Katherine Schwarzenegger Talks Body Image on @katiecouric

On @katiecouric, she said she wrote the book for "young girls saying you're not alone when you're going through all this because every other girl's going through the exact same thing."

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When she was 10 years old, Katherine said her mom helped her put things in perspective, with a quick little exercise. "She took a piece of paper and she drew a line down it and told me to write things that I like in the life side and things I don't like about myself in the right side." At the end of the exercise, she realized "the likes column was much longer than the dislikes column."

Katherine said it really opened "your eyes to all the positive things that you have that you always don't think about."

"It seemed like everyone In LA, every girl was having an eating disorder," Katherine told Katie Couric. But, she said she "never had an eating disorder."

She added, "seeing other people struggle with eating disorders definitely scares you away from doing anything like that. And the amount of stress that they put their bodies under and how much they torture themselves to look a certain way and to look like what society considers beautiful, and they can't really be themselves." She thinks it's "really sad, because I think that society doesn't really allow girls to be who they are. And that's what I really hope to change with this."

Katherine's mother, Maria Shriver joined the conversation via Skype.  She gave her thoughts on on the gubernatorial race in California.  "I think it's a tossup. I think it's a tight race."