Jackie Goldschneider, star of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, chats with Zibby about THE WEIGHT OF BEAUTIFUL, the courageously candid memoir about her decades-long battle with anorexia and public journey to recovery. Jackie shares the origins of her disordered eating—from generational food trauma to cultural diet obsessions—and the emotional toll it took on her family, body, and joy. She and Zibby both reflect on their experiences with food, body image, and painful pressures of perfection. Finally, Jackie reveals what she’s working on next!

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome Jackie.

Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about the Weight of Beautiful, my battle with anorexia and journey to recovery. Congratulations. 

Jackie: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

Zibby: I loved your book so much. I like poured over every word on every page, and it was so moving. You were so open. I could feel like the rawness of it all.

The newness of some of it, like just having to say it and get it out there like that is so courageous. And important that you're doing this and you're gonna help so many people if you haven't already. 

Jackie: Oh, that, that's very nice. Thank you. Yeah. I do think that it has helped a lot of people both recover and not feel so alone.

In this, because it is a very lonely disease. 

Zibby: Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about the book, but really about your own journey. 

Jackie: So the book was the culmination of a lifetime of disordered eating, but really 20 years of a horrific battle with anorexia. When I chose to recover, I just felt like I had all these awful memories of everything I had done to myself.

And writing the book was so therapeutic. There was, when I looked back, when I stepped back and started writing this, I realized how many factors had gone into my eating disorder and generational food trauma was a big part of that. Starting with my grandparents being Holocaust survivors, having nothing.

The way that my mother was brought up as you eat every last bite and turning into a mother who made her kids eat every last bite because she was so scared of when you know. They might not have any more food, even though that was a ridiculous, in, in the 1980s, like we were not in danger of not having food anymore.

But she, I gained weight really rapidly. I always had a very distorted image of my body. I put a lot of emphasis on what other people thought of me, and by the time I was in my twenties, it all just I just stopped eating. And it was really bad. It was very lonely. I did awful things to myself, but I also did mainstream stuff, like all the diets that everyone did you know that nineties era the diet obsessions, like the tasty delight and the WOW chips, all of that stuff that was just so terrible for your body. I did it all. And writing the book was really, it was great to get all of that out of my head and onto the page. 

Zibby: By the way. I was so obsessed with Tasty Delight that I actually thought about opening a franchise.

That's how often? 

Jackie: No way. Oh my God. 

Zibby: Did a whole deep dive into how to be a franchise owner. I had two tiny kids at home at that time, and I was there. It was my only escape was like going to Tasty Delight in the afternoon and like sitting on the bench. And I remember one point I went in the middle of a snowstorm and the actress Tia Leone. Do you know who she is? 

Jackie: Yes, of course. 

Zibby: So I was the only one in the store. She opens this opened the door, the snow and the blustery winds came in and I was sitting there eating tasty light and she looked at me and she's are we nuts or what? 

Jackie: I know. Yeah. And then I remember the New York Times came out with an expose on how it was not the accurate calorie count and like my world exploded.

I was like. I don't understand, like what have I been doing to myself because I would be, there were some days I ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I would just be doubled over in pain, like gastrointestinal pain from all of this stuff. 

Zibby: This happened to me too with did you ever have this vegan divas chocolate mousse?

Because it said it had 18 calories. And I was like, oh my gosh. So I literally stocked my freezer and I would eat three a day. And then they came out and they're like, no, funny. It's actually 150 or 80 a per thing. And I was like, are you kidding me?

Jackie: I know, which happened pretty often. There was health foods to health food, I use that word very lightly in New York.

You probably remember it on the corner of 54th and ninth. It's called Westerly. And they just had every product that you could ever imagine filled with, like the ingredient list would like, RFK would jump off a bridge. It was like th 30 pages long and everything was just fake. And I used to suggest that was the only place I would shop.

Zibby: Yeah, I used to put Splenda on my cucumbers as well. I like so many of these tricks that you were, I hate to I don't wanna glamorize it. It's all so crazy, but not crazy, but just like I, all the things that we did that, like so many people were doing that. 

Jackie: Yeah, yeah. I would spray a water bottle on corn Flakes to avoid using milk.

It was horrific. It really was. It's really an awful way to live, which is really the crux of why I wrote the book, because I certainly wasn't looking for people to congratulate me on recovery. I could have gotten that without the book. And there were parts of that book that were not, did me no favors in the public eye, especially around my children and the things that they saw.

