or heard of anyone struggling with disordered eating while pregnant. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 So reading about that, and I know how much I ate when I was pregnant. you know, with singletons, also with my twins, and passing out in a grocery store.

Speaker 2 Being pregnant and anorexic, it doesn't just go away because you get pregnant, you know.

Speaker 10 it was bad i know what it's like to almost pass out while you're pregnant and not be

Speaker 2 counting calories and things like that so i cannot imagine what it was like for you and even that wasn't really like rock bottom for you oh no that wasn't rock bottom i had two rock bottoms the first one was in mexico when i was eating the tuna on a toilet that was really bad the the second rock bottom was when i collapsed on the floor and decided i had to stop because right before i didn't put this in my book, but right before I had that rock bottom where I finally decided to recover, and that was four years ago, and I'm still in recovery.

Speaker 2 I'm still in active recovery.

Speaker 10 Okay, so that was going to be one of my questions. I know with, you know, drug addicts or alcoholics, they're sort of always in recovery.
Like at the point that you're sober, you are.

Speaker 10 forever then a recovering addict or alcoholic. Is it the same for disordered eating?

Speaker 2 Different, I think. This is just my personal opinion.
I don't know what an expert would say.

Speaker 2 For me, I think that you can make a full and complete recovery with food because, whereas, with like alcohol and drugs, you just have to abstain from it forever. You can't do that with food, right?

Speaker 2 You have to learn to eat.

Speaker 2 I think that you can, if you get rid of all the noise in your head and the mental aspects of it, I think you can learn to have a really healthy relationship with food, which is where this intersects with Ozempic.

Speaker 2 Because I think a lot of people are relying on diet drugs now instead of recovery, instead of doing the recovery work, because you can quiet all that noise in your head, but that's not

Speaker 2 not the real recovery, right? Like you have to fix your relationship to food, but also fix the reasons why you'd starve yourself in the first place or else it's going to manifest in another way.

Speaker 10 Overeating as well, right? You have to fix the relationship because the food noise won't go away. I mean, it'll go away while you're on the drugs, but you won't, it'll come right back.

Speaker 2 Well, if you go off.

Speaker 2 I think there are people that are planning on staying on it forever. If you can, we don't know.
We don't know if that's sustainable. We'll see in a few years from now.

Speaker 2 And I think another problem is that a lot of these studies you hear about how fabulous they are are funded by the drug companies that are producing them. So

Speaker 2 I think it just remains to be seen. And I don't want anybody to get sick.
It wouldn't make me happy if it came out that it's causing like cancer or anything like that.

Speaker 2 But I think that people are relying on, listen, there's a reason why you chose to deprive yourself of like your life source in order to fix something in your life.

Speaker 2 And going on a diet drug is not going to help you resolve that that and right get healthy from that so that's why i i get nervous with these diet drugs because i know a lot of people who had anorexia who are like oh my god i'm on a diet drug now i never think about food anymore i never have to think about it right and it just scares me because there's so much value in repairing your relationship to food and really understanding like just setting an example, especially as a parent from my daughter and my sons, but like especially my daughter.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 10 You know, no, and I relate to that so hard. I don't even know how I'm going to explain my choices to her.

Speaker 10 And I hope that she doesn't have the same struggles because I do think that it's a mental illness for me as well.

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Speaker 10 So you did, you did IVF, several rounds of IVF?

Speaker 2 I lost my period probably one year into anorexia.

Speaker 10 Oh, that soon? Like that would be?

Speaker 2 After a year, well, my... My weight kind of plummeted.
So I started in, I'm a real sucker for dates.

Speaker 2 Like I remember everything i have the mind of an elephant that's why i could write this book in like a minute i wrote this book in like a minute um can you write mine

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 i

Speaker 2 started like real anorexia in uh the summer of 2003 and by the summer of 2004 i was like

Speaker 2 no not the summer by the end of 2004 i was really really thin so i lost my period i was on the pill though so i didn't really really know, but I lost my, it stopped even coming with the pill.

Speaker 2 And so I had no choice. I couldn't get pregnant.

Speaker 2 I didn't ovulate. I didn't do it.
My body didn't do anything. And also there's a lot of science behind it.
Like your, your glands are not going to produce the reproductive

Speaker 2 hormones that they need because your body's in protection mode. Like it's trying to protect.

Speaker 2 So the reason you lose your period is because your body recognizes that it doesn't have enough calories to do everything. Okay.
So it has to do the things that are going to keep you alive.

Speaker 10 Like prioritize, basically.

Speaker 2 So your period is not one of those. Neither is temperature regulation, which is why so many anorexic people are very cold all the time.
It's not just because you don't have fat lining in your bones.

Speaker 2 That's part of it. But you lose temperature regulation.
You also lose a lot of muscle mass because your body has to, it takes a lot of calories to form muscle.

Speaker 2 So all of these reasons why your body is trying to keep you alive. So it lets go of a lot of the things that allow you to reproduce.

Speaker 10 When you and your husband decided to try to get pregnant and start the family journey, did he know without talking about it why not at all?

Speaker 2 Okay, he didn't know.

Speaker 10 Um, oh, he didn't know it from anything from like women's reproductive stuff, like he didn't know that you having disordered eating led to you not being a period led to the business.

Speaker 2 No, I don't think so. No, I mean, he's very smart, right? So I think when the doctor sent us to a clinic,

Speaker 2 he might have started to have an inkling that maybe I was too thin. But right when I got pregnant, Nicole Richie was pregnant and she was emaciated.

Speaker 2 And you never know anyone's story, but I remember looking at her and being like, well, she got pregnant. So, and this is part of my comparison thing.
So I'm fine. Like, I don't care.

