Eating disorders affect people from all walks of life, have varying symptoms, and can be easily disguised by those afflicted. Obsessive exercise, starvation, and laxative abuse are some of the most common behaviors of eating disorder sufferers. The reasons these symptoms are developed are wide ranging, but usually boil down to a lack of self-esteem and pressure to fit some imaginary societal mold.

Even the beautiful, rich, and famous suffer from eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. We’ve compiled a list of celebrities—some surprising, some not so much—who have overcome eating disorders and managed to have a healthy relationship with diet, exercise, and themselves.

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If you’ve ever envied the bodies of slender singers and actresses and thought they had the perfect lives to accompany their perfect figures, think again. Yet another star has opened up her private struggle with an eating disorder. On a recent episode of VH1′s “Behind the Music,” former Pussycat Dolls lead singer Nicole Scherzinger revealed her eight-year struggle with bulimia.  

The Hawaiian-born star and former X Factor judge revealed that her eating disorder began in 2003 when she felt pressure to slim down for the revealing outfits she and other members of the group had to wear for performances.

“I got my outfit, and my outfit was a bra and some underwear and some garters,” Scherzinger said. “I was sweating in the back room and I was like I can’t go out there. I can’t do this.”

Scherzinger, 34, recalled it was all new to her and she was incredibly scared. In addition, she was not comfortable with her body.

Other members of the Pussycat Dolls took note of her struggles early on and noticed that she didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. “She didn’t see a perfect figure when she looked in the mirror,” recalled one of the group members. “She said she saw thick thighs and chubby knees and she wanted blonde hair and different lips and a different nose.”

This initial breakdown triggered the start of a full on eating disorder that Scherzinger kept private for nearly a decade. ”I guess it was like my addiction, right? I never did drugs, but kinda doing things to myself was my addiction. It’s like when I got offstage, I was on this high, and I’d come back to my room and I’d be alone, so I would just do things,” she said. “My bulimia was my addiction. Hurting myself was my addiction.”
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Katie Couric’s new talk show tackles the serious issue of eating disorders in America with her September 24 episode featuring Demi Lovato.

The star, singer, and host of X Factor tells Couric her personal story of her rise to fame and how, along with it, she developed an eating disorder that almost killed her. Lovato speaks out against our culture’s obsession with thinness and body image by explaining how she defeated her demon before it spiraled out of control. 
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Unknown to many, Amanda Beard silently struggled with bulimia and depression for years. The multiple Olympics medal winning swimmer and successful model agonized for years over her physical appearance. Even though everyone else saw a thin beautiful and successful woman, Beard thought of herself as fat, ugly and a failure.
In her college years she had begun cutting herself to deal with the extreme agony she was going through. Along with the cutting, she became bulimic as a way to cope with all the pressure and her low self-esteem. Through the years, no one suspected a thing because on the outside she appeared to be so successful.
She told Today’s Ann Curry, “I felt like an idiot saying I was struggling so much inside because I was an Olympic athlete. I was having a great career. I had my own house. There were all these great things going on in my life, but on the inside, I was hating everything about me.”
Beard began to feel the pressure at a young age. She won her first medal when she was only 14 years old. She said that it was a lot for a teen to take in, that she felt the constant need to look beautiful, thin and perfect. The pressure was magnified when during her second Olympics in Syndney in 2000, the media began saying she had put on weight.
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Katharine McPhee has overcome huge personal challenges on her journey to professional success. Currently getting big attention for her role in the new show Smash, McPhee has found a balanced approach to food and exercise after struggling with a severe eating disorder. The singer and actress suffered from bulimia for many years, culminating in three months of rehab at Los Angeles’s Eating Disorder Center of California.

McPhee tried to address her cycle of binging and purging by a number of different approaches, from therapists to Food Addicts Anonymous. She ultimately found success through intuitive eating, which helped her overcome her fear of “bad” foods and curb her binge eating. Counter-intuitively, once McPhee stopped obsessing over her weight, she was able to drop 30 pounds.

“The more I focused on my weight, the worse my bulimia got,” McPhee said. “Now I’m more easygoing. I stopped fighting myself and became more forgiving of my body. Ironically, the weight came off naturally through exercise but no dieting.” She says she works to avoid a “diet mentality” to prevent relapses.

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