America's Got Talent star Jackie Evancho has revealed that her anorexia battle has left her with the bones of an "80-year-old".
MORE: AGT's Nightbirde's family shares heartbreaking statement with bedside video
The 22-year-old singer has previously shared how she struggled with the eating disorder as a teenager but knew it was time for helP in 2021 after a car accident left her with a broken back.
WATCH: Simon Cowell cries whilst remembering Nightbirde
"They were abnormal breaks, breaks that you see in 80-year-olds," the AGT alum revealed. "That's how I learned that my eating problems created osteoporosis. So now I'm a 22-year-old with osteoporosis."
However, it wasn't easy for Jackie to heal as she had to eat and "that really messed me up with my eating problems, because I was gaining weight to heal".
RELATED: Simon Cowell expresses heartache after X Factor star Tom Mann's fiancée dies on wedding day
Jackie - who won the reality competition series at the age of 12 in 2012 - entered an inpatient facility in October 2021. She told People magazine that she now also sees a nutritionist and therapist, and also is in treatment for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), "a type of psychotherapy that she hopes will help her process past trauma and get her anorexia under control".
At the age of 15 she began to enter puberty and decided to "mildly diet" and work out regularly after thinking she looked "a little bigger".
Jackie was also a surprise guest on The Masked Singer
Even though her mom suggested it was just "baby fat", the teenager began eating even less and working out more.
"When I started to go days without eating, in my head I said, 'I know that this isn't normal,'" she shared. "I felt exhausted, moody, tearful, but after a bit of time, I started to feel nothing."
She entered treatment at the age of 17 but the COVID-19 pandemic made things worse because there were no distractions.
Jackie is now working on new music, and plans to release her ninth EP later in 2022 after having been writing in Nashville. "It's opening old wounds, but painting with the blood; it wasn't healing, but it was making something beautiful out of something painful," she admitted.
Read more HELLO! US stories here