But I think that letting people know that this is a shared experience, like even now, even five years into recovery, hearing you tell me that you did those same things, it feels better. Like I feel less weird. So if I could give that to other people, that was really a big part of the motivation for writing this.

Zibby: Oh, no. When I saw your picture of all the all the trackers and everything, I have everything. And you did that too. I have everything I ate for five straight years and how many points everything had. And I remember, this is not about me, but I went down that rabbit hole and I remember my brother came over once.

And I was like, would you like seven almonds? And he's what? Because it was at one point and he's you do realize this is not normal the way you eat, right? And I was like, it's fine. It's totally fine. 

Jackie: Yeah. Yeah. You can rationalize anything, especially somewhere like New York or LA where everyone is so cognizant of how they look.

Yeah. 

Zibby: I actually became a Weight Watcher's leader. 

Jackie: Oh wow. 

Zibby: Yeah, I was so into it. I like don't go into things halfway, so I like was like, oh, I can be a lifetime member and meetings are free the rest of my life I have to do that. But you have to stay within plus or minus two pounds. That was the deal that to be a leader.

Jackie: Wow. 

Zibby: Be a lifetime member. You had to get to your goal weight and stay for six months, plus or minus two pounds. 

Jackie: They weighed you. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Jackie: Oh wow. 

Zibby: Yeah. Crazy, right? Yeah. And I would go around the city and I hadn't even had kids at that point and what people, I used to have like moms come in and I was like in my like, size two theory suit, yeah. With like my, like one slice, two ounces weight on the scale Turkey. Do you know what I mean? Being like, what do you mean it's hard? It's so easy. I everybody can do this.

Jackie: I fell into that also, for sure. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. But anyway, I joke. But what you describe in the book, a lot of which I can relate to, goes to a dark place.

It, you went to the extreme. I almost read it and I was like, oh, I couldn't get I couldn't even achieve that, it's so messed up. The thinking. 

Jackie: But you were able to get to a smaller size without, with doing like Weight Watchers for me, I always felt like my body was betraying me.

Like my body wanted so badly to be over overweight and that if I didn't take it to an extreme, it would just stay there. So I convinced myself that I hated food. And that food was my enemy and that I could get all the enjoyment of life from other areas. Of my life and that food was my enemy.

So once I convinced myself of that, and I just would always just repeat, I'm not a food person. I'm not, food is not my vice, then it felt okay, I have permission not to eat. 

Zibby: But even the way after you decided that like you could live this way, right? And that you. Even before you got the two meals a day sanctioned two meals a week of like cheap meals, so to speak, before that.

And when you were running so much in so much pain and you have this one moment where you collapse on the floor when you were told not to run and you kept running and you're constantly doing the math and calculating and every meal is like a threat. Every situation is like a threat. The joy of eating together, like you, you take that out of your relationship with your husband.

Like just take me back to the darkest, when you look back at it, do you feel, what do you feel now? 

Jackie: I feel sad that I did that to myself. I feel like I wasted a lot of years and a lot of occasions that I'll never get back. I'll never get my wedding back. 80% of my wedding night was spent thinking about what I had or hadn't eaten and how much I could drink, how many glasses of champagne I could have based on how much I had eaten at the dais and I didn't touch like the de dessert bar. I just, I calculated everything. Even when I was saying my vows, I was calculating things like my honeymoon. I brought a 900 page food encyclopedia of calories and nutritional values in my. Suitcase to my honeymoon. I didn't eat anything on my honeymoon and I was just, I was so hungry that I don't remember much about vacations and holidays and everything except for my hunger and except for the anxiety around food.

So all of these years that I spent doing this, I can't get any of that back. And I think that's my. That's my biggest regret in any of this. And also what my children saw, because I did let this, I lost that connection between hunger and food. So I didn't eat when I was hungry. I'm sure you know this feeling too.

I ate when a schedule told me that I could eat or I ate and I ate based on what I had left in my day from what I ate before that. So I would hoard food and everything like that so I could reward myself at the end of the night. And. I didn't know how to feed my children when I had them, and so I fed them based on numbers.

And so if they didn't finish a meal, I got frantic and I would force them to eat. When they would open their mouth to cry, I would force food inside of there. And it was just all of these moments that should have been amazing were just so wracked with anxiety and guilt and not knowing what to do and feeling bad and I can't get any of those back. I can't. So I I feel really sad about all of those, I feel like now I can do something good with it. 

