Kat's Dark Side

American Idol hottie Katharine McPhee admitted that she'd been bullimic since she was 17. At her worst point, she was throwing up as many as seven times a day.
She didn't seek help until after her initial Idol audition.
"When I made it onto American Idol, I knew that food – my eating disorder – was the one thing really holding me back," she says. "I was bingeing my whole life away for days at a time … So when I got on the show, I said, 'You know what? I can do well in this competition. Let me give myself a chance and just get ahold of this thing.' "
"Growing up in Los Angeles and spending all those years in dance class, I'd been conscious of body image at a young age, and I went through phases of exercising compulsively and starving myself. … Food was my crutch; it was how I dealt with emotions and uncomfortable situations."

She'd spend 10 hours a day at the Eating Disorder Center where she learned "intuitive eating." "I learned that there's no such thing as a bad food," she says. "If you look at a doughnut, people think it's a fattening food – why? Because if you eat it you'll get fat? No, you'll get fat if you eat 10 doughnuts."