Real Housewives of New Jersey Jackie Goldschneider

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Speaker 5 My guest today, Jackie Goldschneider, is a star of the super successful Bravo TV show, Rio Housewives of New Jersey. And now, more importantly, she is also an author.

Speaker 5 She wrote an unfiltered memoir, The Weight of Beautiful, My Battle with Anorexia and Journey to Recover, where she bravely chronicles her decades-long battle with anorexia and public journey to recover.

Speaker 5 After decades of hiding her eating disorder from friends, family, and the world, Jackie felt ready to expose the realities of her devastating struggle with anorexia, including the harrowing day-to-day tactics she employed to count calories and restrict meals, her struggles with fertility and pregnancy, the effect her eating disorder had on her relationships with her husband and children, and ultimately how, in a twist of fate, becoming a reality TV star saved her life.

Speaker 5 I was very impressed by her book because I know as a woman how tough it is. to put out there in the public something that we are struggling with personally, something that is a personal pain to us.

Speaker 5 In my case, I've been doing it through the podcast, talking about overcoming an abusive marriage, being a victim of abuse, rebuilding my life from scratch.

Speaker 5 And I know it's very intimidating when you're talking to thousands and thousands of people out there. So I was very impressed by her book.
It's very raw, very real, beautiful, beautiful story.

Speaker 5 Even if you are not dealing with anorexia, I highly recommend a read because it will definitely inspire you. Jackie is living proof that you can turn your life around.
And it's a beautiful story.

Speaker 5 I hope you guys enjoy my great conversation with the beautiful and super talented Jackie Gold Schneider.

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Speaker 5 Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.
It's such an honor having you.

Speaker 5 I have to say, I was reading your book the past few days, and I am very impressed first and foremost as a woman, because I know how hard it is to open up about personal things.

Speaker 5 And you did such such an amazing job. So, the first thing I want to say is congratulations.
Thank you. It was very healing for me to open up that much.
Yeah, it's really hard, right?

Speaker 5 Because I do the same like on my podcast. I talk a lot about my personal life, my journey, getting out of an abusive marriage.
And I know in the beginning, it's scary and it's tough.

Speaker 5 So, the way you open up in your book, I was like, wow, this is just because it was so raw and so real and so honest. I'm like, obviously, you poured your soul into it.
Yeah, I did.

Speaker 5 I mean, certain parts were harder to open up about than others. Some parts I couldn't wait to just get the terrible memories out of my head and onto paper, but other things were touchier.

Speaker 5 I questioned whether or not I should open up about them. Yeah, so let's rewind for people that don't know your story, people that haven't read the book yet.

Speaker 5 And I want to try to pack up as much as we can, like I told you, because I also want to talk about your experience being on the show.

Speaker 5 But for those who don't know what you've been going through, the book is The Way to Beautiful. You decided to talk about your journey, being an anorexic and recovery.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 for people that don't know you, in a nutshell,

Speaker 5 everything started because you grew up obese, correct?

Speaker 5 I became obese in high school. Yeah.
Yes. And I was bothering.
I was very lonely and I used food

Speaker 5 as a companion because I really had no one else. Yeah, like a lot of people people do, by the way.
We use food to cope, right?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 5 Yeah. So, and then in your journey

Speaker 5 of gaining weight and feeling as an outcast when you were younger,

Speaker 5 food triggered you. What was the turning point that you went from just gaining weight and eating so much to like, oh my God, I want to lose all this weight and I want to be skinny?

Speaker 5 Yeah, there was an absolute turning point. It was one day I was

Speaker 5 having my

Speaker 5 pre-college physical. It was April of 1994.
I was a senior in high school and I knew nothing about how to lose weight. It was totally foreign to me.

Speaker 5 And I went to my doctor and he basically weight shamed me and told me

Speaker 5 that I wouldn't have any fun in college if I went to college so overweight.

Speaker 5 And, you know, it was a different time back then.

Speaker 5 Obviously, that wouldn't fly right now.

Speaker 5 And I think he gave me some medical jargon about also the benefits of losing weight, but I really remember him talking to me with like palpable disappointments about

Speaker 5 how much more fun I would have if I was

Speaker 5 if I lost weight. And I went straight from his office to Weight Watchers.
And it was the last day of my life that I was not on a diet. Wow.

Speaker 5 And this was a long time ago. How many years ago was that?

Speaker 5 That was 94. So it was 31 years ago.
So this is something that you've been going through for a really long time. Now,

Speaker 5 I just want to point out that when we say that you were overweight and how skinny you got,

Speaker 5 when you guys are reading the book, you also put the pictures there. You put pictures of yourself in the book.
So I saw it.

Speaker 5 I was like, and I also think that's very brave because as a woman, we get judged all the time if you're too fat if you're thin if you gain five pounds we judge ourselves and the world judges us so when i saw that you put the pictures i'm like wow that's because everybody can see the difference yeah i mean it's one thing to read it it's it's another thing to visually

Speaker 5 you know to look at it with your own eyes and say wow yeah like you know that something drastic must have happened this is the days before diet drugs right so something drastic must have happened to have you know a well over a hundred pound difference in a young girl.

