Bethenny Frankel is defending herself against people who criticize her weight.
“I think being thin is a very, very polarizing thing,” the Real Housewife of New York, 45, says on Monday’s episode of the FORTUNE Unfiltered with Aaron Task podcast. “I think people get mad at you for it, or it makes themselves feel better if they can say, ‘Well, she doesn’t eat and she works out every day’ – neither of which are true.”
The reality star and entrepreneur says she actually loves eating, despite what others may think.
“I do eat,” she says. “I don’t binge, I don’t self-loathe. But I love food, and I like good food. I don’t like fat-free crap.”
And she doesn’t encourage others to eat fat-free foods either.
“I promote eating a smaller amount of quality food, of full-calorie foods,” she says. “The word ‘diet’ has the word ‘die’ in it, and it’s a multi-billion dollar business because diets do not work. I eat pizza, I eat French Fries – I just don’t binge.”
Frankel has tried to adapt healthy views of eating despite growing up in a home where both her grandfather and mother were obsessed with their weight.
“My grandfather would eat All Bran every morning and was obsessive, and there was no option for fat in that house,” she says. “Then my mother was 5’4″ and wanted to be a model and was gorgeous, so my mother was always – it was the Tab and the half a cantaloupe generation, and it was always a diet and there were laxatives around.”
WATCH: RHONY Star Bethenny Frankel Responds to Critics about Her Being Too Skinny
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The Housewife says she learned about weight and diet at a very young age because of her home environment.
“I was at an obesity clinic when I was 8,” she says. “I knew what diets were before any kid ever should.”
Now that she is a mother herself to 6-year-old daughter Bryn, Frankel is careful about how she speaks about food and body image.
“I heard another parent say, ‘Oh my God I’m so fat’ or ‘I was good today’ or ‘I was bad today’ – that kind of talk doesn’t happen in front of my daughter,” she says. “There’s no word ‘diet’ – nothing like that. Because even though she’s only 6, kids hear their moms. There’s trigger words that people should not be talking about.”
And while she tries to promote a healthy diet for her daughter, she doesn’t deprive her of treats and snacks.
“She’ll eat quinoa and tomato soup and some broccoli, because it’s one of the only vegetables she likes – but she eats candy and pizza and French Fries and crap food,” says Frankel. “My philosophy, as far as kids go, as long as you know you’re getting some healthy food in as your base … She has a balance in her diet.”
