Zayn Malik opens up about battling an eating disorder during his One Direction days
By Josh Lee
Former One Direction star Zayn Malik has opened up about his eating disorder struggles in his newly-released autobiography, the Sun reports.
The Pillowtalk singer revealed that he’d “go for days – sometimes two or three days straight – without eating anything at all,” during his time in the band.
“I have come to terms with since leaving the band… that I was suffering from an eating disorder,” he wrote.
“It got quite serious, although at the time I didn’t recognise it for what it was.”
23-year-old Zayn wrote that he felt as though he had no control over anything in this life, triggering the dangerous relationship with food.
“Food was something I could control, so I did,” he wrote.
He continued: “I had lost so much weight I had become ill. The workload and the pace of life on the road put together with the pressures and strains of everything going on within the band had badly affected my eating habits.”
Zayn has also publicly fought anxiety, which is detailed in the new autobiography: “On the morning of the 2016 Capital Radio Summertime Ball, an anxiety attack hit me like a f***ing freight train. I felt sick. I couldn’t breathe.
“The idea of it totally freaked me out and I was paralysed with anxiety.
“This overwhelming fear just kicked in out of nowhere, bringing with it a s***storm of self-doubt.
“When my management team came over to see what was wrong, I was on total psychological lockdown. I would make a move to walk out of the house, to get into a car that would then drive me to Wembley, but I could only manage a few paces before I hit an imaginary wall. It stopped me in my tracks, and I would have to sit down again.”
Zayn is out today (November 1)
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