Speaker 5 I know it's it's shocking.

Speaker 5 But most people, I mean, when they go to Weight Watchers, and I maybe you're, I don't know if your doctor was coming from a good place or not, they, it doesn't mean they're going to transform that weight loss journey into a full-blown battle with anorexia, right?

Speaker 5 You go to Weight Watchers and you're like, I hope it's going to do me some good and help me lose weight. What do you think happened in your case that it became an obsession to you, right?

Speaker 5 Yes. Well, I think that actually it was due in part to my diet journey beginning with Weight Watchers.
I have strong feelings about Weight Watchers in the 90s

Speaker 5 that I haven't really gone into yet, but I do believe that Weight Watchers in the 90s was the start of many people's eating disorders.

Speaker 5 That being said, what happened at Weight Watchers is it taught me to look at food as numbers instead of nourishment.

Speaker 5 And it taught me to treat food as a mathematical equation instead of food being something that

Speaker 5 instead of teaching me how to eat and stop when I'm full or eat intuitively, it did none of that. It teaches you how to make food into numbers and then end.

Speaker 5 when you've reached the limitations of your mathematical equation. And that worked for me.
And my mind is very mathematical. And the counting, you know, I do have like little bits and pieces of

Speaker 5 like OCD,

Speaker 5 which very controllable, not like, you know, full-blown OCD, but like, I like things, I like numbers and numbers make me feel safe. So that worked for me.
And immediately

Speaker 5 it transformed my way of eating into just mathematical equations and my joy of food completely disappeared.

Speaker 5 And the way that I ate completely transformed into just math. So you, when you started going to Weight Watchers, you started seeing what the weight was dropping.
You went to Weight Watchers.

Speaker 5 My first week on Weight Watchers, I lost nine pounds. And basically, Weight Watchers,

Speaker 5 I know. And I mean, I'm not a doctor, but as I was reading your book, I was like, well, obviously, I think any outsider can see that this is not healthy.
Like nine pounds in a week is a ton of weight.

Speaker 5 It cannot be significantly overweight. Yeah, but still, it cannot possibly be healthy to do that.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, there were so many things that happened that made me go from dieting to anorexia or from like a casual diet to obsessive.

Speaker 5 A lot of things happened. It was almost like a perfect storm.
It was like the

Speaker 5 weight shaming and then the

Speaker 5 The fact that it started just like that. Like the day I got weight shamed, I went to Weight Watchers and and by the next week I had already lost that pound.

Speaker 5 The positive reinforcement that I got from every single person in my life, despite the fact that what I was doing was so harmful to my body, because I was a teenage girl eating maybe 1,200 calories a day, probably a thousand.

Speaker 5 And that's not even enough to support your organ function, much less like a healthy, developing teenage girl. So I was doing all these horrible things to myself.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I just, I couldn't like people just could not stop telling me how great the results were.

Speaker 5 So, you know, it's just like your, your head is not able to think logically and rationally, especially as a teenager, you know, so I think that I just,

Speaker 5 I never knew how to get out of it. And then once I did lose so much weight, so on Weight Watchers before college started, I went out in April.
I left for college in August, I lost 50 pounds.

Speaker 5 And college was a total roller coaster of weight gain and weight loss. And I'm not talking three pounds, five pounds.
I'm talking like 30 pounds up, 25 down, 25 up, 30 down. It was horrific.

Speaker 5 Oh my God. It's interesting that you say that, that everybody was encouraging and supporting you because I have the same perspective.

Speaker 5 I think we live in a world that people, of course, they see us from the outside in and everybody glorifies. thin women.

Speaker 5 I remember in my life a few years ago in 2017, when my mom passed away and my husband passed away, I lost a ton of weight. It wasn't on purpose, like I couldn't eat because of stress.

Speaker 5 So I literally went from having like 118 pounds, I was 111 pounds. And I was so sick, so sick.

Speaker 5 And I remember, and now I look at the photos, I was getting photo shoots, I was on the cover of two magazines. People, I was getting more endorsements like on social media than I do now.

Speaker 5 And people are like, wow, look at her. Cause I immediately, they would send me a size zero dress and they were like taping it on the back.

Speaker 5 And I was, I was almost dying. And everybody was complimenting me.
And I remember thinking, wow, if people only knew the pain that I'm going through, that I can't swallow food.

Speaker 5 So now I'm- Wait, so then how is a woman supposed to say,

Speaker 5 you know what? Let me take a break from this. I know.
I know. Everyone around you is telling you how amazing you look.

Speaker 5 Not only do you not want that to stop, but gaining weight at that point feels like you failed everyone.

