Zayn Maliks Says He Had An Eating Disorder

As diehard Directioners and Zquad members alike have heard by now, Zayn Malik wrote a book entitled Zayn. Is the title on the nose? Sure. But it kind of has to be — the book is all about him, after all, and he's got a lot to say about his life thus far. In a recently released excerpt of the book, Malik wrote that he had an eating disorder.

According to Just Jared, the singer wrote,

Something I’ve never talked about in public before, but which I have come to terms with since leaving the band, is that I was suffering from an eating disorder. It wasn’t as though I had any concerns about my weight or anything like that, I’d just go for days — sometimes two or three days straight — without eating anything at all. It got quite serious, although at the time I didn’t recognize it for what it was.

He continued,

I didn’t feel like I had control over anything else in my life, but food was something I could control, so I did. 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.

While he does write that he had an eating disorder in the book, in an interview with the Associated Press (via CBS News), Malik said he doesn't think he had an eating disorder, but did explain that his eating schedule was irregular while in One Direction:

"It was just more down to losing track of, you know, actually eating and being super busy and getting caught up with other things that 17 or 18-year-olds do, which normally entails them going out, drinking or partying, so it was a mixture of everything ... I don’t think I ever had an eating disorder. I was never diagnosed with one of them."

While Malik walks back his claim that he had an eating disorder, the fact that he's spoken out about struggling with eating habits at all is a rare thing to hear from a young, successful male celebrity. His fans will surely take note.