Zibby: Wow. You have a scene towards the end of the book where you finally order ice cream with your kids. 

Jackie: Yeah. 

Zibby: And you taste it and you're like, oh my gosh. It's actually so good.

Because I was thinking to myself as I was reading maybe, maybe she's lost the taste for food in a way, after all. 

Jackie: Oh. No, I know that. No. And I still have a lot of fears around. I'm recovered. I, there's no anorexia left in me. I eat everything and anything. I don't let it stop me. But I do get scared and I do feel guilty sometimes, and I do have to walk away from the mirror at times, like it's an ongoing process.

That ice cream scene, if I could go to that for a moment, that was on television and I think a lot of people, I felt very. Conflicted after that scene because I think a lot of people watch that and were like, oh, she's good now. Like she ate the ice cream. She's fine. And. I think I went home and I was like, people are gonna think that's recovery like that you just make this decision one day I'm done not doing this anymore. Gonna go eat ice cream now. And that is so not the way it works because eating disorders are mental illnesses. And you really have to get to the core of. Why you would do this to yourself in the first place, right? What is starving yourself, like literally cutting off your source of life, going to do to make your life better?

How is that gonna fix you? And I didn't wanna give people, like I, I felt like I was doing such a disservice to anybody who was struggling, and I also felt. Like I did a disservice to my children because at that point they were maybe like 12 and 10 and their entire lives had been spent watching me sip Diet Coke while they ate ice cream and sip Diet Coke while they ate pizza and everything like that, and suddenly, all of a sudden it just.

He is eating ice cream today with no explanation and no background. Just Hey guys eating ice cream today. And I think everyone was really confused, the audience was confused and I think my children were confused. And yeah, it was a wonderful scene sharing ice cream with my kids and it was actually wonderful in real life.

But I felt like I did a lot of people a disservice with that scene. 

Zibby: So I guess I should have mentioned to people who don't know that you were also on The Real Housewives. 

Jackie: Oh, yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. 

Zibby: No, I put it in your bio, which I will have. Okay. Which comes out before, but maybe I shouldn't even admit this.

I haven not seen Real Housewives of New Jersey. I haven't watched it, so I actually haven't watched that scene. I only read about it through your eyes in the book, and I haven't really watched any of it. I really haven't, so I didn't know you from that. At all. I'm getting know you from your story as you tell it here, and not any sort of public opinion.

I didn't Google what people thought, like I'm not interested. I'm just interested in you and your depiction of it. 

Jackie: Okay? Yeah, no, I'm just saying that I thought, I felt like it was supposed to be something that it didn't end up being. I see. No, I get it. But it was wonderful to eat ice cream with my kids.

And the short answer to your question is I haven't lost a taste for anything. There are, I'm discovering new foods now, and I'm shocked sometimes there are things that I thought that I would like absolutely die for, that I just don't really care for as much. And other things that I really love. 

Zibby: In the beginning of the book, you tell us a lot about your childhood and you have some heartbreaking scenes about your brother and what the kids at school did. You have a special needs brother and how they would basically torture this poor boy and you had to just stay there with him and be in this school in an area you didn't feel comfortable in, like not knowing how to handle it.

That is that whole thing was so horrible, and whoever those kids were who are now grownups, I cannot believe that you did that whoever these people are, that they did that, it's so terrible. I feel like that whole thing is so heavy. Tell me about how you feel about that now, looking back and all of that.

Jackie: I still can't talk about it without crying. The fact that, and it wasn't like most of the bullying that took place with my brother, I was bullied also because I was just not. I was heavy. I would had bad hair, bad clothes, but my brother was disabled and it was less like, like no one would go up and push him into a wall, no, no one did that.

