Jackie Goldschneider, THE WEIGHT OF BEAUTIFUL: My Battle with Anorexia and Journey to Recovery
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[0:44]Jackie Gold Schneider is the author of The Weight of Beautiful, My Battle with Anorexia
[0:49]and Journey to Recovery.
[0:50]Jackie is a star of the Bravo Hit TV show The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
[0:55]Before joining the show in 2018, Jackie was an attorney and freelance journalist.
[1:00]Her writing has appeared in Goodhousekeeping, a post and scary mommy among others.
[1:04]The Weight of Beautiful is her debut book length work.
[1:07]Jackie graduated magna cum laude from Boston University and received her Juris Doctorate
[1:12]from Fordham University School of Law before practicing law in New York City.
[1:16]She now lives in New Jersey with her husband and their children.
[1:19]Welcome, Jackie.
[1:20]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about The Weight of Beautiful, My Battle
[1:25]with Anorexia and Journey to Recovery.
[1:28]Congratulations.
[1:29]Thank you.
[1:30]Thank you for having me.
[1:31]I loved your book so much.
[1:32]I like port over every word on every page and it was so moving, you were so open.
[1:38]I could feel like the rawness of it all, the newness of some of it, like just having
[1:43]to say it and get it out there, like that is so courageous and important that you're
[1:50]doing this and you're going to help so many people if you haven't already.
[1:52]Oh, that's very nice.
[1:54]Thank you.
[1:55]Yeah, I do think that it has helped a lot of people.
[1:57]will recover and not feel so alone in this because it is a very lonely disease.
[2:03]Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about the book, but really about your own journey?
[2:08]So the book was the culmination of a lifetime of disordered eating, but really 20 years
[2:14]of a horrific battle with Anorexia.
[2:18]And when I chose to recover, I just felt like I had all these awful memories of everything
[2:23]I'd done to myself and writing the book was so therapeutic, but you know, there was
[2:29]when I looked back, when I stepped back and started writing this, I realized how many factors
[2:34]had gone into my eating disorder and generational food trauma was a big part of that, starting
[2:42]with my grandparents being Holocaust survivors having nothing, the way that my mother was brought
[2:48]up as you meet every last bite and turning into a mother who made her kids eat every
[2:54]last bite because she was so scared of when, you know, they might not have any more food,
[3:00]even though that was a ridiculous, you know, in the 1980s, like we were not in danger of
[3:05]not having food anymore, but she, you know, I gained weight really rapidly.
[3:10]I always had a very distorted image of my body.
[3:13]I put a lot of emphasis on what other people thought of me.
[3:17]And by the time I was in my 20s, it all just kind of, I just stopped eating.
[3:23]And you know, it was really bad.
[3:24]It was very lonely.
[3:25]I did awful, awful things to myself, but I also did kind of mainstream stuff.
[3:30]Like all the diets that everyone did, you know, that 90s era, the diet of sessions,
[3:37]like the tasty delight and the wauchips, all of that stuff that was just so terrible
[3:42]for your body.
[3:43]I did it all.
[3:44]And writing the book was really, it was great to get all that out of my head and onto
[3:48]the page.
[3:49]By the way, I was so obsessed with tasty delight that I actually thought about opening
[3:55]a franchise.
[3:56]That's how I went away.
[3:57]Oh my God.
[3:58]It had a whole deep dive into how to be a franchise owner.
[4:02]I had like two tiny kids at home at that time.
[4:05]And I was there.
[4:06]It was my only escape.
[4:07]It was like going to tasty like afternoon and like sitting on the bench.
[4:11]And I remember one point, I went in in the middle of a snowstorm and the actress
[4:15]T.L.
[4:16]You know what I mean?
[4:17]Yeah.
[4:18]So I was the only one in the store.
[4:19]She opens this like open the door, the snow and the blustery winds came in.
[4:24]And I was sitting there eating tasty delight and she left me and she's like, are we nuts
[4:26]or what?
[4:27]I know.
[4:28]Yeah.
[4:29]And then I remember the New York Times came out with like an expose on how it was not
[4:33]the accurate calorie count and like my world exploded.
[4:37]I was like, I don't understand like what have I been doing to myself because I would
[4:41]be there were some days I ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and I would just be
[4:45]doubled over in pain, like gastrointestinal pain from all of this stuff.
[4:51]This happened to me too with a, did you ever have this vegan diva's chocolate most because
[4:55]it said it had like 18 calories?
[4:57]And I was like, oh my gosh.
