Katie Couric reveals her 6-year long struggle w/ bulimia in her early 20s

Katie Couric

Katie Couric’s new talk show has only been on the air for a few weeks, but she’s already getting more gossip airplay than the likes of competitor Anderson Cooper these days. Her latest episode features discussions with many sufferers of bulimia — including Demi Lovato, who has already proven herself to be quite quite vocal about her struggles with binging and purging — but Katie decided to surprise her audience by discussing her own ties to bulimia. Oddly enough, Katie herself has recently declared that Duchess Kate is “getting too thin,” and as Kaiser mentioned already, Kate definitely has some food issues even if they don’t include bulima per se. As for Katie Couric, she has confessed to battling with bulimia for many years during her young adulthood. Here’s what she had to say about her illness:

Katie Couric

Katie Couric admits she battled with bulimia in her early 20s on a TV special about eating disorders, Page Six has exclusively learned.

We’re told that Couric makes the emotional confession today on her daytime show, on which she interviews new “X Factor” judge Demi Lovato, who sought treatment for “emotional and physical issues” including eating disorders in late 2010.

Couric says on her show, “I wrestled with bulimia all through college and for two years after that. And I know this rigidity, this feeling that if you eat one thing that’s wrong, you’re full of self-loathing and then you punish yourself, whether it’s one cookie or a stick of gum that isn’t sugarless, that I would sometimes beat myself up for that.

“How do you have a healthy relationship with food, and say, ‘You know what, I can have one cookie and it’s OK?’ That is such a huge thing for people who wrestle with this.”

Couric, 55, suffered from bulimia between the ages of 18 and 24, while she was at the University of Virginia, and as she started her TV career at the ABC News bureau in DC.

Sources tell us she was eventually able to beat the eating disorder with the help of a therapist and personal research into the lasting medical damage purging does to the body. It is estimated that 8 million people are suffering from an eating disorder.

We’re told that Couric has since maintained a healthy weight through diet and exercise, and is a huge fan of spin studio Flywheel, where she has been spotted working out daily ahead of the debut of her new show.

[From Page Six]

Obviously, Katie’s admissions aren’t nearly as scandalous as Diane Keaton’s account of her 20,000 calories per day bulimic diet, but I do think it helps when any celebrity comes clean about a past or present eating disorder. Katie’s always seemed to have it so together, and she’s so damn perky; so it’s hard to imagine her own self-esteem and weight struggles, and this revelation humanizes her somewhat.

Here’s the preview clip featuring Demi & co. Honestly, we’ve heard all of this from Demi before, so I don’t see the point in discussing that aspect of the story any further. But as for Katie Couric? That’s a pretty huge disclosure.

Katie Couric

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet

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14 Responses to “Katie Couric reveals her 6-year long struggle w/ bulimia in her early 20s”

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  1. Amelia says:

    That’s quite gutsy to suddenly whip out a personal story like that. I know I couldn’t do that. I need the anonymity of the internet.
    But kudos to her for doing it. And I know Demi sometimes gets a bit of flak for seemingly always bringing up her ‘struggles’ in interviews, etc, but I still have a lot of respect for her admitting that and laying bare all her crap.

    • RocketMerry says:

      You’ll get there, sweetie. It takes a while, but it will become easier to talk about it.
      Have you considered seeing a therapist, if you can? It helped me so much!

  2. neelyo says:

    Ratings grab!

    • Jackie O says:

      exactly. while i think it is important for those in the public eye to come forward on issues, this is suspiciously timed.

      she so desperately wants to be the next oprah.

    • Dusty says:

      I agree totally! This is an all time low for KC. She must be desperate – she has now downgraded her status by engaging in this type of revealing information about her self. I would never call her a journalist in the first place – this latest revelation just confirms she is just a talk show host.

  3. SmokeyBlues says:

    It now seems even more messed up that she publicly criticized Duchess Kate’s weight. She’s not scoring any points with me here. You would think that, having struggled with something like this, she would know better than to highlight and then bash another woman’s body and weight.

  4. anon says:

    Eating a cookie is not a binge, I understand the guilt she’s talking about and its association to a punishment to a purge. But for many bulimics its kind of annoying to hear people say ‘I binged, I ate a celery stick’…. A binge is defined as a massive consumption, I’m talking about boxes of cookies, not one. Usually followed by purging. It’s about loss of control and then punishment to get control back. I’m trying not to doubt her sincerity, but I think she is downplaying how bad it was, or trying to make some eating issues she had sound worse. Idk.

    • M says:

      I know when I was bulimic, I would often purge after regular meals, no “binge” required. As far as the single cookie or stick of gum thing, I doubt she threw up after eating a stick of gum. I think she is talking about the type of thinking bulimics have, the rigidity as she described, where they overanalyze everything they consume, even if it is not a binge.

      I do question the timing of her disclosure and do not doubt it is ratings-related but I still think discussion of the topic can help others.

    • El says:

      I don’t think she means she’d purge after a stick of gum, but eating ‘bad’ foods can trigger a binge.
      I’ve been struggling with bulimia since I was 16 (almost 10 years, grrr, but in treatment now) though amongst people I know I have a reputation for eating very healthily. What people don’t know is that the reason I eat super healthily is to stay away from binge foods. The bing/purge cycle can be the ‘punishment’ for bulimics, not just the purging part.

  5. CatfromFLA says:

    When I was in my 20s I practiced what I guess was restrictive eating – limiting myself to 1000 calories a day, weigh-in’s a.m. and p.m., no room to go over 114 lbs. That was weird but not bulimic. I think that’s what Katie is talking about and I agree that this is a ratings grab. Not bulimia but very common for women.

  6. F5 says:

    New show to sell.. yawn ب_ب
    But she does have that old ruined skin of ED.

  7. TheOneAndOnlyOnly says:

    Agree with neelyo and others; not interested in her sudden personal “sharing” she’s as vapid and shallow as the rightwingers she and her old newtwork CBS loved/s to skewer – the world is full of pots jeering at kettles.

  8. jacque says:

    Bulimia is more common than you’d think. I suffer with anorexia and have been in treatment with bulimics. It is a very serious issue and it needs this kind of exposure. I applaud Katie.

  9. Onyx XV says:

    That doesn’t surprise me at all. She seems like the type.