Speaker 2 And my doctor, I remember him telling me, like, maybe try to put on a few few pounds and let's see if that works naturally and i was like no i couldn't remember

Speaker 2 yeah yeah it was too hard i couldn't i couldn't do it so um like i remember going to the store and like picking up a sandwich in one of those plastic triangle tins and looking at it and being like i cannot physically eat this

Speaker 10 So when

Speaker 10 I was reading and trying to understand like where you were at, from an outsider's perspective, it's like, well, okay, just eat grilled chicken or just eat fruit or just eat something healthy.

Speaker 10 But to you, that was not part of it.

Speaker 2 I just couldn't eat food because when I would go to eat something, I would connect the trauma of being overweight with

Speaker 2 being

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 unhappy.

Speaker 2 And so when I would go to eat something, I felt sick to my stomach and mentally I had a mental block on putting it in my mouth.

Speaker 10 Even if it was healthy, celery, carrots,

Speaker 2 celery I could do. Celery.
Carrots were too calorie dense. It's just, I I felt like,

Speaker 2 you know, you don't worry when you're 26 years old. You don't worry about destroying your life because you're so young, right?

Speaker 2 So you always, I thought to myself that this was going to be a temporary thing until I lost some weight.

Speaker 2 And I mean, all the diets in that age, in that era.

Speaker 2 Atkins, South Beach, they were all fucked up. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, Atkins was like eating this, like, just like bars full of chemicals Yeah, that had like no carbs in them and people were doing the craziest fucking diets.

Speaker 2 Everyone was on Dexatrim people were on fenfen. So it was like

Speaker 2 you know, what's so bad about not eating? Yeah, right. At least I'm not putting chemicals in my body.

Speaker 2 And so I really rationalized it, but it got to the point where when I went to eat something, it was so loaded. It was like, I can do better than this.

Speaker 2 And if I eat this, then I can't eat something later. And I could eat something lighter than this.

Speaker 2 So I would, it was hard for me to actually eat something without investigating everything around and making sure it was the lightest option. Grilled chicken was just too heavy.
It was not necessary.

Speaker 10 Okay. Because I was just trying to figure out what the thought process was.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the thought process had less to do with food and more to do with mental illness. Okay.

Speaker 10 Yeah. So when you're going through all of, you know, trying to get pregnant and eventually go to the IVF, go through IVF, you got pregnant on the first time you got pregnant on the try.

Speaker 2 The first time on the first try.

Speaker 10 Okay. Yeah.
And

Speaker 10 you wrote in here that, and this is sort of switching gears a little bit, but you said a woman goes through IVF alone. You take the shots alone.
You feel the physical pain alone.

Speaker 10 You fight the fears and demons alone. And if you have the misfortune to have most likely caused your own infertility, you feel the crushing guilt all alone.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 I have never had to go through IVF, so I can't understand like the pain. I can empathize, but what was that like on top of dealing with everything that you were dealing with with your disorder?

Speaker 2 It was really scary because I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a mom

Speaker 2 and my husband really wanted to be a dad. And I felt, it was the first time I really felt like that I fucked something up for somebody else with my eating disorder.

Speaker 2 And that like, not only did I fuck up my husband potentially becoming a father, but. like all these future lives that I wanted to bring into the world were now like in jeopardy because

Speaker 2 I couldn't eat, you know, so I felt like for the first time, this was bigger than just me.

Speaker 10 Right. Did you have a lot of support going through IVF? Did you know anyone else that was going through IVF?

Speaker 2 I didn't know anybody else going through it and I didn't want to talk about it to anyone else because I was nervous that people would connect it to my eating disorder.

Speaker 2 And I didn't want to talk about my eating disorder ever to anybody because I was scared they would make me stop.

Speaker 10 Do you think that people talked about IVF?

Speaker 10 I don't want to say back then because it wasn't that long ago.

Speaker 2 It was a long time ago. It was 17, it was 18 years ago.

Speaker 10 Do you think that people talked about it as openly as they do now? Nope.

Speaker 2 I think everything now is so much more open because of social media. Right.
There really, there really wasn't that much social media back then. So,

Speaker 2 no, now everything is.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 10 So, you know, you're struggling with disordered eating, mental illness in that way, and then you're now going through IVF with your, your husband and you're sort of having to deal with these two things with no real support outside of your husband.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I was very headstrong and also mentally ill. So in my own head was a different universe where I just had to get through things and then move on.
And I knew eventually I would get through,

Speaker 2 I would get through

Speaker 2 whatever phase I was in. You know,

Speaker 2 my doctors put me at ease. They said,

Speaker 2 They said, you know, you're a good candidate for IVF.

Speaker 2 It should work because I guess the issues that I caused with being anorexic were not impacted by like IVF treatment, puts the, you know, puts the fertilized embryo right into your fallopian tube, right?

Speaker 2 So you're utter.

Speaker 10 Did it affect the quality of your eggs? Or that's just

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 10 you talked about having low quality. So I just didn't know if the anorexia was a contributing factor to that or if that was just by nature.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, I think when you destroy your body the way that I did, by the time I went for my second round of IVF, and you know, that took four rounds to get pregnant again, I had

Speaker 2 no

Speaker 2 estrogen left in my body. So I couldn't get any levels up to anything close to keep like a pregnancy going.
So I went on hormone replacement at what, 31 years old.

Speaker 2 I've been wearing an estrogen patch since I'm 31, so for 18 years. You've been wearing estrogen patch on my butt.

Speaker 10 Yeah. I didn't even know that was a thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I had, I have no estrogen in my body.

Speaker 10 To this day.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because, and, and I was, I was very like high-risk osteoporosis. Oh, yeah.
I, oh, the number of health things that I messed up in my body from anorexia, 18 years of anorexia, terrible.

