'RHONJ's Jackie Goldschneider Reflects on 'Living Hell' of Her Eating Disorder and Her Choice to Get Help

etonline.com:

Jackie Goldschneider opened up about her history with anorexia early on in her first season on , nearly five years ago — but now, she admits she was only telling part of her story. «This all started about in 2003, and I got some help in 2013 and I got a little bit better, but I was really still struggling — and that was the case until I came on the show [in 2018],» the star shares with ET over video chat. «When I got a little better in 2013, I wanted so badly to believe that I was a little bit recovered, that's just the story that I went with because I didn't want to be questioned.

I had formed this whole identity around being very thin, and it was a part of me and I wasn't ready to let go of that — and there's a lot of mental issues that go into that, too; it's not just food — and so that's the story I told myself, and the story I told other people.»Jackie explained her eating disorder to her co-stars during a cast trip to Oklahoma in season 9, telling the women that as soon as she had children (her eldest twins, Jonas and Adin, were born in 2008), a flip switched and she got things in check.

Now, she says, that was just another half-truth. «I had learned how to eat in public in a way that would make people go, 'Oh, OK, she's actually eating.

So there really isn't a problem,'» she explains. «And then the times that I didn't think that people were watching, like when I was eating baked chips at breakfast a few seasons ago, that's when people would go, 'But is she OK?' So, I was never recovered, and there was never a relapse because I was never recovered.»In the first few episodes of season 12, Jackie's pulled back the curtain on the lies she told herself about her disordered eating and, in turn, the lies she told the.