Why Kelly Clarkson felt least healthy at her thinnest weight

“Skinny” and “healthy” are not at all one and the same—just ask Kelly Clarkson, who recently opened up about how the only direct correlation to her slimmest physique was her slimmest state of happiness and mental health.

Even when she was releasing hit after hit during her Breakaway album days in the early 2000s, Clarkson admits it was hard to enjoy the fame because of how torn up she was inside: “When I was really skinny and unhappy, I wanted to kill myself. I was miserable, like inside and out, for four years of my life,” Clarkson told Attitude, later clarifying via Twitter that she never actually contemplated suicide. “But no one cared, because aesthetically you make sense.”

NOT TRUEI’ve never contemplated suicide because of my weight.I said people had no idea I was unhappy oddly enough because I appeared healthy https://t.co/Ddvumlrk5b

While she looked happy onstage during that time, she was spending most of her free time working out to literally run from her mental anguish: “It was a very dark time for me. I thought the only way out was quitting. I wrecked my knees and my feet because all I would do is put in headphones and run. I was at the gym all the time,” she said.

Luckily, things turned around for the Grammy-winning artist: Once she gained more control over her career, she realized the most important thing in life is being happy and surrounding herself with those who make that possible.

“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 said. So she purged her life of the negative people around her and started “walking toward the light.”

With two little ones at home and her new album Meaning of Life out this week, it seems Clarkson has totally found the light in her life, and there’s nothing left to stop her from rising higher. Because what’s better than being happy in your own skin?

Serena Williams wrote the most amazing letter on body positivity. (And these women also have some inspiring words to share about loving your body.)