[4:58]So I literally stalked my freezer and I would eat like three a day.
[5:02]And then they came out and they're like, no, funny, it's actually like 150 or 80.
[5:07]And I was like, are you kidding me?
[5:09]Yeah.
[5:10]Which happened pretty often.
[5:11]There was a health food to help food.
[5:13]I use that word very lightly in New York.
[5:16]You probably remember it on the corner of 54th and 9th, it's called the Westerly.
[5:20]And they just had every product that you could ever imagine filled with like the ingredient
[5:24]list would like, I mean, RFK would jump off a bridge.
[5:28]It was like 30, 30 pages long and everything was just fake.
[5:33]And I used to just, that was the only place I would shop.
[5:35]I used to put Splendour on my cucumbers.
[5:38]So I like so many of these tricks that you were.
[5:40]I mean, I hate to like, I don't want to go memorize it.
[5:43]It's all like so crazy, but not crazy, but just like, I all the things that we did that
[5:48]like so many people were doing that.
[5:49]Yeah.
[5:50]Yeah.
[5:51]It was right.
[5:52]I would spray a water bottle on cornflakes to avoid using milk.
[5:55]It was horrific.
[5:57]It really was.
[5:58]It's really an awful way to live, which is really the crux of why I wrote the book because
[6:03]I certainly wasn't looking for people to congratulate me on recovery.
[6:08]I could have gotten that without the book.
[6:10]And there were parts of that book that were not did me no favors in the public guy, especially
[6:14]around my children and the things that they saw.
[6:17]But I think that letting people know that this is a shared experience.
[6:21]Like even now, even like five years into recovery, hearing you tell me that you did those
[6:26]same things, it feels better.
[6:28]Like I feel less weird, you know?
[6:32]So if I could get that to other people, that was really a big part of the motivation for
[6:37]writing this.
[6:38]No.
[6:39]No.
[6:40]I mean, when I saw your picture of all the, all the trackers and everything, I have
[6:43]everything.
[6:44]We did that too.
[6:45]I have everything I ate for like five straight years.
[6:48]And how many points everything had?
[6:51]And I remember, I mean, this is not about me, but I, I went down that rabbit hole.
[6:57]And I remember my brother came over once and I was like, would you like seven almonds?
[7:01]He's like, what?
[7:02]Because that's not one point.
[7:04]And he's like, you do realize this is not normal the way you eat, right?
[7:09]And I was like, it's fine.
[7:10]It's totally fine.
[7:11]Yeah.
[7:12]Yeah.
[7:13]You can rationalize anything, especially somewhere like New York or LA where everyone
[7:17]is so cognizant of how they look.
[7:19]Yeah.
[7:20]I actually became a Weight Watchers leader.
[7:22]Oh, wow.
[7:23]Yeah.
[7:24]I was so into it.
[7:25]I like don't go into things halfway.
[7:26]So I like was like, oh, I can be a lifetime member.
[7:30]And meetings are free.
[7:31]The rest of my life.
[7:32]I have to do that.
[7:33]But you have to stay within plus or minus two pounds.
[7:36]That was the deal.
[7:37]That to be a leader.
[7:38]Wow.
[7:39]Be a lifetime member.
[7:40]You had to get to your goal weight and stay for like six months plus or minus two pounds.
[7:45]They weighed you?
[7:46]Yeah.
[7:47]Oh, wow.
[7:48]Yeah.
[7:49]Crazy, right?
[7:50]Yeah.
[7:51]And I would like go around the city.
[7:52]And I had even had kids at that point.
[7:54]And like what people, I used to have like moms come in and I was like in my like size
[7:58]two theory suit, you know, with like my like one slice, two ounces weight on the scale
[8:05]turkey.
[8:06]Do you mean being like, what do you mean is hard?
[8:08]Yeah.
[8:09]So easy.
[8:10]Everybody can do this.
[8:11]I fell into that also.
[8:13]Oh my gosh.
[8:15]But anyway, I joke.
[8:16]But what you just described in the book, you know, a lot of which I can relate to goes
[8:20]to a dark place.
[8:22]I mean, you went to like the extreme.
[8:25]I almost read it and I was like, oh, I couldn't get like I couldn't even.
[8:28]achieve that.
[8:29]Jerry, like it's so messed up the thinking, but you were able to get to like a smaller
[8:35]size without with doing like weight watchers.
[8:37]For me, I always felt like my body was betraying me.
[8:42]Like my body wanted so badly to be over overweight.