Speaker 5 Right. Like, oh, what happened? You were doing so well, you know? So going back to healthy habits or doing something healthy for yourself is almost like failure.

Speaker 5 So it's a really twisted dynamic when it comes to losing weight. in unhealthy it really is so you're going through college you're watching the weight drop you're watching your pant size drop.

Speaker 5 You, you talk a lot about that in the book. I love it.
But do you remember, do you have a memory in your mind?

Speaker 5 I know it's obviously slowly became an obsession, but do you remember anything that triggered you or a special moment? They were like, oh my God, this is it. I don't like food.
I can't.

Speaker 5 Because you mentioned like you were putting the poll, you were doing post-its with the points and the post-so that was in college. So college was

Speaker 5 computer. So college was very much much a

Speaker 5 roller coaster for me. I did not become anorexic until I was 26 years old.
And I was living in New York City. I was a young lawyer and I hated being chubby.

Speaker 5 And I just couldn't figure out how to lose weight unless I was on Weight Watchers, which just didn't work for my lifestyle. Living in New York City, I was running around with my friends.

Speaker 5 I was drinking at night. And so I was trying all kinds of different diets.
And things would work in in the beginning.

Speaker 5 Back then, it was like South Beach diet and the zone and the Atkins and like they just weren't working for my lifestyle. So I decided to try

Speaker 5 getting foods.

Speaker 5 And when I

Speaker 5 and so I would started cutting out foods and then I started losing weight and I started cutting more and eventually got to the point where I was like, if I just eat as little as possible, I don't have to follow any diet.

Speaker 5 I just have to eat as little as possible. And then I started really counting calories and count the day I decided to count my calories strictly was the day that everything spiraled because

Speaker 5 then I got scared to eat anything that I didn't know the nutritional value of. And it became

Speaker 5 too restrictive of a lifestyle and I didn't know how to get out of it. And I didn't get out of it for another 18 years.
Oh my God. Yeah, that's, I cannot imagine.

Speaker 5 And yeah, you do mention that like for 10 years, there were certain foods you wouldn't try and all this, this crazy, crazy things.

Speaker 5 I want to talk about a few things that I read in the book that I was like, wow. And I think it's important that we share.
For example, you mentioned eating jelly beans.

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah. That was the only thing I would eat.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Jelly beans, it's not even food, right? It's like, it's a bad snack.
Well, eating became about

Speaker 5 safety for me.

Speaker 5 So I didn't care. I lost all the joy of food.
Food no longer brought me any joy whatsoever. Food was

Speaker 5 only, I only ate for the sole purpose of not starving, being absolutely starved, like the physical feeling of being starved.

Speaker 5 As long as I could get rid of that feeling, I didn't care what went into my body. So

Speaker 5 jelly beans were the only

Speaker 5 like treat that I would give myself because I knew

Speaker 5 how many calories were in each one. And I could sort of like play with them in my mouth.
It all became a game. Everything with eating was a game.

Speaker 5 And so I would cut jelly beans in half and just like savor them and just eat like

Speaker 5 10 jelly beans. It would take me like an hour.
That's crazy. You also talk about when you met your now husband and you guys were dating, you fell in love.

Speaker 5 And he, do you think he noticed in the very beginning?

Speaker 5 Because obviously when you go on dates, like you mentioned, they take you to dinner and they order food and they ask, do you want to share a bite? And you were always making excuses about that.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no,

Speaker 5 I think our first like two or three dates, I managed to hide it because

Speaker 5 I knew on our first actual date. that he

Speaker 5 that I didn't want to scare him away. He ordered, we went to a Mexican restaurant, he ordered some food for us.
And I very, I didn't eat all day.

Speaker 5 And then I ate a little bit, as little as possible at that meal, but I did eat.

Speaker 5 And then I just didn't eat anymore the rest of the night. So I would like bank calories, you know.

Speaker 5 But I think after like our third date, he started to notice. But, you know, he was a kid in his 20s also,

Speaker 5 and nobody taught him anything about this. His mom and sister have always been like pretty normal eaters.

Speaker 5 And he had no exposure to eating disorders, you know, so I think that he just thought that I was, you know, he was living in New York City. I mean, New York City has plenty of thin women.

Speaker 5 So I think maybe he thought like, oh, like this is what some women do to stay thin. And it didn't really start to concern him until he saw

Speaker 5 actually

Speaker 5 how little I ate. And over the course, you know, when I met him, I was only a few months into my journey with anorexia.
And so I wasn't that thin when I met him.

Speaker 5 And by the time we got engaged, I was just absolutely emaciated.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I think that he, it just got so far, so fast that he just didn't know what to do. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And also, I think when you see a person every single day, you don't really notice as shockingly like the weight loss. Like if I saw you one day and then six months later, you're like, wow, right.

Speaker 5 But if you're, if you're with a person every day, you kind of like life just happens and you don't really realize that person is like, yeah, and also it's a little bit overwhelming for like a young man.

