Portia de Rossi:'I Don't Want to Have Any More Secrets'

Looking at a photo of herself back when she weighed 82 pounds, Portia de Rossi can now admit she was sick.

"But at the time, I thought, 'Okay, my arms look awful so I should cover them up, but my legs look pretty okay now," says the actress, 37. "I didn't think I was crazy to only eat 300 calories a day. That made perfect sense to me."

In a new memoir, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, de Rossi comes clean about the years she spent battling anorexia and bulimia – after landing her breakthrough role on TV's Ally McBeal in 1998 – and the pressure she felt to hide the fact that she was gay.

"My struggle with anorexia, coming to terms with my sexuality, I realized I had struggled with self-acceptance my whole life," she says. "To be able to get to a point where you're just happy with who you are, I think that's when you know what real peace feels like."

Now healthy and happily living in Los Angeles with Ellen DeGeneres, whom she married in 2008, de Rossi never steps on a scale and eats three balanced meals, plus snacks, every day.

"Look, I don't think I'm perfect. I still don't like my thighs," she says. "But I'm not going to do anything to compromise my health or my sanity to change them. I don't want to have secrets anymore. I don't want to have a darkness that I feel that I should be ashamed of. And going forward now, without having anything to hide, the future looks pretty bright."

For more of de Rossi's interview and an exclusive excerpt of her book, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

Idol's Kara DioGuardi Struggled with Eating Disorder

American Idol's Kara DioGuardi has revealed that when she was younger, she battled an until-now secret affliction.

"I had kind of a binge eating disorder where instead of dealing with my emotions, I would stuff them down with food," the show's judge told Extra. "I actually went into a treatment center for it."

DioGardi, 38, says she never starved herself or threw up. Rather, "It was definitely that excess eating to kind of just stuff all the emotions down ... I really was a creative kid who didn't know she was creative and didn't have those outlets because I was always afraid to join the theater group and not perform."

It was music that proved to be her salvation. "The moment I started doing music, the moment I did what I loved to do in my life and committed to it, I don't have those problems anymore ... I have my outlet," she says. "I have that form of expression. I can go to the studio and talk about my feelings."

Hoping to help others, DioGuardi has built a recording studio inside Phoenix House, a Los Angeles treatment center helping recovering addicts heal through music. "It's real therapeutic," she says.

Still, she faces what she calls "this craziness in my head," the feeling that she has to be "perfect all the time," especially as her critiques on the wildly popular show can contribute to the rise or fall of a career.

"But I made this commitment in my life to face my fears," says DioGuardi, "and if I am afraid of something I make sure I do it."