[8:46]And that if I didn't take it to an extreme, it would just stay there.
[8:50]So I kind of convinced myself that I hated food and that food was my enemy and that I could
[8:55]get all the enjoyment of life from other areas of my life.
[9:01]And that food was my enemy.
[9:02]So once I convinced myself of that and I just would always just repeat, I'm not a food
[9:07]person.
[9:08]I'm not food is not my vice, then it felt like, okay, I have permission not to eat.
[9:14]Mm hmm.
[9:15]But even the way after you decided that like you could live this way, right?
[9:20]And that you, even before you got the two meals a day, sort of sanctioned two meals
[9:25]a week of like cheap meals that was before that.
[9:28]And when you were running so much in so much pain and you have this one moment where you
[9:32]collapse on the floor and you were told not to run and you kept running and you're constantly
[9:37]doing the math and calculating and, you know, every meal is like a threat, every situation
[9:42]is like a threat.
[9:44]All the joy of like eating together, like you take that out of your relationship with your
[9:48]husband.
[9:49]Like just take me back to like the darkest when you look back at it.
[9:54]Do you feel, what do you feel now?
[9:56]I feel sad that I did that to myself.
[9:58]I feel like I.
[10:00]wasted a lot of years and a lot of occasions that I'll never get back. I'll never get my wedding back.
[10:05]80% of my wedding night was spent thinking about what I had or hadn't eaten
[10:11]and how much I could drink, how many glasses of champagne I could have based on how much I had
[10:19]eaten at the deus and I didn't touch like to deserve bar. I just I calculated everything. Even
[10:26]when I was saying my vows, I was calculating things like my honeymoon. I brought a 900 page
[10:33]food encyclopedia of calories and nutritional values in my suitcase to my honeymoon.
[10:40]I didn't eat anything on my honeymoon and I was just I was so hungry that I don't remember
[10:48]much about vacations and holidays and everything except for my hunger and except for the anxiety
[10:55]around food. So all of these years that I spent doing this, I can't get any of that back and I
[11:01]think that's my that's my biggest regret in any of this and also what my children saw because I
[11:07]did let this you know I lost that connection between hunger and food. So I didn't eat when I was
[11:12]hungry. I'm sure you know this feeling too. I ate when a schedule told me that I could eat or I
[11:19]ate based on what I had left in my day from what I ate before that. So I would hoard food
[11:25]and everything like that. So I could reward myself at the end of the night and I didn't know how
[11:31]to feed my children when I have them. And so I fed them based on numbers and so if they didn't
[11:38]finish a meal, I got frantic and I would force them to eat. I mean when they would open their
[11:46]mouth to cry, I would force food inside of there and it was just all of these moments that should
[11:52]have been amazing. We're just so racked with anxiety and guilt and and not knowing what to do
[12:01]and feeling bad and I can't get any of those back. I can't. So I feel really sad about all of those
[12:10]but you know I feel like now I can do something good with it. Wow. You have a scene towards the
[12:15]the end of the book where you finally order ice cream with your kids. Yeah. And you taste it and
[12:22]you're like, oh my gosh, it's actually like so good because I was thinking to myself and I was really
[12:26]like maybe, you know, maybe she's lost the taste for food in a way right after all. No, no, I have
[12:33]a little bit now and I still have a lot of fears around I'm recovered. I there's no anorexia left
[12:39]in me. I eat everything in anything. I don't let it stop me but I do get scared and I do feel guilty
[12:45]sometimes and I do have to walk away from the mirror at times. Like it's an ongoing process
[12:50]but you know that ice cream scene if I could go to that for a moment that was on television and
[12:55]I think a lot of people I felt very conflicted after that scene because I think a lot of people
[13:01]watch that and were like, oh, she's good now. Like she ate the ice cream. She's fine. And I think
[13:10]I went home and I was like, people are going to think that's recovery. Like that you just
[13:15]make this decision one day. Like I'm done not doing this anymore. Going to go eat ice cream now
[13:21]and that is so not the way it works because eating disorders are mental illnesses and really
[13:26]have to get to the core of why you would do this to yourself in the first place, right? Like what
[13:31]is starving yourself? Like literally cutting off your source of life going to do to make your life
[13:37]better. How's that going to fix you? And I didn't want to give people like, I felt like I was
[13:43]doing such a disservice to anybody who was struggling and I also felt like I did a disservice to my
[13:49]children because at that point they were maybe like 12 and 10 and their entire lives had been
[13:55]spent watching me sip diet coke while they ate ice cream and sip diet coke while they ate pizza
[13:59]and everything like that. And suddenly all of a sudden it's just how many eating ice cream today
[14:04]was no explanation and no background just like, hey guys eating ice cream today. And I think everyone
[14:11]was really confused. The audience was confused and I think my children were confused and yeah it was
[14:16]a wonderful scene sharing ice cream with my kids and it was actually wonderful in real life. But I
[14:21]felt like I did a lot of people to disservice with that scene. So I guess I should have mentioned
[14:26]to people who don't know that you are also on the Real Housewives. Oh yeah, so I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
[14:30]I put it in your bio, which I will have read, which comes out before, but maybe I shouldn't even
[14:36]admit this. I have not seen Real Housewives of New Jersey. I haven't watched it so I actually haven't
[14:40]watched that scene. I only read about it through your eyes in the book and I haven't really watched
[14:44]any of it. I mean I really haven't. So I didn't know you from that at all. I'm going to know you
[14:49]from your story as you tell it here and not any sort of public opinion. I didn't google what people
[14:55]thought. Like I'm not interested. I'm just interested in you and your depiction of it.
