Jackie from Real Housewives of New Jersey bravely reveals 18-year-long eating disorder battle

Details of Jackie from RHONJ's eating disorder offered up some much-admired candidness and courage on the March 30 episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, in the middle of a bunch of baseball shenanigans and workout gear-related nonsense.   

Jackie Goldschneider has talked about her battle with an eating disorder previously during The Real Housewives of New Jersey season 12, but an appointment with her new therapist, Ilene, delved into candid, moving details of her struggle. "I am afraid of losing so much control because I've been holding onto all of these habits for, like twenty years," the Housewives star said in her therapy session. 

"It takes so much work," she tearfully continued. "I see what my calendar has on it and I worry about which days are going to require me to eat stuff and which days I'm going to be required to fake it. It's all day every day. I hate it so much and my body hurts and I do it anyway."

"The amount of anorexia you're describing has to be seeping into and impacting you all the time," her therapist told her.

Goldschneider spoke of a heartbreaking encounter she had when she was young. "I think it was very traumatic for me to be so heavy as a child. I remember once I was putting on lipstick in the hallway and a boy walked by and said 'It won't help.' And I was like, 'He's right. It won't help because I'm just so freaking gross."

She also discussed how her disorder affects her family and her husband Evan, and her "irrational fears" of putting on weight and what that would do to her marriage. "I worry about people in my life not embracing the new me."

"I'm scared of my kids getting older and seeing more... I didn't know until a few weeks ago that they were noticing the things that I do," Jackie said. "When I take them out to eat, I have never gotten ice cream with them in the hundreds of times I've taken them for ice cream."

"Since I met Jackie, we haven't been on a vacation more than four nights because she didn't want to have so many meals out of her control," Real Housewives of New Jersey husband Evan Goldschneider said of his wife during a confessional. "For many years, the only type of vegetables Jackie would eat would be steamed vegetables and we would have to call in advance to restaurants to make sure that they would steam spinach."

Her therapist encourages Jackie to have some ice cream that week as some healing homework. Though initially ambivalent, she agrees, gamely adding: "I'll even get a topping if you want!"

Fans praise bravery of Jackie RHONJ eating disorder reveal:

Viewers applauded Goldschneider's frankness and vulnerability in talking about her disorder, with even her detractors giving her props for shedding light on a difficult, taboo issue. 

Catch new episodes of The Real Housewives of New Jersey on Tuesdays at 8 pm ET on Bravo, and is available to stream on Peacock (US) and Hayu/Sky TV (UK).