Lauren Alaina reveals bulimia battle

Country star Lauren Alaina has revealed she secretly battled bulimia as a teenager.

The singer was thrown into the spotlight when she was just 16-years-old, after coming in as the runner-up to Scotty McCreery on American Idol in 2011, but despite the fact she was living out her dreams of becoming a professional singer, Lauren now admits she was desperate to become a picture perfect star.

In a candid Facebook Live interview with Motto magazine on Tuesday (10May16), Lauren, now 21, said, "I had bulimia for a few years. I was really sick."

"I don’t know that person, I can’t believe that was me," she added. "I just desperately wanted to be thin. That's all I thought. I was obsessed with it, which was ridiculous because I had everything going for me. I was following my dream. Everything I wanted at the time, I was getting. But I was obsessed with this other thing that was making me unhappy."

Lauren was able to fight the eating disorder thanks to the support of her mom, who was instrumental in her recovery and helped boost her self-esteem.

"My mom made me look in the mirror every day and say three things that I loved about myself," Lauren continued. "At first, I couldn't name anything. It was so sad. When my mom made me do that, I looked in the mirror and I literally couldn’t name one thing that I loved about myself. I try to remind myself of the things that I like about myself that make me who I am."