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Nicole Scherzinger opens up about eight-year battle with bulimia: 'It's a horrible, paralyzing disease'

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Nicole Scherzinger is an ex-Pussycat Doll, a former X Factor judge, pop princess, the girlfriend of Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, yet the woman who has it all found herself suffering from the eating disorder bulimia for eight years. Nicole has spoken out about her battle with bulimia when she was the lead singer of girl band The Pussycat Dolls, revealing that it was only when she was found unconscious by her manager that she realised she needed help. "I had started losing my voice, I couldn't sing at shows, and then I remember my manager finding me passed out on the floor in Malta or in the south of France," she recalls. "I thought, 'I'm going to lose everything I love if I don't love myself.'"

Nicole Scherzinger has opened up about her eight-year battle with bulimia

"One day when you feel like you've reached the end, you just say, 'I'm not doing this anymore.' It's sad to see how I wasted my life." The 36-year-old, who appears on the front cover of Cosmopolitan in August, describes bulimia as "a horrible, paralyzing disease"."It was such a dark time for me," she says. "I didn't think anyone knew in my group or in my family because I hid it that well, I was so ashamed. I knew it wasn't normal or healthy because I was hurting myself through this cycle of disordered eating. It was my drug, my addiction. It’s an endless vicious cycle."

nicole scherzinger bulimia© Photo: Getty Images
Nicole Scherzinger suffered from bulimia when she was in The Pussycat Dolls

The pop star, who first spoke about the disorder in 2012, two years after the group split, also talks about the façade that she kept up during the ordeal. "I had such a great life on the outside, the Dolls were on top of the world, but I was miserable on the inside," she reveals in the August issue of Cosmopolitan. "I'm never letting that happen again; you only get one life – I was 27 only once."