"I really just thought I wasn't supposed to eat food."
It was a long, emotional journey for Kesha to finally release her album, Rainbow, this year.
The 30-year-old pop star covers the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, which boldly declares: "The Liberation of Kesha."
"I feel like myself," she tells the music magazine. "I made a record I’m extremely proud of, from the bottom of my guts."
News
MORE: Kesha Sends Message of Support for Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez -- 'Heal Safe and Feel Good'
Before Kesha's "liberation," she shares that she had to get healthy, opening up about her serious issues with food that led to her checking into a rehab facility for a time.
"I really just thought I wasn't supposed to eat food," she recalls."And then if I ever did, I felt very ashamed, and I would make myself throw up because I'd think, 'Oh, my God, I can't believe I actually did that horrible thing. I'm so ashamed of myself because I don't deserve to eat food."
Kesha says her eating disorder only got worse as her career advanced. "I was slowly, slowly starving myself," she confides. "The worse I got and the sicker I got, the better a lot of people around me were saying that I looked. They would just be like, 'Oh my gosh, keep doing whatever you're doing! You look so beautiful, so stunning.'"
She even remembers a dinner party where she was worried someone would notice that she wasn't eating. "I just had all this mounting anxiety. And then finally I was like, 'F**k. This. S**t. F**k this s**t. I'm hungry!'" Kesha exclaims. "I remember just shaking because I was so fed up, so anxious, and I was just mad that I had let myself get to that point."
It was then that she called her mom, Pebe Sebert, who flew her to a rehab facility where she met with a nutritionist. "I didn't know how to even eat. At that point, I'd forgotten how to do it," the singer admits. "I just remember crying into a carbohydrate, being like, 'I can't eat it. It's going to make me fat, and if I'm fat, I can't be a singer because pop stars can't eat food -- they can't be fat.'"
While Kesha says there was a time that she felt like she was on a "life treadmill," she doesn't necessarily look down on the music or persona she created prior to Rainbow.
"I loved what I was doing when I was doing it," she explains. "It was so much f**king fun! I wouldn't change all the Worst Dressed lists, I wouldn't change the mohawk, I wouldn't change all that s**t. I'm proud of myself for being that ballsy young girl that was ready to take life by the balls."
Kesha's music career was put on hold after she filed a lawsuit against record producer and songwriter Dr. Luke in 2014, claiming that he was physically, emotionally and sexually abusive towards her while they were working together. In the summer of 2016, she dropped the lawsuit in California against him in an effort to focus on new music.
During an interview with Good Morning America in August, she gushed over her new music, proclaiming, "I think this record has quite literally saved my life. I hope you guys like it. I hope you can hear it and I hope it helps people."