Speaker 5 You know, I'm not saying that young men shouldn't help. You absolutely should if someone in your life is struggling.

Speaker 5 But like he's, you know, this guy in his 20s, he's trying to, he's working in finance in the city, trying to support himself, trying to be in a new relationship.

Speaker 5 And also he's got people asking him, is Jackie okay? Is Jackie okay you know and

Speaker 5 i don't think that he knew enough about

Speaker 5 you know it's not the world we live in today yeah you know back then it was different and like i just don't think he knew enough about um how to help someone who was an eating disorder in order to be able to help me you know and that's why i'm doing some of what i'm doing is because i want people to know among many other things how to help somebody oh my god

Speaker 5 no i think it's very brave of you for sure and i'm sure you're gonna help a lot of people out there I saw you actually put a picture on your wedding day, like you have this beautiful strapless gown and you're tossing the bouquet.

Speaker 5 And I see your arms. I mean, now we look because I know you're starting like, oh my God, you are so, so like beyond skinny.
I don't even know the word for that. You are so frail.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and what people don't know is that

Speaker 5 that skinniness comes with a lot of health.

Speaker 5 Oh, yes, it must. It must.

Speaker 5 I found a lot of things in my body by doing that to myself and the prolonged anorexia. A lot of,

Speaker 5 I caused myself a lot of health issues. Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 I was thinking about, as I'm reading your book,

Speaker 5 I mean, I had tears in my eyes and I'm like, oh, my God,

Speaker 5 because you were so malnourished. I kept thinking about what is going on inside her body.
And then you guys go to the honeymoon to Italy, right?

Speaker 5 And you, you, also another picture that you put it's in in the book you talk about like being this gorgeous place you're in your honeymoon with the man you love and there's a huge plate of pasta in front of you guys and you didn't want to eat the pasta no i didn't eat any pasta

Speaker 5 no and i brought i brought my 900 page calorie encyclopedia in my bag with me on my honeymoon

Speaker 5 i didn't eat anything on that honeymoon i i had like a tablespoon of sauce i just had salads I was so,

Speaker 5 my mind was like warped. It was just completely focused on maintaining my weight.
That was my number one priority in life. And after I had children, that became my number two priority in life.

Speaker 5 Like it was staying skinny was everything to me because I had such a traumatic experience being overweight as a teenager. And

Speaker 5 my mind put together

Speaker 5 being overweight with trauma and loneliness. And so it wasn't a normal response.

Speaker 5 I had such a fear, such an overwhelming fear of gaining weight, not just because what I would look like, but because I equated

Speaker 5 gaining weight with loneliness. Oh my God.
Yeah, no, obviously it's a mental issue. And you actually mentioned that in the book.

Speaker 5 You meet this guy, it's the guy of your dreams, and you're getting married. Then you're like, oh my God, he met me skinny.
What if I gain weight?

Speaker 5 You were literally thinking you didn't want to lose him. You thought you might lose him if you gained the weight back.
Yeah, which is so silly because weight was never

Speaker 5 anything that he cared about with me. Oh, yeah, no, for sure.
I mean, and

Speaker 5 I know we get so, I think we judge ourselves more than anybody else.

Speaker 5 But obviously, if a guy is madly in love with you and you put a ring on your finger, he's like, I want to marry you, five pounds more, five pounds less ten pounds more is now what's going to be like the the deal breaker right

Speaker 5 yeah it was um but i was so scared because i had never had anyone love me back like that and

Speaker 5 i just was so scared of losing him that i didn't listen to anything or anyone i just did what i wanted

Speaker 5 um then so you guys decide to have children that's another thing that i because i did not know your story before.

Speaker 5 So when I'm reading the book and you're like, I want to get pregnant, I'm thinking, oh, how can she carry

Speaker 5 healthy children? Because her body must be so malnourished. I was so like, so as I'm reading the book, I'm reading really fast because I'm like, oh my God, I want to make sure.

Speaker 5 I want to know that everything is okay. And you have twice

Speaker 5 twins.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 I had five rounds of IVF.

Speaker 5 My first round, i had twins and my fifth round i had twins and i had nothing in them at all but i i really i remember the first time i got pregnant um nicole ritchie had just gotten pregnant and this was she was emaciated and i kept telling myself well nicole ritchie got pregnant so i can get pregnant and i i really throughout the course of this whole thing i i

Speaker 5 rationalized everything and I made excuses for why my behavior was okay. And that was one of them, like other really skinny women get pregnant and have healthy kids.

Speaker 5 So I don't have anything to worry about. So yeah, pregnancy was very, very hard for me.
It was very hard to justify eating more. I can imagine, but your kids were born healthy.
Thank God, right?

Speaker 5 They were born early, very early, but not very early, but they were born significantly early because it was better for them outside my body than in.

Speaker 5 And they stayed in the NICU for a little bit. But

Speaker 5 yeah, they're they're healthy. But when you were pregnant and you're going to the doctor, were they saying something to you? Like, you have to eat more, you have to gain weight,

Speaker 5 are you nourishing yourself enough? Did anybody say that to you?