Speaker 2 I have, um, I had a heart condition called bradycardia

Speaker 2 where it was

Speaker 2 my heart was struggling. So my resting heart rate was in the 30s, like

Speaker 2 sometimes 40. 40.

Speaker 2 And it was, and it's supposed to be in the 60s. I

Speaker 2 couldn't, my heart just didn't want to beat fast because it didn't have enough muscle to beat fast. And everything in my body was trying to conserve.

Speaker 2 So because I had no calories, I was really eating nothing. Right.
And so all of these, um, all of these organ functions were not functioning in my body.

Speaker 2 I had a lot of hormones that weren't functioning. I had, my lips would turn blue if

Speaker 2 anything under 60 degrees, my lips would turn blue. I was always in a heavy coat and doctors never stopped me.
So I rationalized that if doctors aren't saying anything, I'm fine.

Speaker 2 With the pregnancy, I mean, like, I just like created such bad conditions for getting pregnant that, yeah, of course, I think it contributed to my egg quality.

Speaker 10 But you, you know, you had your twins the first round of IVF the first time. They were mostly healthy.

Speaker 2 I know they had a short NICU stay, which, you know, overall they're healthy they were born early but they were healthy thank god yeah but i don't know what my eating habits contributed to them i ate more when i was pregnant but i but i did it very mathematically i went to a prenatal nutritionist i said tell me the minimum amounts that i need to eat and she said to me she was like you know you have to feed yourself too i said fuck you Tell me what is going to keep my twins alive and healthy.

Speaker 2 Right. Don't worry about me.
I'm good. And basically I had a chart and I ate at the very minimum levels of that chart and then I had no guilt.

Speaker 10 And did your husband ever say anything to you during that time?

Speaker 2 No, because the time that he tried to say something to me, I jumped down his throat. And, you know, again, we were in our, you know, early 30s.
I think he thought like, it's a phase and I'll get.

Speaker 2 past it. And he never knew any different.
I became anorexic a few months before I met him. I remember.
So he never knew anything different.

Speaker 10 So when you get pregnant the second time, you went through four rounds of IVF, sort of a similar situation with the first set of twins where they stopped growing at a certain point, C-section early.

Speaker 10 And I think, was that the time that four months later you had lost all your weight, or was that the first?

Speaker 2 The first ones. I lost all the weight so quickly.
I couldn't, like I say in the book, like the way some people miss like wine or sushi, that's the way I missed starring myself. Like, I hated,

Speaker 2 I couldn't look at myself pregnant and see anything but ugly. Like my stomach I thought was so ugly and every stretch mark I thought was so ugly.
And I

Speaker 2 couldn't wait to starve again. I really couldn't, which sounds so crazy because now it's like my worst nightmare.

Speaker 2 But I,

Speaker 2 my second time, I just couldn't lose the weight. I mean, I lost most of it, but I just could not, I couldn't lose it fast and it drove me crazy.

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Speaker 10 And so then what?

Speaker 2 I did get a mommy makeover after my second set. I mean, I just starved myself until I,

Speaker 2 until I lost it. You're happy enough with it.

Speaker 10 But then does it really bring you true happiness? Oh, no.

Speaker 2 No. I mean, I was still anorexic for another decade after that.
You know, I went, I did a half-assed attempt at recovery.

Speaker 2 And I went to a dietitian. And I, now here's the problem with just going to a dietitian to recover.
First of all, any steps you're going to take to recover are great. Yeah.

Speaker 2 However, I really think that your best chances are a dietitian and a therapist because I went to this dietitian and I said, I need to eat more, but I don't want to gain more than two pounds.

Speaker 2 And at the time I was 90 pounds soaking wet. I was tiny.
So

Speaker 2 I expected this person who has a, you know, a degree in food science, right?

Speaker 2 To fix the issues in my head that were saying, saying, you can't eat, you don't have a right to eat, you're not entitled to eat. So she can't do that.
That's not her training, right?

Speaker 2 So unless you have that piece of it going also, and somebody helping you fix that, you're not going to get past this, you know?

Speaker 10 What was her reaction? I did, I remember reading the two-pound

Speaker 10 scenario in the book, but what was her reaction when you said that?

Speaker 2 She tried being diplomatic about it, like, okay, I understand.

Speaker 2 Let's try this out and see and I would say to her over and over again what if I gain more will you help me will you help me and she didn't want to help commit to helping me lose weight which I think was one of the reasons why I was so scared to do anything more and I think once I learned how to eat a little bit more without gaining weight I was kind of like I'm good I'm not going back anymore yeah and then

Speaker 10 when you started filming the show and you had you obviously have all of your kids. How does that play into counting your calories, restricting, doing all of that?

Speaker 10 Because I know you're hiding food and bringing it up on the table, but obviously your

Speaker 10 castmates had to have noticed and said things.

Speaker 2 The first year, no, because I knew how to fake it. So I knew how to save.

Speaker 2 So I would just, if I knew I was going to a meal, I would just starve myself until the meal and then eat all my calories in one sitting.

Speaker 2 And, you know, the truth is that on these shows, for a a number of reasons a lot of people do not eat during the the meals you it's first of all it's hard to speak with food in your mouth you don't want a chance dropping the food on your clothing um also it doesn't look as elegant you know so i i would go to these meals and at the beginning i was like oh god i'm gonna have to eat and prove it and and then i realized that no one was eating and then like a lot of the times we would get in such heated i mean do you ever see a meal on real housewives like four seconds into it you're already fighting So, I half the time I didn't even have to worry about it.

Speaker 2 I would take one bite. And, like, I did have some times, though.
My second season, I got caught because I just, there were too many meals where we were expected to sit and talk to each other.

