During an appearance on former Bachelorette star Hannah Brown's Better Tomorrow podcast, Lauren Alaina opened up about how her 2011 run on American Idol intensified her struggle as a teenager with an eating disorder.
"People commented a lot on my weight... What kind of evil humans can comment on a 16-year-old child is beyond me now. But as that 16-year-old child, it got very bad for a while," Alaina said. "I suffered with such a severe eating disorder in those years where nothing was connecting. It wasn't only because [I needed] to work hard, I lost who I was completely. Everything — my light... it was dimmed quite a bit because of the TV aspect."
While finishing second that year to fellow future country star Scotty McCreery validated Alaina as an artist, being thrust into the public eye at a formative time in her life worsened a preexisting condition.
"It was an extreme high and an extreme low and I got sick... I struggled very, very bad with bulimia for a very long time," she added.
Alaina sought professional help after her struggles began to impact her singing voice.
"I had really bad polyps on my vocal cords, and I've had them since I was a kid, but the bulimia made it 10 times worse. They were bleeding constantly and it was straining on my voice. And just the lack of nutrition— my vocal cords couldn't keep up because I was so unhealthy," she told People in 2017. "That was the first time it clicked for me," Alaina confessed. "It wasn't my hair falling out, it wasn't my bones sticking out too much — it was my voice. When they told me that my voice was going to go away, that really got to me. Had I not gotten better, I may not have this album now, I may not have this music. I can't even imagine. I don't know what I would do."
