Zayn Malik has already spoken out about his battle with anxiety, but in his new memoir the singer reveals that he also struggled with an eating disorder during his time in this generation’s boy band, One Direction.
In his book, aptly titled Zayn, Malik wrote that when he looks at images of around November 2014, before the band’s final tour, he can see just how ill he was, according to BuzzFeed. Back then, Malik says, he wasn’t as concerned with how his body looked as he was with not eating. He writes:
Something I’ve never talked about in public before, but which I have come to terms with since leaving the band, is that I was suffering from an eating disorder … It wasn’t as though I had any concerns about my weight or anything like that, I’d just go for days – sometimes two or three days straight – without eating anything at all. It got quite serious, although at the time I didn’t recognize it for what it was.
Malik told the Associated Press that he was so busy on the road that he ended up skipping meals. He said that he was never actually diagnosed with an eating disorder and that he’s since become better at managing his diet.