[15:00]Okay. Yeah. No, I'm just saying that I thought I felt like it was supposed to be something that
[15:05]it didn't end up being. But it was wonderful to eat ice cream with my kids. And the short
[15:11]answer to your question is I haven't lost the taste for anything. There are, you know, I'm
[15:14]discovering new foods now and I'm shocked sometimes. There are things that I thought that I would
[15:19]like absolutely die for that I just don't really care for as much. And other things that I
[15:25]really, really love. In the beginning of the book, you tell us a lot about your childhood and you
[15:31]have some heartbreaking scenes about your brother and what the kids at school did. You have
[15:37]especially his brother and how they would basically torture this poor boy. And you had to just
[15:44]like stay there with him and be in this school in an area you didn't feel comfortable in like
[15:50]not knowing how to handle it. I mean, that is so that whole thing was so horrible. And whoever those
[15:58]kids were who are now grownups, I cannot believe that you did that. Whoever these people are that
[16:05]they did that. It's so terrible. I feel like that whole thing is so heavy. Like tell me about how you
[16:12]feel about that now back and all of that. I still can't talk about it without crying. The fact that
[16:18]you know, and it wasn't like most of the bullying that took place with my brother. I was bullied
[16:23]also because I was just not, you know, I was, I was heavy. I would had bad hair, bad clothes,
[16:31]but my brother was disabled. And you know, it was less like like no one would go up and push
[16:37]him into a wall. You know, like no one did that, but the emotional torture of like when I would
[16:45]walk down a hallway and this happened every day. He would be dancing, break dancing for a group of
[16:50]kids and everyone would be clapping. And he would think that they were so excited to see him
[16:55]dance, but they were also doubled over and laughter. And I would always have to be the person
[17:00]who stopped it from happening, which was so hard on I was new to that town. I didn't have friends.
[17:08]And I was just like the enforcer also and like it was just so bad. And the worst thing that happened,
[17:17]this was the worst was one day I saw my brother walking through the school in socks
[17:22]because kids flushed his shoes down the toilet. And I just never recovered from that.
[17:28]And I just like the kids just got like one or two days' suspension. And you know, it was a different
[17:34]time back then, but still like to be able to mistreat somebody with special needs, you have to be,
[17:41]I don't know what your upbringing is or what your value system is or whether you are capable of
[17:46]changing, but I wasn't just astonished by how cruel people could be. And what I wrote in the book
[17:53]is the most true thing is that when you hurt somebody like that, like you hurt,
[17:57]you don't just hurt them. You hurt their entire family. Like my mother, my father, me, like we all
[18:04]cried, you know, my brother didn't cry, but we all cried because like it's so, I don't know.
[18:10]But high schools where I formed all these trauma connections between being overweight and being so
[18:17]desperately lonely and unhappy that I never, I didn't get over that until I really did
[18:26]intense therapy and recovery, you know, in my late 40s. Oh, checking out you really sorry.
[18:32]No, it's okay. It forms who you are and you know, it made me stronger and it made me value my
[18:38]brother even more. And you know, luckily he doesn't, if you asked him how high school was, he'll
[18:43]tell you it was good. He sees the bright side of everything, you know, he's, he's a unique person.
[18:49]He's amazing. But yeah, really it left more, more of a mark on me than it did on him.