But the. The emotional torture of like when I would walk down a hallway, and this happened every day, he would be dancing, break dancing for a group of kids and everyone would be clapping. And he would think that they were so excited to see him dance, but they were also doubled over in laughter. And I would always have to be the person who stopped it from happening, which was so hard on, I was new to that town, I didn't have friends and I was just like the enforcer also. And it was just so bad. And the worst thing that happened, this was the worst, was one day I saw my brother walking through the school in socks because kids flushed his shoes down the toilet. And I just never recovered from that. And I just the kids just got like a one or two day suspension and, it was a different time back then, but still to be able to mistreat somebody with special needs. You have to be I don't know what your upbringing is or what your value system is, or whether you are capable of changing, but I was just astonished by how cruel people could be. And what I wrote in the book is the most true thing is that when you hurt somebody like that, like you hurt, you don't just hurt them, you hurt their entire family, my mother, my father, me, like we all cried. My brother didn't cry, but we all cried because it's I don't know. I, but high school is where I formed all these trauma connections between being overweight and being so desperately lonely and unhappy that I never, I didn't get over that until I really did intense therapy in recovery, in my late forties.

Zibby: Ugh, I'm really sorry. 

Jackie: No it's okay. It forms who you are and it made me stronger and it made me value my brother even more. And luckily he doesn't, if you asked him how high school was, he'll tell you it was good. He sees the bright side of everything, he is a unique person.

He is amazing. But yeah, it really, it left more of a mark on me than it did on him. 

Zibby: My goodness. Even when you said a minute ago, anorexia is gone. I'm totally recovered. Like I get nervous hearing you say that because I feel like with anything anyone struggles with like even myself, like saying like I'm over that or I'm, that's like in the pa, like it makes me, this is my own anxiety, I guess hearing. 

Jackie: Yeah.

Zibby: Projecting, but being able to say that's not coming. It's like I don't wanna jinx things in general, you know?

Jackie: Yes, I understand that. And I'm not saying that I'm fully recovered. Let me be clear. I am not fully recovered. I still have, I would say I am about like 80% there. When I say that anorexia is gone, I feel so sure in my heart I know I will never do that to myself again.

And the reason I know that I'm not saying I won't go on diets or sometimes I wanna lose a few pounds. It was the way that I tortured myself came from a place of self hatred. And I have learned to love myself beyond the way that people see me. So in my thinking the way that I'm thinking, it could never happen again.

'cause I value myself too much to ever do that to myself again. And I know that the people who love me for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the size of my body. So it's not something that I feel like I ever could do again. Do I wanna lose a few pounds sometimes? Yeah. Probably. Do I exercise too much?

Sometimes, probably. But I think like real anorexia is gone. I am. I do have some disorder to even left, for sure. 

Zibby: Oh, how do you feel then? I. I'm close to 50 in dealing with aging like everybody. And how do you feel, because aging is another thing that happens to our bodies that's out of our control in some ways.

And for people who like to be in control of how we look or present or whatever, like how are you dealing with that? 

Jackie: Yeah, it's hard. It is hard, especially with social media of course, and having a bigger social media presence. I get a lot of opinions on the way that I look. I think it's easier now that I've let go of some of people's judgments, but it's still hard.

I went to my endocrinologist a few weeks ago 'cause I've struggled with thyroid disorder for a very long time and I said, can you just test me? For all the hormones and stuff because I've got this like lower stomach, like a big lower stomach, and she's you don't have a big lower stomach.

But I'll test you if you want. I just, I'm starting to see things that I don't know if I'm just seeing them because other people tell me they're gonna come on. I do get nervous. I try to remind myself that, I try to do things that make me happy and not for other people's validation, but yeah I do keep up, and it is tiring.

Zibby: Yeah. I don't know. I've thrown in the towel in some ways. No, but you have to pick your battles. Do you know what I mean? I'm like,.. 

Jackie: Yeah, for sure. 

Zibby: I'm picking hair like I refuse to pick gray, but I'm okay right now with. My face. Do you know like I think we have to like all make our choice. 

Jackie: Yeah, you have to pick it.

Listen, there are flaws that I am not going near because it's just never ending. I know people who had a facelift and then they got tired of their facelift and they got a nose job and then they had their facelift tightened. And then they got veneers and then they changed their hair. It's never ending.

You can keep fixing yourself 'cause there's always gonna be people that are more beautiful than you. So at a certain point you just gotta say, this is who I am. 

Zibby: That's great. You write in the book about showing up at Renfrew and how you learned about it from documentary and you finally, you like show up at the door and there's this big sort of climax of a moment in my mind in the book where you finally walk through the door and then what happens after is also really interesting, but like the fact that you haven't got yourself through the door for me was like such a hurdle. And then, so I actually worked at an eating disorders clinic and I worked in an adolescent inpatient unit. And I'm wondering like, through that experience, 'cause I've heard like it doesn't always work for people.