Speaker 2 And I just didn't know how to eat the food. So, I just wouldn't.

Speaker 10 And so, what did what did they say to you?

Speaker 2 What did the girl say to you? So, nobody said anything until this one pivotal scene where

Speaker 2 I was in, it was, I took everyone to my beach house, and there was a breakfast scene and Melissa had cooked like a whole breakfast and it was stuff that I would never touch.

Speaker 2 It was eggs and bacon and, you know, sliced avocado. And

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 decided, and usually I would have them put, I don't know how it works on Team Mom, but like, did you guys travel at all? No, no.

Speaker 2 When we would travel, they would ask us what foods we wanted in the house. Okay.
So I would always make sure that there was,

Speaker 2 I gave them my specific yogurt that I liked

Speaker 2 and fruit and i would eat yogurt and fruit because i knew the calories and it was comfortable you knew right yep and um there was no yogurt and fruit in the fridge that day like i don't know if someone ate it or if they just didn't put it there because they wanted this to happen i don't know but if they plotted that i don't know who knows i mean it made for good tv because my only option was eating these chips that were on the counter and i thought no one would notice and i ate the chips because they were like these these pea snaps and i knew the calorie count on the back i just couldn't eat anything that i didn't know the calories of okay for me that was like a non-starter so i

Speaker 2 was like i'm not really hungry i'm just going to grab some of these and that sent red flags up everywhere because everyone was eating a normal breakfast and i was sitting there eating like dehydrated pea protein chips and after that it became a talking point and then i got called out on it that I don't eat and I had like a nervous breakdown on air and I kind of told the story and covered it up.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I mean, I planned for that moment, I knew it might come. So, I had all my stories lined up of what I would say.
And after that, it never came up again.

Speaker 10 That's the most outrageous thing that I've ever heard for people to weaponize something so personal and be so calculated about it.

Speaker 2 Um, yes and no. I mean, I did put myself on a reality show with a secret.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 yes, but I mean, I don't know that you didn't put the secret in there, of course not, but to create a moment.

Speaker 10 And here's the thing. Like, you know, we've both been on reality TV, right? Like, I would always tell my producers, I'm happy to give you the drama you want.
You just have to plan it with me.

Speaker 10 Like, I want to plan. I want to be a part of the planning.
I don't want to be caught off guard and blindsided.

Speaker 10 I will literally give you what you want.

Speaker 2 Whole Housewives is all about being caught off guard and blindsided, for sure. And that's not even a bad thing.
Like, I don't even think I'm burning a virgin, probably.

Speaker 11 I don't want to put you in a position where you're not going to be able to do it.

Speaker 2 I know, no, I would never. But that's what it is.
And that's part of the thrill of it is like getting caught. Like you catch your castmate doing something.

Speaker 6 I,

Speaker 10 yeah, I just, I have mixed feelings about it because I just knowing that that is like so personal to you.

Speaker 2 I will say, yes, I agree. And I think that is, you know, more on my castmates than it is on production.
What I will say is that when I did choose to recover and I called the producers and I said,

Speaker 2 I would like my story this season to be real recovery recovery, and I want you to document it. They were all in.
They did a lot of work for me.

Speaker 2 They found, they did everything to get me in the doors at Renfrew, which was the sort of recovery center that I started at.

Speaker 2 And they really did

Speaker 2 help me. Now, now,

Speaker 2 I do think that that's the reason I got demoted. It was not because, I mean, the season before I got demoted was one of the best seasons that anyone on Jersey has ever had, right?

Speaker 2 Like I had people said it was the most real storyline that they've ever seen someone really go through

Speaker 2 so i think that saying on camera that stress from the fighting had made me my sickest and brought me to my rock bottom and then the the intake counselor at the eating disorder center saying that i was on the verge of a heart attack

Speaker 2 i think all of that combined made them now they've never told me this but i think all of that combined was a big legal issue for Virgo, for sure. And I understand that.

Speaker 10 But they would bring you back surely now, right? Because you're in recovery?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think I have kind of made it clear that I enjoy the friend role. My

Speaker 2 see, this is difficult for people to understand because they think that they use the word friend as like a, you know, a derogatory term.

Speaker 2 My sons at 17 years old would love nothing less than a camera in their face right now, right? So if I got asked asked to go back full time, I don't even know that I could because they don't,

Speaker 2 it's not for them. Right.

Speaker 10 And my, my son feels that, well, he likes to pick and choose. And so I get, I think that's, and that's their right.
Yes. You know, I went back, I made a cameo on Teen Mom and loved being the friend.

Speaker 10 I loved that the story wasn't about me. And I think you probably

Speaker 2 derogatory. Like people are always like, shut up, friend.
And I'm like, wait a second. Like, I'm still like

Speaker 2 there. And like, all the doors are still open for me.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know. Who knows? But would I go back full time?

Speaker 2 That would be, that would put me in a position because I had a lot of fun with it. And I do credit the show with helping me recover.
For sure. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 10 Well, I mean, that's, that's really nice.

Speaker 10 I will say that despite some of the reality experiences that, you know, you and I may have had or other castmates and things, it does contribute to some of the troubles, I would say, like in our lives, or at least be, you know, just a contributing factor.

Speaker 10 But I, I also have seen production on teen mom be helpful when cast is ready for treatment but they have to ask for it we have to ask they're never going to offer it until the cast member asks for it right because i think that's also a legal issue okay suffering

Speaker 2 okay so they can't just come to i don't know this for sure i'm not in law i don't think that i think that there's some liability in trying to help somebody you know fix a health problem and then like not following through i don't i don't know how deeply they want to get involved with that.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 10 So if a cast member is like, hey, I need to go to treatment or I need to do this, they'll help you.