Speaker 5 So I gained weight with the pregnancies. And I made sure that I lost it all very quickly when I was done.

Speaker 5 And it was gut-wrenching for me to gain the weight. But

Speaker 5 the only doctor who ever said anything to me was my

Speaker 5 obstetrician when I first went to him and he determined that I needed help getting pregnant. He said to me, why don't you try gaining a few pounds? He didn't say you're too thin.

Speaker 5 He didn't say you're malnourished. He said, why don't you try gaining a few pounds first and see if that helps you get pregnant before we go to fertility treatments? And I said,

Speaker 5 and I said, okay.

Speaker 5 And then I went home and I just, I couldn't bring myself to eat. I just couldn't do it.
So a week later, I called him and I said,

Speaker 5 I can't do this. Like, I just, I don't want, I don't want to gain weight.
It's not going to work. Let's just go for fertility.
And so I went to the fertility clinic and

Speaker 5 it worked. Thank God.
But, you know, no, no doctors ever said to me,

Speaker 5 And I was so, so thin. No doctors ever said to me, are you eating enough? You're way underweight.
My heart rate was so low. Nobody ever said,

Speaker 5 you know, this is dangerous. Your body's not working.
You're right.

Speaker 5 Your heart's in danger. Nobody, not one doctor.
That really surprises me. Everything that you were going through, that I don't know if they were afraid or

Speaker 5 because I'm not a doctor. I think maybe back then it just wasn't a thing, you know.
I mean, after I had children, my weight, was higher.

Speaker 5 I was still a size zero, but I was in children's clothing when I was

Speaker 5 before I had kids, I was in children's clothing. I couldn't shop in regular stores anymore.
I was in the teen department. And

Speaker 5 after I had kids, my body settled at a higher weight.

Speaker 5 So I was still a size zero, but I was, you know, if you looked at me, you couldn't immediately see like anorexia, the way that you look at some women and you're like, wow, you are way too thin.

Speaker 5 It wasn't like that. It was like, she's really thin, but like, you could ignore it.
You could totally ignore it.

Speaker 5 And you thought, so as you're living your life and you're raising your kids, you mentioned, for example, never sharing ice cream with them. Of course, you're not snacking with them.

Speaker 5 You, you thought, but you were, you were

Speaker 5 measuring their food, right? You had the scale at home. You're measuring your kids' food.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, because I didn't know how to eat. And food gave me a lot of anxiety.
and I didn't trust myself to feed my kids enough because I didn't feed myself.

Speaker 5 So I wanted to make sure they were getting enough.

Speaker 5 And so I was measuring out their food because that's how I lived. I measured out everything that I did.

Speaker 5 So I measured out everything they did. And it wasn't until, you know, I made a half-assed attempt at recovery.
When I was about,

Speaker 5 I think like 36, 37 37 years old, I made an attempt and I wasn't ready for it and I didn't go anywhere with it.

Speaker 5 But the one thing that the dietician did help me with was to stop measuring my kids' food and to let them tell me when they were full and when they were hungry.

Speaker 5 And it was the best thing that could have come out of that.

Speaker 5 So I stopped all of that, but that was really hard for me. Feeding my kids was

Speaker 5 a nightmare. I get it.
A nightmare because when they would stop eating, I got so nervous.

Speaker 5 I got so nervous that they were going to be malnourished like me. And I just, I didn't know what to do with that.
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Speaker 5 So, fast forward, you are going through all of this, and you're battling this major, major issue. You're hoping nobody notices, right? You're just living your life.

Speaker 5 You get a call to be on one of the most

Speaker 5 successful television franchises, which is the Real Housewives of New Jersey. You get a call and an invitation to go on the show.
So, I have a few questions about that. My first thought was,

Speaker 5 why did you decide to do it? I mean, considering everything that you were going through, weren't you afraid? Because I mean, you know, it's like you jump on fire on that show.

Speaker 5 Were you afraid? I mean, because obviously the women can be vicious. Weren't you afraid? Like, they're going to notice, they're going to trash me.
This is going to be too much?

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 My first question was, do you keep cameras at my house? Because I knew that if

Speaker 5 I was on surveillance 24 hours a day, there was no way that I could hide this. And it was my biggest secret.
So I wouldn't have done it.

Speaker 5 But they only film you when you are filming a scene for the show. And I had had already at that point

Speaker 5 15 years of experience with being anorexic. I knew how to hide it.
I knew how to save up my food for the one time that people would be watching me.

Speaker 5 Keeping this secret was the after my children and my marriage, it was the biggest priority of my life. So I knew how to hide it.
So I wasn't worried. I really wasn't worried about that.

Speaker 5 And, you know, the truth is that there's so many women with not eating disorders, but disordered eating that I felt like it would just, especially in the reality TV world, right?

