Michelle Duggar gives advice on how to deal with eating disorders and body image

On the latest episode of 19 Kids and Counting Michelle Duggar opened up again about an issue she’s talked about in the past: her struggle with bulimia and body image when she was a teenager.

While working out with her personal trainer friend Cindy Michelle revealed that she used to be an insecure teen who really worried about her appearance. “Before I came to know the Lord, I had been struggling with my self worth, just feeling like I needed to measure up with all my friends around me,” Michelle says. “And, I just really began to have a wrong view of who I was, and felt like I gained weight so easily.”

Cindy, who went to high school with Michelle, says she was surprised that Michelle had a poor image of herself, and found out only when she read the passage in her daughters’ book where she opens up about it. Michelle reveals that she hid what she was doing. She said she started a “bad habit of making myself get sick after I would eat, especially if I had more food than I felt like I should eat. And it was destructive for my health, and my life. And I think as I was in that process, no one knew.”

Cindy says she asked Michelle about it, and told her she wanted to help people admit where they are in life with whatever struggle. “I think probably all girls struggle with the same body issues. The struggles still gonna be there. How do you deal with the struggle? And I just talk with the kids, the girls, the boys, and I’m honest with them about the things that I struggled with. Life’s too short to not have a chocolate chip cookie, but you need to be wise in how you do that.”