Speaker 2 Then they'll help you. Yeah, but I think initiating the process might encounter some liability.

Speaker 10 Do you feel like nothing, like looking back, right? Hindsight is always 20-20. Do you feel like looking back, nothing would have gotten you into treatment or recovery sooner?

Speaker 10 Do you feel like this is how it had to go and you had to decide when you were ready?

Speaker 2 Absolutely. So I really feel like that's one of the sad parts about this.
Like unless you're a child, no one can force you into

Speaker 2 treatment. So having anorexia as an adult, and I developed it pretty late in life, and I carried it into really late in life.

Speaker 2 And it's hard because you get so stuck in your ways and you get comfortable and you get scared of change. And

Speaker 2 the fact that no one can force you to recover, I do feel like it had to go like this. And I also,

Speaker 2 it was a lot for me. there was a lot riding on staying thin.
It was my measure of success. It was also my identity.
It was, it made me feel special.

Speaker 2 I knew that if I walked into a room before the housewives, I felt like if I walked into a room, there was really nothing about me that was special. And this was mental illness.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying that's true.

Speaker 2 But if I walked into that room and I was the thinnest person in that room, everyone was going to notice me because that made me special.

Speaker 2 So, and that was part of my warped way of thinking, but I didn't really feel like anything about my life was that fantastic. And then when I was on the show, I was like, well, this makes me special.

Speaker 2 And then I was like, but I don't want to be the special person who got fat. So now I have to keep going.

Speaker 2 There was always a reason why I had to keep going and always a reason why being thin made me special.

Speaker 2 And I really had to untangle all of that, like separate my identity from the size of my body in order to recover.

Speaker 10 When you started recovery and treatment until you started to finally be comfortable with food and starting to gain weight, what was the timeline there, do you think?

Speaker 2 It was so weird. And it's funny you asked that because

Speaker 2 I guess there's sort of like a trajectory that a lot of people follow with weight gain in recovery.

Speaker 2 So I went from eating nothing to really eating, not overeating, but eating pretty normally, quickly and then i got spooked and then i backtracked and because at the beginning the first like two months i didn't gain anything first like four months i didn't really gain anything i remember i started it all in like august and then in december we went to miami and i was in a lot of the same clothes and i was like this is great

Speaker 2 i'm eating everything and like i'm not eating everything but like i'm really eating normally and like i haven't gained anything and then like all of a sudden from January to March, I must have gained, I didn't get on scales.

Speaker 10 I must have gained. That's probably a better idea.
Cause I mean, even the healthiest person getting on scales can be scary.

Speaker 2 I gained so much weight. I don't, nothing fit me at all.
I was in like all sweats. I felt awful about myself.
I was second guessing everything. It was really hard.
I backtracked a lot.

Speaker 2 I stopped eating a lot of the things I was eating. It took me a long time to get comfortable with food.
A really long time.

Speaker 2 Not going on the scale is a great idea for me because then you don't, you can't hate a number that you don't know, right? But I'm also at the point now where I'm not fully recovered. I'm like 80%.

Speaker 2 I do still get nervous about gaining a lot of weight, which I think is due to the fact that everyone's on Ozembic. So back to your question about would the show have me back?

Speaker 2 I'm like the hell, I have like the healthiest relationship with food on my whole show because everyone's on diet drugs now. No one's even eating anymore.

Speaker 2 So I, not everyone, but like at least half my cast is on diet drugs. So in terms of health, there's no liability issues anymore.
It took me a long time to really get comfortable with eating. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I can imagine. Yeah.
And then people,

Speaker 2 that one scene that I said at the end of the book where I went to dinner and one of the husbands guessed my weight. and said a number that just set me off.

Speaker 2 And I really had to go home and think about like, what the fuck does a number mean?

Speaker 10 Who decided that that was a good idea for him to do that?

Speaker 2 He decided. I won't say who it is, but people know.
Why do men feel like they should?

Speaker 2 No, yeah, of course.

Speaker 10 But why do people feel like they should do that?

Speaker 2 I don't know any other. Like, I cannot imagine my husband guessing someone's fucking weights.
Like, I think it ticks you.

Speaker 10 I don't even think, like, anybody I've ever been with has even thought about that. It's just not something that is.

Speaker 2 That's not. I don't know if he thought he was complimenting me or what, but that number in my head was so triggering for me.
I mean, I went home and I was like, like, oh my God, I'm 140. I'm 140.

Speaker 2 Like, that's a number like when I met my husband and I just started being anorexic. I was 140.
And like, I was hysterical.

Speaker 10 I can imagine.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And then I, and then I had to realize, you know, it's a lot of self-talk.
I had to realize, like, I, my body looks the same as it did before I went out to dinner.

Speaker 2 No matter what this person says, that number is, like, it doesn't change. my body.
Now I don't care. Like, you told me I weighed 300 pounds.
I don't care. I know who I am.
I know what my body is.

Speaker 2 I know that weight fluctuates. You know, I know some days my clothes are tight and then the next day they're loose.
You know, I know that's just how bodies work.

Speaker 10 You know, and do you think that if your daughter ever had questions, you would tell her the same thing?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 oh, yeah, for sure. Um, I try to talk to my bot, my, my daughter a lot about, um,

Speaker 2 body size and

Speaker 2 how fun it is to, you know, eat food and try different foods and have much fun. I don't hide my eating disorder from them.
I

Speaker 2 do try to make a show of how much I enjoy eating now and how also that I do exercise and that you need to do both and that

Speaker 2 and I do make comments. from time to time so they know how horrible it was to live with an eating disorder.