Speaker 5 I could just blend it into like how everyone else is behaving around food. Why did you want to do the show?

Speaker 5 A lot of reasons, but I think the first and foremost was that I was just looking for something different in my life. I had very big goals that I didn't know how to achieve.

Speaker 5 I needed doors opened that I could not open on my own.

Speaker 5 And also,

Speaker 5 I had spent my life

Speaker 5 chasing the acceptance that I didn't have when I was a teenager, right? So I spent four years really being an outcast

Speaker 5 and I never really got over that.

Speaker 5 And so I was always looking for that validation and that acceptance and for people, you know, to finally be like, you know, not the popular girl, but like to finally be more than just like the average, you know, just like

Speaker 5 mom. Yeah, sure.
And here's this like opportunity that's going to make me into a star overnight. It was so enticing.
And

Speaker 5 yeah, fame was just,

Speaker 5 it just was overnight. Like my world changed.
Oh, I'm sure. I have to say that I watched the show a really long time ago, many, many, many years ago.
I think I was still married.

Speaker 5 I don't even remember when it was. And there was a scene that Teresa like flipped the table and someone was like huge chaos.
They were like screaming and yelling at each other.

Speaker 5 And after that day, I never watched it again.

Speaker 5 And I tell you why, because I think because of everything that I've been through, I'm all about women empowerment, like women helping each other, women supporting each other.

Speaker 5 All my work, everything I do is about that. And when I saw the way they were treating each other on the show, I was like, I understand wanting to be on TV.
I agree.

Speaker 5 It's such a fantastic platform for your projects, for opening doors. I support all of that.

Speaker 5 But when I saw the way they were treating each other, especially some of them, I was like, oh my God, this is just too awful. Do they need to be doing this on TV? So when you jumped in and

Speaker 5 as I was reading your book, I haven't watched your scenes. I haven't seen it, I just know what I know from the book.

Speaker 5 As I'm reading the page, I'm like, these women are going to pounce on her because not only she's new, but the minute they i don't think they're going to be supportive because they won't you know i think the show of course the show thrives on drama i was like oh my god this is going to unfold not in a good way for jackie this is almost like when you find a show like this you don't think about the bad parts everybody thinks they're going to come in as the voice of reason yeah everybody thinks they're going to come in and unite everyone and um have a great time and i did have some great times on this show but yes it is not for everyone and um i think they did a really good job of handling myself over the years.

Speaker 5 And I tried not to get too far into the mud. But yeah, I mean, like, I know what I signed up for.
Yeah. You, you talk about messy sometimes.

Speaker 5 Let's give people some examples for those who haven't watched. And by the way, I'm going to go and watch it because now I want to see the scenes, you imagine, because I do agree.

Speaker 5 I think, at least from the book, you did an amazing job going through it. And then you end up, you know, opening to the entire world.

Speaker 5 But in the beginning, you mentioned like you guys are having breakfast. You went on a trip.
I forgot. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And I just breakfast has always been a really difficult meal. You know, eating disorders are very nuanced.
So just for your audience, first of all, they are a mental illness. And anorexia is the,

Speaker 5 as of last year, I know it was the number one most fatal mental illness in the United States. So,

Speaker 5 you know, a lot of this stuff won't make sense to other people, but for me, there was so, it's so nuanced. And like breakfast, starting my day off heavy was like a non-starter, right?

Speaker 5 So I would like forward calories to the end of the day, but starting with a heavy meal, I just, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Speaker 5 So when I had to have breakfast on camera, it was a very big problem for me. And you mentioned this one trip that you wrote about in the book.

Speaker 5 There's like all this food and there is bacon, whatever, eggs, and there's no fruit. And you're like, what am I going to eat? What am I going to eat? And you kind of grab a bag of

Speaker 5 like snacks, seeds. Yeah, like vegetable chips.
And I think the other women at that point, they're kind of beginning to wonder, right? How come Jackie doesn't eat?

Speaker 5 Yes. That was, I think,

Speaker 5 the first time that people started discussing on camera whether or not I.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And I didn't know that those conversations were being had.
I thought I was still flying under the radar. So when you find out that they're talking about you behind your back, were you worried?

Speaker 5 Like, oh my God, I don't want this to be.

Speaker 5 Oh my God.

Speaker 5 When they confronted me with it, I had in my head a nervous breakdown. And I stayed pretty calm and I had my stories ready to go and I explained everything away.
And

Speaker 5 that was, that was good enough. That put a

Speaker 5 you know, a period on the end of the sentence and then we all moved on.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 I,

Speaker 5 before my fourth season started, I was, I had gone through, you know, a really tumultuous time. I had lost more weight.
I was, I knew that my health was failing.

Speaker 5 And I said, you know, if I don't stop soon, I'm never going to stop. I was already 45 years old.

