- Jenna Bush Hager revealed Friday she struggled with body-image issues during childhood.
- Jenna said she remembers wanting to lose “four pounds” when she was in first grade.
- Meredith Viera, who Jenna was hosting the fourth hour of the TODAY show with, also said she’s struggled with body-image issues.
Earlier this week, Jenna Bush Hager announced her third pregnancy—she’ll be having a baby boy. But Friday, Jenna opened up about some childhood struggles of her own: body-image issues.
While discussing Jennifer Garner’s appearance on PEOPLE’s Most Beautiful cover with Meredith Viera (who’s filling in for Hoda on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna), Jenna revealed she was thinking about her weight as early as first grade.
Jenna recalled finding a notebook she kept during childhood: “I opened my first-grade journal so I must have been 7 or 8. I could barely write, I could definitely not spell, and my New Years’ Resolution was to lose four pounds,” she said. “I actually I had scratched out seven and wrote four.”
Jenna also said that her twin sister Barbara Bush actually found the journal first and cried for her sister, adding that Barbara decided not to show Jenna because she thought it’d make her upset, though Jenna still found it.
She also expressed concern about passing on her body-image issues to her daughters, Mila, 6, and Poppy, 3. “I see my perfect little girls right now,” she said. “And they look at themselves in the mirror—and they’re so proud—and I’m like, ‘How can I leave that? How can that stay?’ I don’t know the answer.”
Meredith revealed that she also struggled as a young girl.
“I was a chubby girl, and I remember being on a bicycle…I was rounding the curve and my—and this was one of my good friends—was sitting on the curb with a little boy, so we had to be like 8 maybe? And she referred to my rear end,” she said. “To this day, it sticks in my head.”
For her part, Meredith says her body-image issues don’t seem to haven’t been passed on to her daughter. “I’m happy to say that Lily, who’s 26, I don’t think has ever had a body-image problem, so maybe something’s getting through, I hope,” she said.
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