[18:54]Like a miss. You know, even when you said a minute ago, like,
[18:59]anorexia is gone. I'm totally recovered. Like I get nervous hearing you say that because I feel
[19:04]like with anything, anyone struggles with like, like even myself, like saying like I'm over that
[19:10]that's like in the fact like it makes me, this is my own anxiety, I guess. Here you get, you know,
[19:15]projecting. But being able to say like that's not coming, like it's like, I don't want to jinx things
[19:20]in general. You know, I understand that and I'm not saying that I'm fully recovered. Let me be
[19:25]clear. I am not fully recovered. I still have, I would say I'm about like 80% there. When I say
[19:30]that anorexia is gone, I feel so sure in my heart. I know I will never do that to myself again.
[19:38]And the reason I know that, I'm not saying I won't go on diets or sometimes I want to lose a few
[19:42]pounds. It was the way that I tortured myself came from a place of self-hatred.
[19:50]And I have learned to love myself beyond the way that people see me. So in my thinking,
[19:56]the way that I'm thinking, it could never happen again, because I bad-
[20:00]you myself too much to ever do that to myself again. And I know that the people who love me love me
[20:06]for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the size of my body. So it's not something
[20:11]that I feel like I ever could do again. Do I want to lose a few pounds sometimes? Yeah,
[20:16]probably. You know, do I exercise too much sometimes? Probably. But I think like real anorexia
[20:23]is gone. I do have some disorder to even left for sure. How do you feel then? I mean,
[20:30]I'm close to 50 and dealing with aging like everybody. And how do you feel because aging is
[20:38]another thing that happens to our bodies that sort of out of our control in some ways. And for
[20:43]people who like to be in control of how we look or present or whatever, like how are you dealing
[20:50]yeah, it's hard. It is hard, especially with social media, of course. And having a bigger social media
[20:58]presence, I get a lot of opinions on the way that I look. I think it's easier now that I've
[21:04]let go of some of people's judgments. But it's still hard. I mean, I went to my endocrinologist
[21:10]a few weeks ago because I've struggled with thyroid disorder for a very long time. And I said,
[21:16]can you just test me for like all the hormones and stuff? Because I've got this like
[21:22]lower stomach, like a big lower stomach. And she's like, you don't have a big lower stomach. But I'll
[21:27]test you if you want. I just, I'm starting to see things that I don't know if I'm just seeing them
[21:32]because other people tell me they're going to come on. I do get nervous. And I try to remind myself
[21:37]that, you know, I try to do things that make me happy and not for other people's validation.
[21:43]Yeah, I mean, I do keep up, you know, and it is tiring. Yeah, I don't know. I've sort of thrown
[21:49]in the towel in some ways. No, you have to pick your battles. Do you know what I mean? I'm like,
[21:54]yeah, for sure. I'm taking care. Like I refuse to be right. But I'm okay right now with my face.
[22:02]Do you really like, I think we have to like, I'll make our choice. Yeah, I have to pick it. I mean,
[22:06]listen, there are flaws that I'm not going near because it's just never ending. I know people who
[22:12]had a facelift and then they got tired of their facelift and they got a nose job. And then they
[22:16]had their facelift tightened and then they got the ears and then they changed their hair. I mean,
[22:20]it's never ending. You can keep fixing yourself because there's always going to be people that are
[22:23]more beautiful than you, right? So at a certain point, you just got to say this is who I am.
[22:28]That's great. You write in the book about showing up at Renfrew and how you learned about it
[22:32]from documentary. And you finally, you like show up at the door and there's this big sort of
[22:37]climax of the moment in my mind in the book where you finally walk through the door. And then
[22:41]what happens after is like, you know, also really interesting. But like the fact that you haven't
[22:46]got yourself through the door for me was like such a hurdle. And then so I actually worked at an
[22:51]eating disorders clinic and I worked in that in patient unit. And I'm wondering like through
[22:56]that experience because I've heard like, it doesn't always work for people. Like people sometimes
[23:00]people go and they learn more tricks to beat the system. And it can be, you know, what do you say?
