Jinger Duggar Says She Was Skipping Meals at 14 When Her Mother, Michelle Duggar, Shared Her Own History with Bulimia

Instagram Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Amazon TikTok TikTok Thought Catalog Diamond Mark Camera Collective World FlagLink Loading Arrow Pointing Down Skip to content When Jinger Duggar told her mother she was avoiding food at about 14, Michelle Duggar shared her own experience with bulimia and helped her set up meal check-ins, even giving her a cell phone so she could text when she’d eaten.

On their Call Your Sister podcast, Jinger discussed the conversation with her sister Joy-Anna Duggar. Jinger’s now 32 and a mother of 3.

“She met me with such grace and kindness,” Jinger said. She remembered Michelle telling her, “Jinger, I struggled with bulimia when I was young.”

Before asking for help, Jinger had been comparing her body with other people’s and worrying about whether someone would find her attractive. She said the stress left her feeling physically sick and led to a doctor’s visit.

She’d sleep late to miss breakfast, then try to get through the day without lunch. Dinner was the meal the family more often shared, which made the missed meals easier to conceal. “So I think that I was slipping through the cracks in a sense,” she said.

Her difficulties with food also led her to withdraw from social events. She underwent a colonoscopy while doctors investigated her health problems. Jinger linked those problems to stress and not eating enough, saying, “I was in a terrible place in my mind thinking of how I viewed myself.”

Michelle encouraged her to keep talking about what she was experiencing and warned that avoiding food could hurt her body. When Michelle was away, Jinger could text her about meals and check in with someone who was there.

Jinger said she never purged or experienced bulimia herself. She described the mental work of changing her relationship with food: “I wanna focus on having a healthy relationship with food.”

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