Katharine McPhee admits she feared ‘relapsing’ with her eating disorder while pregnant as she says ‘I was suddenly so obsessed with food’
Katharine McPhee feared ‘relapsing’ with her eating disorder whilst pregnant.
The Scorpion star, 36, who welcomed a baby boy with her husband David Foster last week – struggled with an eating disorder when she was younger and she worried it would return as she prepared to give birth to her first child.
She told Dr. Berlin’s Informed Pregnancy Podcast: ‘I have felt really stable in my life in the last four or five years, and my weight has been sort of like more consistent.
Honest: Katharine McPhee, 36, has admitted she feared ‘relapsing’ with her eating disorder while pregnant as she says ‘I was suddenly so obsessed with food’ (pictured while pregnant)
‘But feeling like there was a relapse after getting pregnant was really shocking and upsetting and concerning for me, because I was suddenly so obsessed with food, starting from this first trimester.
She continued: ‘I had such a distortion of the way that I looked. I look back at these pictures and my husband was documenting like every day, because I’d be like, “Take a picture of me now. Am I showing?” And I look back and I’m like, “Oh my god, why was I so hard on myself?”
‘I didn’t full-blown relapse. It was definitely a feeling like I was overeating. And then I had that stuffed feeling, where I couldn’t breathe.
She said: ‘I couldn’t figure out if I was just stuffed feeling because there was a new thing in my body that was making me feel stuffed or if I was actually eating too much food. I was eating really fast. And there’s just a lot of anxiety’
‘And I couldn’t figure out if I was just stuffed feeling because there was a new thing in my body that was making me feel stuffed or if I was actually eating too much food. I was eating really fast. And there’s just a lot of anxiety.’
And the singer and actress managed to ‘weather’ her negative feelings and she is feeling ‘really grateful’ that she got through it all.
She added: ‘I weathered it and I’m really grateful I’m at the end of it, that I feel this good and that I look in the mirror and I’m like, “Yeah, my legs, thighs, arms are a little bit thicker, but I’m OK with it”.’
Kathrine, who noted that she had gained 40 pounds during her pregnancy, spoke out about her previous battles with disordered eating and bulimia in a 2017 interview with Health magazine.
Katharine said: ‘It just suddenly came up in a way that hadn’t been present in a long time.’
Lovebirds: Katharine said ‘she was very obsessed with food’ during ‘the first trimester and into the second trimester;’ seen February 24, 2021 at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills
The mother of one explained: ‘I think it was also because I was going back to film on the show on Netflix that I had started, [which] obviously paused during the [COVID-19} pandemic.’
She revealed the hardest part was ‘feeling like I was relaxing in some capacity with my food issues.’
The singer/actress said she then decided to reach out to a psychiatrist that she had previously worked with during her time on American Idol.
Katharine said the psychiatrist told her that ‘it’s really common for women who have struggled with eating disorders in the past to have almost a relapse, in some sense, when they enter pregnancy.’
Adding: ‘And it made me feel so much better that I wasn’t alone in that head space… by just meeting with him and him talking me through it. It wasn’t like he gave me a bottle of pills and said,”Here’s your pills for anxiety.” That’s not what he did when he met with me, but he was just talking through it and asking questions.’
When she reached her second trimester, she said the experience ‘got a lot better.’
Katharine and David, 71, welcomed a baby boy last week; he is already father to five daughters from previous relationships.
Her words: The singer/actress said she then decided to reach out to a psychiatrist that she had previously worked with during her time on American Idol who helped her