For the first time, Anahi has opened up about her battle with anorexia and bulimia and candidly addressed some of the toughest experiences of her life.

In a new interview in Spanish with journalist Joaquín López-Dóriga, Anahi opened up about her struggles with eating disorders that she’s battled with over the course of her life. She discussed the pressure of the media and thanked López-Dóriga for granting her a space to discuss her disease openly and address her experience while growing up in the limelight.

Anahi revealed she was told she was chubby in a casting for the series “Mi Primer Amor,” when she was fourteen years old. “Anahí, protagonists are skinny. Protagonists are very pretty. And you’re chubby. You have to work on yourself so you can do the novela,” she said a producer of the series told her.

“I suffered for years from anorexia nervosa and bulimia that almost killed me,” she said. “From that moment on, my essence changed. Everything changed… I believed I wasn’t enough. I believed it.” Anahi also shared the moment where she faced how advanced her disease was, and how her cousin ended up saving her life. “I could go five or six days without eating. Sometimes, I would eat a grapefruit. Sometimes, I would eat ice to trick my stomach,” she said, asking the public that she didn’t want them to get any ideas.

“We were in [Alicia’s] car,” she said. “I told her, ‘I feel bad. Something is wrong, I feel bad.’ My heart was going super fast, and I felt that my stomach was turning inside,” she said. Her cousin took her to the hospital where she was interned over the next couple of weeks.

Anahi is currently on tour with RBD, a moment that fans have been waiting for over the past decade. The tour has stops on arenas and stadiums in Brazil, Colombia, the US, and Mexico. The tour has defied all expectations. “But even then, RBD achieved unique things, RBD broke records, we touched people’s hearts, and we sent a positive message,” said Maite Perroni, one of the band’s members, in an interview with Billboard. “We achieved things that, today, 20 years later, allow us to be here.”