Speaker 2 One other thing I messed out, and I don't talk about this in my book, but I did, I was for a period of time addicted to laxatives also which is not glamorous and i didn't talk about it in the book it was one of those judgment calls i made okay but i feel like it does that is something that affects a lot of and it screwed me up for a long time i'm great now but to the point where i'm the only person when i went for my colonoscopy my doctor said i was like the only person that he knows that the prep didn't work for like everybody shuts their brains out and i just couldn't go to the bathroom at all

Speaker 10 And you just didn't want to put it in there, you felt like it was oh, yeah, that's I just didn't. I shit my pants regularly, so I was just wondering.

Speaker 2 No, I don't need to take

Speaker 2 that colonoscopy prep, like my

Speaker 2 bowels were just so fucked up from everything, like head to toe. I destroyed my body with anorexia, absolutely destroyed it, which is not something you think about.

Speaker 10 Well, I was just about to say, you don't know until it's

Speaker 2 think about, you think about all the glamorous parts of being thin. I thought about how wonderful it would be for me to tuck my shirt in and not have like a massive stomach hanging over.

Speaker 2 You don't think about all the ways that you're absolutely destroying your life and the lives around you.

Speaker 10 I never thought of half of the things. I mean, laxative never, that never crossed my mind for, I've thought about eating tapeworms.

Speaker 2 Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 10 Is it tapeworms?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I thought about eating the parasites, eating parasites. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, you'll do anything. You get so desperate, so desperate to be thin.
And then it's hard because like everyone's reinforcing how great you look, right?

Speaker 10 Absolutely. And what's so hard is like when people hear my story, they're like, if you put that amount of work into eating right and going to the gym, you wouldn't have to do this.

Speaker 10 But mental illness doesn't allow you to think that way. Oh, of course not.

Speaker 2 And by the way, that doesn't work for everybody. No, like going to the gym.

Speaker 10 I have PCOS, so I need help losing weight. It's not something that I've ever, even from a small child, been able to just do on my own or just exercise and I'm going to lose weight.

Speaker 10 Like that's not, I could eat right and go to the gym and I still need help.

Speaker 10 So I think when people don't understand that, and even doctors don't understand that like if they're not versed in PCOS or you know having

Speaker 2 what it cortis high cortisol or high testosterone in women like they're not thinking about all of those things if they're not super familiar with it it's really hard I mean the way that society reinforces being thin as the ideal I mean I was so I remember times when I used to I used to go to the gym when I lived in the city before having kids and I would run for 60 minutes and there was no alternative And I would run at seven miles an hour for 60 minutes.

Speaker 2 And people would come over to me and be like, Oh my God, that's amazing. And you're like, do that.
And I was like, what I really wanted to say was, like, it's fucking torture.

Speaker 2 And I don't give myself a choice. And my body hurts so bad, but I would be like, oh, you know, I love running.
You know, I'd be like, oh, that's so great. That's amazing.
You look so good. Yep.

Speaker 2 You know, and like this, I remember this, just like elderly women that were from like a different era.

Speaker 2 They would just tell me, oh, you look so glamorous don't let anyone tell you you're too thin this woman told me once she's like don't let anyone tell you you're too thin you're so glamorous people would die to be that thin and then like i am

Speaker 2 with your head you know you're like well

Speaker 2 like if i go back i'm gonna be a failure everyone's gonna say oh i knew she couldn't do it because she's really like meant to be fat you know and i never wanted to give that to anyone there were just so many contributing factors and i'm so grateful that i found my way out of it and that's why i wrote the book is because

Speaker 2 I was so far gone. And I want people to know that like, you can be so far gone and still completely make your way back.

Speaker 10 And you did.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And I know that everyone is so proud of you and everyone that can connect to your story in any way is so proud of you.

Speaker 2 Oh, thank you. And I loved hearing your story.

Speaker 10 It's, it's been rough. And I don't know if reality TV contributes to it.
Like, especially if you sort of already are suffering with mental illness or body image or anything like that.

Speaker 10 And then you're on reality TV on top of it. It sort of adds another layer, like another adding salt to the wound, sort of, because you have more eyes on you.

Speaker 10 I don't know if you've ever experienced that.

Speaker 2 I mean, I also think that they're part of the same thing. Like, you're looking for validation from something outside yourself.
You're looking for people to tell you that you're doing great, right?

Speaker 2 And whether that's because of the size of your body or because you're suddenly a TV personality, you're looking for something else bigger and better, right? So, it's all part of the same.

Speaker 2 I don't know many

Speaker 2 really confident, happy, settled people who would choose to expose their lives on reality TV.

Speaker 10 So do you think reality TV is mental illness then?

Speaker 2 No, I don't think it contributes to it. I think that the people who would want to be a part of it are probably

Speaker 2 missing something in their lives.

Speaker 2 Stop yelling at me. Stop

Speaker 2 yelling, Jackie. Stop yelling at me.
But I would still do it. So what does that say about it? What does that say about me? What's missing? I just got a little bit addicted to the fame, right?

Speaker 10 A little bit because it's this love-hate relationship. I hate what the the trolls say.
I hate how mean they are, but I can't stop.

Speaker 10 And I, my identity now is like, I don't feel relevant enough unless I'm on TV. So me actively seeking out what am I doing next on TV to stay relevant because that is what I identify as successful.

Speaker 2 So I think that once you're on TV, it changes like the trajectory of why you would go on. So at first, you go on it because you're looking for that validation.

Speaker 2 And then you get a taste of the fame and you're like, wait, I can open all these doors. And like, I stand out in a room, right?

Speaker 2 So, like, I know when I'm going away this week with my family, I know when I go to the airport, like, there's going to be a lot of people who want to take a picture with me.

