Fearne Cotton has opened up about her struggle with bulimia for the first time.
Speaking on the podcast, “How to Fail with Elizabeth Day”, the broadcaster described the eating disorder as “intense”, adding it was “sort of a weird, new release”.
“I had [bulimia] on-off for a good decade of my life,” explaining that it “ruled everything” in her early 20s when it was at its worst.
The 38-year-old said her bulimic behaviours became more erratic as she got older and it became something she would go to when she was feeling particularly emotional or like she was lacking control in her life.
“It took quite a while physically to kind of move on from that, but mentally a very long time,” Cotton added.
The “Happy Place” podcast host also explained why she hadn’t spoken publicly about her eating disorder before, fearing the media would take her words out of context or that it would impact her career.
Speaking about her recovery, Cotton said that her 30s have been all about “healing” her body through a healthy relationship with diet and exercise.
“I denied myself the pleasure of cooking food for so long, that it’s now become my everything,” she added. “It’s something I’m so passionate about.”
Cotton went on to say that she doesn’t define herself as “a bulimic”.
“I’m not,” she said. “For the last eight years I’ve been very studious with food and very careful about how I eat, how I cook and how I talk about food. I feel really good and recovered. I hope I’m not being naive by saying that but I do feel like that.” You can listen to the full episode here.
Cotton has previously spoken about her relationship with food and why she doesn’t believe in the term “clean eating”.
“Do whatever makes you feel good and if you know it works for you then go for it. If you don’t want to eat wheat, or meat, or dairy then that’s up to you,” she told The Independent.
The NHS describes bulimia as an eating disorder and mental health condition. “People who have bulimia go through periods where they eat a lot of food in a very short amount of time (binge eating) and then make themselves sick, use laxatives or do excessive exercise, or a combination of these, to try to stop themselves gaining weight,” the organisation’s website states.
If you have been affected by the issues in this article, contact Beat via b-eat.co.uk
