'It Was A Constant Battle': Model Iskra Lawrence Recalls How An Eating Disorder Became 'Detrimental' To Her Mental Health

Model Iskra Lawrence is getting candid about her experience with eating disorders.

"It really started when I was a teenager where I was kind of thrown into this fashion world where I was pitted against other models and other women. It was purely based on appearance," she shared with Health. "That immediately made me very very super focused on the outside, on the superficial things, especially on size."

Lawrence admitted that she wasn't happy with her body, even though she always radiated beauty on red carpets and in social media posts.

"I would kind of fake the confidence and dress in this kind of provocative ways to kind of get attention to think that would fulfill my need to love myself," she revealed.

The Aerie ambassador's struggles went so far that she often opted to work with photographers that would photoshop her or help her pose in a way to make her body look different, even though she "was a US [size] 6 if that. Maybe a 4."

"I was looking at myself in the mirror thinking that I was huge," she recalled. "Just fighting against my own development into a woman at the time of those teenage years was so detrimental to my mental health. Because instead of embracing, it was a constant battle."

At certain points, the star would feel too weak to attend class since she had restricted herself from eating.

Eventually, she heard about "plus-size modeling," which prompted her to discuss the idea with her agency, as she felt she didn't fit in with the regular modeling industry — however, they shot her down, telling her she was "too small to be a plus-size model."

It was then that a lightbulb went off, as she realized that she could market herself as the average girl in between sizes.

"That's really where I managed to shift that mindset and the responses were really reassuring," she shared. "The best thing I can do right now is really allow myself to define how I want to feel when I look at myself and when I see this body, because I'm in it everyday. I have to figure out how we can get along and how I can fall in love with it."