[23:05]I know you weren't in patient. You decided to say home with your kids and you were at a different age
[23:08]than like teenagers and whatever. But tell me a little bit about it. Yeah. So the interesting thing
[23:12]is that they they recommended that. So Renfrew, I knew of because it was a documentary called
[23:18]Thin. Do you remember it? I don't think I saw that. No, it was horrifying. And I used to watch it
[23:26]and like I knew that I was the same, but I just was scared of it. And so going to Renfrew
[23:32]was very loaded for me because that was the place in the movie. And walking through the doors,
[23:39]I felt like it was a big step. The biggest step was telling my husband I had a problem because
[23:43]this eating disorder was the biggest secret ever. I mean, even though sometimes it was a little bit of
[23:48]an open secret, I wouldn't talk about it with anyone. If you came to an anonymous person,
[23:54]if you came to me and you said, can we talk about your eating disorder? I would have
[23:57]knocked you out, punched you in the face. So for me, the biggest step was opening up and telling
[24:02]my husband, I need help. But going to Renfrew, I don't know what I thought would happen,
[24:08]but I knew that was a big step. Once I got there, they did like a whole comprehensive intake
[24:15]and recommended that I go to residential treatment. And I declined it for a number of reasons.
[24:21]First of all, and I don't want to turn people off to residential treatment because it does work
[24:26]for some people. That's where I think you can pick things up, especially as an adult. If you're
[24:31]forced in as a child, it's different. But I just, I've heard that people compete to see who could be
[24:38]within us, to see who can bypass the most food, who can get out weighing them the least. And
[24:44]having four young kids at home, I knew it was not a sustainable option for me and not one that I
[24:48]wanted to try out. So I declined it. And I felt very guilty about that because I knew that I probably
[24:55]needed the intensity of that. At that point, I was really, really far gone. But Renfrew, I did,
[25:01]I did an outpatient treatment sort of program where they gave me a therapist who specialized in
[25:08]this. And then that therapist set me up with a dietitian. And once a week, every single week,
[25:16]since 2021, I have stuck with that. And my team has really helped me. So it did work for me to go
[25:23]out patient. But Renfrew did work for me because they set me up with the right people. But in
[25:28]patient does not work for everybody. So now the book is out. Tell me about what is coming on the
[25:35]horizon and any challenges or anything you're really exciting, like what next for you.
[25:41]So when the book came out, the hardcover came out in 2023. And that was amazing. I was just
[25:47]everywhere. I was on a billboard in the city. It was, and it sold very well. I had this idea.
[25:53]in my head. So I do this thing to myself where I set myself up for disappointment because I dream
[25:59]very big. And I think that's a good thing in a bad thing. But I was definitely envisioning this being
[26:04]a New York Times bestseller, which it was not. And that's okay. And I had to come to terms with that.
[26:09]But it did very well. And most importantly, I know that it helped like hundreds of not thousands of
[26:16]people because I would get messages constantly from people saying, my mother read your book and
[26:21]she decided to get help or like my, you know, I read your book and I understand what my daughter
[26:26]is going through. And now I know how to speak to her. And that's really what I wanted. So it's a
[26:30]great, it served the purpose. It was supposed to serve. It's still selling well. The paperback came
[26:35]out in February. I toyed with some media options with making it into his documentary. I think all
[26:41]of those are still on the table. Nothing has materialized yet. And I, when I finished, I said,
[26:46]I don't think I have another book in me because I really only knew how to write nonfiction.
[26:52]I was a journalist for like a decade. And I really only wrote like personal essays. And I love
[26:58]writing. But I didn't think I had another memoir in me or a nonfiction because what would I write
[27:04]about? I already told everyone everything. And then about three months ago, I started my first novel.
[27:10]Oh, yeah. So I'm like, I'm so in it right now. It's just funny to be in another book.
[27:18]You know, because this book, this was like my baby, you know, my first born. So to have another
[27:25]book feels like it's so exciting to be able to do it all over again. So that's where I am right now.
[27:31]Wow, congratulations. Well, glad the paperback came out because that's when it got on my radar and
[27:37]somehow I missed it last time when it was in a hard cover. So anyway, I'm really excited about it.
[27:42]It really was so poignant and just that you trust the reader with all of these things. This is what
[27:49]if we all could just be this open, the world would be. Thank you. And the last thing I'll
[27:53]say is that, you know, it's not just the book for people with eating disorders. It's really
[27:57]a story about like losing your way, kind of losing yourself and then finding your way back and
[28:03]really like rediscovering who you are and what your self worth is. So it's not just for people
[28:08]who've experienced, you know, eating disorders. Yes. Well, all right. Jackie, thank you so much.
[28:14]Thank you so much. Okay. Have a great day. Bye. Bye.
[28:18]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books.
[28:23]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[28:29]and spread the word. Thanks so much. Go and buy the books.