Like people, sometimes people go and they learn more tricks to beat the system and it can be, what do you say? I know you weren't inpatient, you decided to stay home with your kids and you were at a different age than like teenagers and whatever. But tell me a little bit about. 

Jackie: Yeah. So the interesting thing is that they recommended that, so Renfru I knew of because there was this documentary called Thin.

Do you remember it? 

Zibby: I didn't, I don't think I saw that. 

Jackie: Now, I, it was horrifying and I used to watch it and like I knew that I was the same, but I just was scared of it. And so going to Renfrew was very loaded for me because that was the place in the movie. And walking through the doors. I felt like it was a big step.

The biggest step was telling my husband I had a problem. 'cause this eating disorder was the biggest secret ever. Even though sometimes it was a little bit of an open secret, I wouldn't talk about it with anyone. If you came to me, and I'm a nice person, if you came to me and you said, can we talk about your eating disorder?

I would've knocked you out, punched you in the face. So for me, the biggest step was opening up and telling my husband, I need help. But going to Renfru, I don't know what I thought would happen, but I knew that was a big step. Once I got there, they did a whole comprehensive intake and recommended that I go to residential treatment and I declined it.

For a number of reasons. First of all, and I don't wanna turn people off to residential treatment because it does work for some people. That's where I think you can pick things up. Especially as an adult, if you're forced in as a child, it's different. But I just, I've heard that people compete to see who could be the thinnest, to see who can bypass the most food, who can get out, weighing them the least, and having four young kids at home, I knew it was not a sustainable option for me and not one that I wanted to try out.

So I declined it and I felt very guilty about that 'cause I knew that I probably needed the intensity of that. At that point, I was really far gone. But renfru, I didn't, I did an outpatient treatment sort of program where they gave me a therapist who specialized in this, and then that therapist set me up with a dietician and once a week.

Every single week since 2021. I have stuck with that and my team has really helped me. So it did work for me to go outpatient, but Renford did work for me because they set me up with the right people, but inpatient does not work for everybody. 

Zibby: So now the book is out. What? Tell me about what is. Coming on the horizon and any challenges or what and anything really exciting?

Like what next for you? 

Jackie: So when the book came out, the hardcover came out in 2023 and that was amazing. I was just everywhere. I was in a, on a billboard in the city. It was, and it sold very well. I had this idea in my head, so I do this thing to myself where I set myself up for disappointment because I dream very big and I think that's a good thing and a bad thing.

But I was definitely envisioning this being a New York Times bestseller, which it was not. And that's okay. And I had to come to terms with that, but it did very well and most importantly, I know that it helped like hundreds if not thousands of people. 'cause I would get messages constantly from people saying, my mother read your book and she decided to get help.

Or like my, I read your book and I understand what my daughter is going through and now I know how to speak to her. And that's really what I wanted. So it did great. It served the purpose it was supposed to serve. It's still selling well. The paperback came out in February. I toyed with some media options with making it into a documentary.

I think all of those are still on the table. Nothing has materialized yet. And I, when I finished, I said, I don't think I have another book in me, because I really only knew how to write nonfiction. I was a journalist for a decade, and I really only wrote like personal essays. And I love writing.

But I didn't think I had another memoir in me or nonfiction because what would I write about? I already told everyone everything, and then about three months ago I started my first novel. 

Zibby: Oh, exciting. 

Jackie: Yeah, so I'm like. I am so in it right now. It's just funny to be in another book, because this book, this was like my baby.

Yeah. It was like my first born. So to have another book feels like it's so exciting to, to be able to do it all over again. So that's where I am right now. 

Zibby: Wow. Congratulations. I'm glad the paperback came out 'cause. I, that's when it got on my radar and somehow I missed it last time when it was in hardcover.

So anyway, I'm really excited about it. It really was so poignant. And just that you trust the reader with all of these things. It's, this is what, if we all could just be this open the world would be.. 

Jackie: Oh, thank you. And the last thing I'll say is that, it's not just a book for people with eating disorders.

It's really a story about losing your way and losing yourself and then finding your way back and really rediscovering who you are and what your self worth is. So it's not just for people who've experienced, eating disorders. 

Zibby: Yes. Said. All right, Jackie, thank you so much.

Jackie: Thank you so much. 

Zibby: Okay. Have a great day. 

Jackie: Bye. 

Zibby: Bye.