Jinger Duggar Reveals How Mom Michelle Duggar Helped Her Develop a ‘Healthy Relationship’ With Food

Jinger Vuolo (née Duggar) revealed how her mother, Michelle Duggar, helped her develop a “healthy relationship” with food after she struggled with an eating disorder.

“I was so insecure for so many years which led me to some bad places,” Jinger, 31, admitted during the Wednesday, January 15, episode of the “Unplanned” podcast. “Even with the way that I was viewing eating … I struggled with, like, just not eating enough and it was because I thought I was too fat, and I wasn’t.”

Jinger then shared that there were several instances during her childhood when she compared herself to her friends. “I had friends who naturally were super skinny and I would look at these girls and … I would compare myself to them,” she said.

After acknowledging that she was “actually pretty skinny at that point,” Jinger said that she started skipping meals due to her fear of gaining weight. “I didn’t think properly about myself. I kept thinking, ‘Well, I’m just not pretty enough,’ or ‘I’m not skinny enough,’ so I would just try to wake up later in the day, try to avoid meals,” the Counting On alum said.

Jinger said she finally started making a change with the help of her mother, who has been open about her own struggles with bulimia in the past. “She came up with a plan: Text me what you eat every day and I’d love to be accountable, too, and I’ll text you what I eat,” she said. “It was so sweet, because in that time I was struggling so much and I was so embarrassed by how I was struggling.”

The mother of two then recalled that Michelle, 58, helped her focus on her nutrition by her, “Maybe we can eat healthy together.”

“It was the most helpful thing for me because then I started to develop a healthy relationship with food,” Jinger continued. “That gave me a healthy perspective on food and then moving forward, I was like, ‘Okay, I want to make sure that I’m eating the right amounts for my body, what is required.’”

She added, “I started to feel better, more energy, more, like, just enjoying life again because I wasn’t thinking about food.”

The podcast appearance was not the first time Jinger has opened up about her eating disorder. She previously detailed the experience in her 2023 memoir, Becoming Free Indeed.

“For years, I thought the best way to please others was to hide my imperfections,” she wrote, noting that her “biggest fear” when she was 14 was what people thought of her. “Convinced my body was an embarrassment, I ate very little. I’d go days hardly consuming any calories. My weight dropped, but my body image didn’t improve. It almost never does in those situations because the weight isn’t the problem.”

Jinger later said that she was never “satisfied with the way” she looked, regardless of how much weight she lost. “This obsession with body image was terrible for my physical health and it certainly wasn’t good for me spiritually,” she wrote. “It was a downward spiral that could have gotten worse and worse.”