For the first time since the bands rise to fame, Jade Thirlwall has opened up about living with anorexia.
The singer talks about it in the bands new book Our World.
Jade reveals that she developed the illness at 13 after a particularly difficult time in her personal life and losing a family member.
She writes:
“My periods stopped and things were getting out of control but I don’t think I really cared about what was happening to me. I felt so depressed at the time that I just wanted to waste away and disappear.
“Anorexia is a self-destructive thing and you become stubborn, so when people are trying to tell you something you get it into your head that they’re against you and you’re not going to listen.”
Jade realised that the illness was causing her body to deteriorate.
“It took going to hospital to make me realise that it wasn’t a game, it was something really serious. They sat me down in the clinic and were quite tough at first, spelling it out: ‘You’re destroying your body and if you keep doing this you will die,” she writes.
Jade reveals that her friend also suffered from the illness and when Jade witnessed her being admitted to hospital, she too made a change.
“It shocked me into making a change,” she writes.
Jade concludes that by the time she was leaving school she had made changes and was back to leading a full and healthy life.