Speaker 5 And I said, well, how am I ever going to stop? And I said, you know what? If I do this in front of the whole world,

Speaker 5 I'll stop because I won't won't show people

Speaker 5 that it's too hard to recover. Like I'll never start a recovery journey and then fail in front of the whole world because I know that there's people watching me who need that hold, right?

Speaker 5 So for all of the tumultuous things that you could go through on a reality show and for all of the days that I came home and cried on this show.

Speaker 5 Every single bit of it was worth it because I truly believe that I would not have had the strength to recover if I had not decided to do it in front of the whole world. Yeah, no, for sure.

Speaker 5 And when you you got to that point, I kind of agreed with you. Like, I see, okay, at least she got help.

Speaker 5 But, and for people that haven't read the book yet, I think the turning point of everything was that your husband ended up getting involved in the chaos, right?

Speaker 5 There was some gossip by some housewives. One of them

Speaker 5 started this horrible gossip that your husband was cheating on you. Yeah.
Right. And he's way more private than you.
He didn't even want to get tangled up in this chaos.

Speaker 5 And his name was being thrown around and and yeah, it was a lot for my family. He was very, very upset and his happiness means everything to me.

Speaker 5 And I had promised him when I started the show that it was not going to be about him. It would not involve him.
He just had to be, you know, shown supporting me. And

Speaker 5 he was so messed up in it and he was so upset about it. So not only was I fighting.
for work, but I was coming home and fighting with my husband. And then my kids were seeing it.

Speaker 5 And like, we really don't fight. So my kids were crying.
They were upset. Everyone was afraid that we were going to get divorced.
My daughter will go to sleep crying.

Speaker 5 You know, it was, it was like a never-ending nightmare. And

Speaker 5 I just didn't know how to handle it. And my default way of handling things is to stop eating.

Speaker 5 So when I stopped eating, it felt like I was, it felt like the only way to punish myself enough that I could not feel guilty about all the chaos that it caused. So how did you resolve it?

Speaker 5 And they're talking about your husband on the show, obviously it's a public show. People are talking about it on social media.
It's total chaos. It's gossip.
It's nasty.

Speaker 5 How do you calm everything down and you get to the conclusion, okay, I'm going to do something good out of this and I'm going to get help?

Speaker 5 What was the change that a lot of people do? Well, I mean, I will say first that like the cycle of

Speaker 5 being upset about something that happens on a reality show is kind of short. You know, like you could do something bad on a reality show and like

Speaker 5 people move on to the next thing pretty quickly um so that's first i mean once evan received the apology that he needed and sort of like the other person said you know it wasn't i didn't have any facts to base this on insurance started like

Speaker 5 sort of

Speaker 5 so i let that move into my path yeah um

Speaker 5 to get to the point where i was like let me do something good with this um i think it i just needed to say it out loud on camera and once I did,

Speaker 5 there was no closing that door. It was the first time that I really said it out loud, you know? So,

Speaker 5 and then once I was

Speaker 5 really

Speaker 5 far enough into my

Speaker 5 treatment, I was not recovering yet when I started writing this book. Once I was far enough into my treatment, I said, I, you know, I was in a place where

Speaker 5 I'm still suffering and I was still learning how to come out of this, but I wanted to be raw. I wanted it like that when I started writing.

Speaker 5 So that's why I think it's so raw is because I was still pretty sick when I started writing this book. And then by the time I finished, I don't, I will tell you, I'm not 100% recovered.

Speaker 5 I'm about 80%, right? I still have, you know, irrational food fears sometimes. I do not have an eating disorder anymore.
I think I do not restrict myself. I do not, I'm not underweight.

Speaker 5 I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm a very healthy weight.
My health has been restored, but

Speaker 5 I still have, you know, after 30 years of, you know, thinking one way, I don't feel like it takes a long time. I think it's a lifetime journey of recovering, right?

Speaker 5 Yeah, but I do feel like you can fully recover. Yeah.
100% fully recover. Well, you're living proof of it because you look incredible.
You look super happy. You look super beautiful.
I feel good.

Speaker 5 And it's, you know, aside from like the physical, the mental aspect of being able to go on vacation and not worry that you're going to come home two pounds heavier, not spend your vacation in the hotel gym.

Speaker 5 I mean, we just booked a trip to Spain and I didn't even check the hotels to see if they had gyms. I don't care.

Speaker 5 I don't exercise when I'm like on a trip like that with my children because I don't want to take that time away from them.

Speaker 5 You know, so to have that freedom and that flexibility to get a call on a Tuesday with a friend asking, do you want to come to dinner?

Speaker 5 There's no chance that I would have said yes in my past because on a Tuesday night, I don't eat like that, right?

Speaker 5 But now there's no more rules, you know, and just to have that freedom back in my life is just, I can't explain how life-changing is. So now you actually get to enjoy food a little more.

Speaker 5 You get to eat out. You mentioned something so beautiful in your book, like you finally decided to take your kids for ice cream and you're like, oh, should mommy get one?