Speaker 2 And for me, that's still kind of thrilling, right? So, the fact that

Speaker 2 I can keep that going

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 somewhat exciting. So, that's not because something's missing in my life now.
I just, I got a taste of it and I like it, you know. At least you're honest, though.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I feel like some people aren't on the show. I feel okay not doing it anymore.
Yeah, of course, of course.

Speaker 10 But maybe not me, though. Like, I'm actively like, what am I? I have have to keep going.

Speaker 2 Are you still on TV?

Speaker 10 No, I left three years ago.

Speaker 2 But you have this. So, like, you became the biggest book talker around, right? Like, you are a success story.
Like, you're amazing.

Speaker 2 Like, when I found out I was coming here, I was jumping out of my skin. Really? So, yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't think I've ever heard a better compliment than that. Oh, no.
I said to my

Speaker 2 publicist at Simon ⁇ Schuster, I said, if there's any way in hell that I can talk to Calem, I'm like, please.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm like, I don't think she knows who I am.
Oh, are you out of your did you ever watch Teen Mom? Yeah. You did? I watched when you were originally on it.
No way.

Speaker 2 I didn't watch the later seasons, but you know, because nobody has cable when I did, nobody has cable.

Speaker 10 Are you able/slash willing to talk about real housewives drama?

Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 10 I guess people know the drama with the real housewives, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.
All right. So.
And it's also ever-changing. Like the person who I was fighting with the most that actually led me to, it's not her fault.

Speaker 2 It was like the way I processed it all mentally is actually like probably my closest friend on the cast now. So like everything changes.
So I think the drama is like, you know,

Speaker 2 you should talk about it like in the overall. Okay.

Speaker 10 I'll just do reality TV questions in general. So

Speaker 10 you and Evan have a rock solid marriage. Yes.

Speaker 10 And I love that for you because I feel like so many times in reality TV, we see bits and pieces, but then it's like sort of not really what's going on on the other side.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. And also like a lot of marriages crumble.

Speaker 10 Especially under the microscope, I would say. But what advice would you have,

Speaker 10 if any, for a relationship and a marriage like that, to have a rock-solid marriage like that?

Speaker 2 You mean on reality TV, just in general?

Speaker 2 I think what works really well for me and Evan is, first of all, you have to love each other. You really have to have that love and respect for each other, but you have to let each other.

Speaker 2 do like be themselves like if you're if you go in and try to change like i have a lot of quirky habits way beyond the eating stuff like put the eating stuff aside i'm quirky. I'm interesting.

Speaker 2 I'm weird. Right.
And Evan lets me be me and I let him be him. He's got his weird habits also.

Speaker 2 And like we, unless it's something dangerous or that impacts the kids, like we give each other that space. He doesn't like to go out that much.
And I love to go out.

Speaker 2 We let each other do our thing, you know?

Speaker 2 I think a lot of trust and a lot of space is

Speaker 2 very important. A lot of trust.

Speaker 10 Trust is hard, I think, specifically for all couples, but also especially when you're in the public eye, that can really test a marriage. And you have to like trust that that's not.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Evan got very upset. I remember when we went to Ireland,

Speaker 2 somebody snapped a picture of me hugging a tourist.

Speaker 2 And he said something to me. And so our faces were like, first of all, the last place I would cheat on my husband is in the streets of Dublin with 18 cameras on me.
Right. So,

Speaker 2 but but anyway, the way that the picture looked, it was like, um, our faces were like real close to each other and we were like holding each other. It was like a kid, you know,

Speaker 2 and someone sent the picture to Evan and was like, this is what your wife is doing in Dublin. And he lost his fucking mind and he got so upset.

Speaker 2 And I was like, you have to trust me, like that I am not cheating on you on the streets of Dublin, you know, and I think he realized like, okay, like this is silly and nothing's happening here.

Speaker 2 With reality TV, yeah, you really got to trust.

Speaker 10 It adds like another layer because with the attention also comes attention from other people and that will

Speaker 10 can ultimately add another layer.

Speaker 2 And I'm also very friendly. Like if you are a fan, like I'll give a hug.
I like that. I'm like a touchy-feely person.
Right.

Speaker 10 I mean, so yeah, you just have to have that extra layer of trust.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Okay. So I told you that I just had twins and I'm, I tell everyone that I love that I want them to experience twins.
And they're like, please don't wish that on me.

Speaker 10 But they, you you have to, and you have two sets of twins.

Speaker 10 I don't know how to explain to people what I mean.

Speaker 2 It's,

Speaker 2 you know, I would say for the first, for your childhood, I believe a happy childhood is, it forms the basis for the rest of your life. I would agree.
Okay. So

Speaker 2 to have a built-in

Speaker 2 playmate and built-in best friend is so invaluable, especially to someone like me that didn't have friends in high school, which is really what made me sick. High school made me very sick.

Speaker 2 High school, I was so lonely. To know that your child has that person, that's always going to be their person no matter what, is so invaluable.
Like I can't explain how at peace it puts me as a mom.

Speaker 2 And even though like my 17-year-old boys now, they've gone in different directions. They're very different people.
They are still connected like that.

Speaker 2 And if something happens to one, it happens to the other. So I feel like that's such a gift to your children.
It contributes to a really happy childhood.

Speaker 10 I am obsessed with my twins and want everyone to have them. So they're, they fight though.
They, they, they're toddlers and they like hit each other.

Speaker 10 But they also love each other so fiercely that I think not saying that my other my other kids don't love each other and you know, they're siblings, but the twins, there's just something about their bonds that is so special.

Speaker 2 They did, both sets of mine fought a lot. That does end.
It does. Okay, for sure.

Speaker 10 Okay. Especially boy-girl, I worry because they're so polar opposite.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 But yeah, I mean, I hope everyone in this room has twins at some point.

