There’s no doubt Kelly Clarkson is now proud of the body she’s in, but early in her career that wasn’t exactly the case. In a new interview with “Attitude,” Kelly talks about the pressure she was under to look “skinny” around the time of her 2004 sophomore release “Breakaway,” and she definitely wasn’t happy.
“When I was really skinny, I wanted to kill myself. I was miserable, like inside and out, for four years of my life," she says. "But no one cared because aesthetically you make sense." Kelly notes that it was a “very dark time” for her, and she says she thought “quitting” was her only way out. “I, like, wrecked my knees and my feet, because all I would do is put in headphones and run," she says. "I was at the gym all the time."
Kelly eventually regained control and even got rid of her manager at the time, Jeff Kwatinetz. “There's a song on ‘My December’ called 'Sober.' There's this line—picked the weeds but kept the flowers'—and I just live my life by that, because you are who you surround yourself with,” she says. “I was around some really negative people, and I got out of it because I had a lot of great people there, too. It was a case of turning around, facing them and walking toward the light."