Speaker 5 Because before you never even got ice cream with your kids, right?

Speaker 5 And you taste the ice cream, you're like, oh, it tasted like heaven. I thought that was so adorable.
Yeah, I like sharing my first. I had my first piece of pizza I shared with my son in Italy.

Speaker 5 And just sharing those things with my children. And, you know, it's also my attempt to normalize.

Speaker 5 You know, I did a lot of damage to them over the years, letting them watch me for over a decade and the way that I was eating was just so terrible.

Speaker 5 And I know that there's things in there, you know, stored in their head that of the way that mommy ate when they were kids. And,

Speaker 5 you know, I don't pretend that that didn't happen. So now I'm just trying to show them the way that, you know, what healthy eating.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, I think it's amazing.

Speaker 5 I one time, I forgot where I read that, but with some nutritionists that when I was going through this horrible time that I couldn't eat, and this is what helped me get back to normal, that she mentioned that food is not bad and it's not good.

Speaker 5 It's not your enemy. It's not, it's just something that nourishes us and allows us to be healthy and live our lives.
And that phrase stayed with me because that's what keeps me.

Speaker 5 It's the lifestyle right i don't overeat and i'm never on a diet i just enjoy it in moderation in bits and pieces like most of the time healthy one in a million years indulge and it has worked for me ever since and i never forgot that phrase Yeah, that's where I am heading for sure.

Speaker 5 You know, I'm learning. I still get nervous sometimes that my weight is going to spiral.
I get nervous.

Speaker 5 You know, I get nervous because of all the diet drugs. It's hard to be a person whose body is getting larger in a world full of people whose bodies are getting smaller.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I don't ever want or intend to take any of those drugs, but it's hard knowing, you know, sometimes I feel like the whole world is going to end up on them and I'm going to be the only person who's still struggling with weight.

Speaker 5 And,

Speaker 5 you know, it's scary. It's a scary world.
And there's, like you said, there's a lot.

Speaker 5 We idolize thin bodies. So it it is a struggle, but it's definitely a worthwhile struggle.
Oh my God. And you did a super brave thing opening up.

Speaker 5 I'm sure you're going to help so many people out there who are going through that and don't know how to seek help.

Speaker 5 I think it's our job as communicators to open up as much as we can, because if you know you're helping save a life out there, you're doing something so beautiful. I have to ask you something.

Speaker 5 My curiosity, the whole gossip, I thought that was so mean and so horrible, the gossip about your husband. So she just pulled that out of thin air?

Speaker 5 In my personal opinion, no, I think another cast member on the show

Speaker 5 started the rumor, and I think a second cast member repeated the rumor. Oh, God.
And when you repeat it on the air, then the whole world starts saying it. So

Speaker 5 she heard it from someone. Oh, my God.
And

Speaker 5 where that first person heard it from, I

Speaker 5 don't even know. People love to talk, they love to start problems.
If there's one thing I'm sure of in my life, it's that my husband never cheated on me. And that's it.

Speaker 5 So, I mean, I never questioned him. I was only upset about

Speaker 5 the fact that the rumor had been started, but I never worried for a second about my husband.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, you guys have like the most beautiful fairy tale, which I also loved because I love reading stories about happy couples. And I believe in karma.

Speaker 5 That's all I'm going to say about the people that start nasty rumors like that about a couple. It's such an honor having you here.
I have to say, congratulations. Your book is amazing.

Speaker 5 Where can people find it? The weight of beautiful. Guys, go read it.
Even if you're not.

Speaker 5 So there's

Speaker 5 the paperback is out now, but the hardcover and the audible, which I recorded myself, you can get them anywhere. Books are sold, but Amazon's the easiest.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 The barn's in Novola, inside the bookstores, everywhere. It's a really great book.
And it's not just for people with eating disorders.

Speaker 5 It's anybody who has ever, you know, lost themselves and found themselves again. It's really, it's really a great story.
I agree.

Speaker 5 Even if you're not going through an eating disorder, read it because whatever it is that you're going through, it's going to inspire you that you can actually get out of it. and rebuild your life.

Speaker 5 I'm living proof in my case, rebuilding after an abusive marriage. You are major living proof in your case that you can be gorgeous and healthy and recover thank you jackie such an honor connecting

Speaker 5 such a great conversation are you going back to the show by the way

Speaker 5 uh if the show comes back right now we're on pause and um we're not really sure if they're recasting if they're um bringing the show back So um we'll see.

Speaker 5 If they invite me back, I would love to come back. Well, congratulations.
It's such an honor to have you guys. The link to find her Instagram is here on the audio episode.

Speaker 5 If you're listening to the audio episode, make sure you go to YouTube, Canon Dollo Show, so you can watch the video. Her gorgeous face, because you look way younger than your age.
You look fantastic.

Speaker 5 Congratulations. I wish you all the success in the world.
It was such an honor having you. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Guys, be safe out there and I'll see you soon.
Love you.

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