Lauren Alaina is opening up about one of the darkest times of her life, when she battled an eating disorder. The 26-year-old was just 15 when she was on American Idol, quickly getting a harsh taste of life on reality TV after she discovered a blog that called her “Miss Piggy,” complete with a pig snout on her face.

The discovery caused Lauren to resort to bulimia to lose weight, shedding 45 to 50 pounds by the end of the American Idol tour.

“[People] can be really cruel, and I didn’t have tools to deal with that,” Lauren told Entertainment Tonight.

It was only when doctors told her that her purging could have a permanent impact on her singing career that she found the strength to stop.

“They told me that if I didn’t stop, I would never sing again, and I didn’t want that,” Lauren said. “That was a wake-up call for me, and it took me a few years even after that to really get into a better place. And I still go check in with the therapist every once in a while, specifically for an eating disorder.”

Lauren’s new album, Sitting Pretty on Top of the World, which includes duets with Trisha Yearwood and Jon Pardi, is out now. Her book, Getting Good at Being You: Learning to Love Who God Made You to Be, will be out on November 23.

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