Katie Couric Reveals Struggle With Bulimia During College Years

Journalist and new talk show host, Katie Couric, revealed she had struggled with bulimia during her show’s discussion of eating disorders on Monday.

“I wrestled with bulimia all through college and for two years after that,” Couric told guest and audience members. The talk show host also revealed the guilt she often felt after eating a cookie or a stick of gum that was not sugar-free.

Couric shared little of her experience and instead focused on her guest, which included experts on eating disorders and suffers, including singer and ‘X Factor’ judge Demi Lovato.

According to CBS News, Couric spoke to The Associated Press after the show and said, “I kind of hesitated to even bring it up. But I felt that if I expect people on my show to be honest, then, when relevant, I owe it to people watching to be honest myself.”

She added, “I wanted to focus on my guests, while acknowledging one of the reasons this issue is so important to me: I went through it.”

While revealing little during her show, “Katie,” Couric, 55, spoke exclusively to the AP to share details of her struggles with bulimia. She told the AP that it began when her top choice college turned her down.

“Like a lot of young women, I was struggling with my body image,” Couric said, “and feeling like I wasn’t good enough or attractive enough or thin enough.”

She told viewers on Monday that she suffered through the illness until her twenties, shortly after graduating from college. Couric told the AP that her disorder suffered through high and lows through the years.

“Some periods were worse than others, when I was binging and purging a lot,” the show host said. “I’d have a piece of gum that wasn’t sugarless and then say, ‘Oh! I’ve been bad,’ and then feel so terrible that I would eat and throw up. It was awful. But what I’m describing is something so many people have gone through or are going through and its so damaging, both psychically and physically.”

According to CBS News, Couric attended the University of Virginia before landing her first job at the ABC News bureau in Washington, D.C. She was finally able to gain control of her disorder with the help of a therapist in her early twenties.

She told the AP that she has since “learned how to have a much healthier relationship with food, and how to enjoy my life without obsessing about food.”

CBS News reported that this is not the first time Couric has allowed the public to know about her private life. In 1998, she lost her husband, Jay Monahan, to colon cancer and she has become an advocate of colon cancer awareness since then.

Couric said that while she does not think “there are any huge revelations” she will have to share with the public in the future, she’s “trying to strike the right balance of talking about my situation, but not focusing on it so much that I’m being put on the couch.”