Speaker 2 It's if they like children.

Speaker 2 And it's two for the price of one, right? I did not like being pregnant, so there you go.

Speaker 10 I mean, and you have, are your older boys, are they identical or fraternal?

Speaker 2 No, everything was fraternal because it was all IVF.

Speaker 10 But you think with IVF, you can still have identical.

Speaker 2 Well, I think having identical is when your eggs split.

Speaker 2 It's not a matter of putting in two. Right.
Okay.

Speaker 10 But did they put in, they put in two at first? Okay. I think now, and they typically don't, or it depends where you go.
They won't put in two.

Speaker 2 Because, you know, twins is a riskier pregnancy. It's a high risk.
And the reason they won't a lot of the time is because IVF clinics have to publish their numbers.

Speaker 2 And the more single pregnancies, the higher rate of live births, right? So if they put in twins all the time, you'd get a lot of disappearing twins. You'd get a lot of, you know, that term, right?

Speaker 2 Where one doesn't make it. You'd get a lot of, you know, twins have a higher risk of not making it, you know? So

Speaker 2 it brings their numbers down.

Speaker 10 I do know that some

Speaker 10 places will still do more than one. At least where I went when I was going to freeze my eggs in 20.
I think like 2021, maybe. I think that was the year.

Speaker 10 They, we talked about the whole process and they said that they would not, when I was ready, they were never going to put in more than one.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. Yeah.

Speaker 10 So, I don't know if it's all of Delaware, but at least where I, where I went in Delaware, they weren't going to.

Speaker 10 Okay. You told the producers of the show that you wanted to talk about your eating disorder on the show, and you said this because you hoped it would hold you accountable.
Yes.

Speaker 10 Looking back, I think we sort of talked about it already, but do you think that that was important?

Speaker 2 I knew that if I came forward and said, I'm really sick and I've got to get over my eating disorder, I wasn't going to show all the people watching that

Speaker 2 it was too hard. I would never do that.
So I knew that if I was going to commit to putting this on the show, I was going to recover no matter what it took.

Speaker 10 I mean, that takes a lot of self-awareness too, to know and to be committed to that. Reality TV has its pros and cons, but sometimes there are good times, obviously.

Speaker 10 What was your favorite moment that you can remember about filming Real Housewives?

Speaker 2 The first few years of it were really fun.

Speaker 2 I think I loved my kids' birthday party in the driveway. It was

Speaker 2 a beautiful day.

Speaker 2 The kids were so young. The ones that just turned 17, it was their 11th birthday.
And we just had a really fun party and half the cast was there. A lot of my real life friends were there.

Speaker 2 Everyone was in a good mood. I was close with the producers and like, I got to, I got to capture my kids' entire birthday party on camera.
And I just, I just remember feeling like this ain't so bad.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Speaker 10 There are definitely glimmers glimmers of like where you're just so thankful.

Speaker 10 I feel like, you know, we saw a lot of highs and lows of, you know, with your friendships on the show, but how does that translate into real life?

Speaker 10 Like when you have drama on the show with someone, is it very real in real life? Or did it sort of, what's the word dissipate?

Speaker 2 Oh, it is so real in real life. Well, it depends.
The problem with New Jersey is that people think, take things too far in real life.

Speaker 2 It's like, if we have a fight on the show, when filming is done, leave me alone. You know,

Speaker 2 there was a certain cast member who went on like a rampage tour of bad mouthing me on like every

Speaker 2 post show.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And like, I was just like, leave me alone already.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Like at that point, it's like, this is for Easy.

Speaker 2 Like, let's just like every time I turn on the fucking internet, like turn on Instagram, turn on the internet. You see what happens when you get 50?

Speaker 2 This is how I know I'm fucking old. That's something my mother would say.

Speaker 2 Every time I turn on Instagram, it would be like, another, it was be like my floating fucking head with like a headline about like what this person said about me. And I was just like,

Speaker 2 that's the parts that suck. Yeah.
You know, because I'm not even getting paid for it. You know, right? And I have to watch everyone trash.
And then you read the comments, and that's all.

Speaker 2 The worst thing that we can do. I hate reading comments.

Speaker 10 I won't even look because at this point, I will go down a rabbit hole of comments and they're worse. They're worse than the actual headline.

Speaker 2 No, I know. But then I'll read the comments on like other people's articles and they're just as fucking bad.
So like, I think everyone gets, there's very few people on reality TV.

Speaker 2 There are some that like everyone loves.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't think I've ever seen like a thing blasting paige de sorbo right yeah ever i don't everyone loves her and i don't watch her show but like it seems like she is doing something very right but

Speaker 2 most people get the beat out of them yeah yeah yeah i would say i agree with that I would definitely agree with that.

Speaker 10 Well, I think everyone can get your book from Barnes ⁇ Noble, Amazon, anywhere you can buy your books. And is there anything else that you want to plug right now?

Speaker 2 No, but also I recorded the Audible myself, so you could listen to it. Everyone in the book

Speaker 10 Judy absolutely loves when people narrate their own books.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I loved narrating.

Speaker 10 Will you narrate your novel?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, for sure. Oh, I'm so excited for the novel.
When the novel comes out, I'm going to come back. Okay, perfect.
But

Speaker 2 what else am I promoting right now? I do a lot of,

Speaker 2 I love talking about eating disorders and recovery. I'm like, anyone could reach out to me at any time.
I'll answer you.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 no, just look for me on Instagram, Jackie Goldschneider, and buy my book. You'll love it.
It's not just about eating disorders.

Speaker 2 It's really like a story about kind of losing yourself, especially in mental illness, and finding your way back, clawing your way back.

Speaker 10 Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on Barely Family.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for having me.

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