JoJo revealed that she was put on a 500 calories a day diet when she was 18 years old.

The big revelation came in an interview with Uproxx posted on Monday (February 24). JoJo, who was previously signed to Blackground Records, said that it was the only record label that would sign her because she was so young at the start of her career.

"When I was 18, I remember being sat down in the Blackground office and the president of the label being like, ‘We just want you to look as healthy as possible,'" she recalled. "And I was like, ‘I'm actually the picture of health. I look like a healthy girl who eats and is active. I don't think this is about my health.'"

The label hired a nutritionist that put her on an extreme diet and injections to suppress her appetite. "I ended up working with a nutritionist who had me on a 500 calorie diet a day," she explained, sharing that she was "taking these injections that make you have no appetite. I was like, 'Let me see how thin I could become because maybe then they will put out an album. Maybe I'm so disgusting that nobody wants to see me in the video and they can't even look at me.' That's really what I thought."

The NHS recommends almost five times the amount of calories that she was on, per day, for a healthy diet for a teenage girl.

Because of the extreme diet, JoJo admitted that she turned to alcohol. “For a while, I coped by drinking too much," she said. "I wanted to get out of my mind. I wanted to stop picking myself apart."

She continued, "I just wanted to feel good, to chase that high. I wanted to stop worrying about my career. And when you get out of your mind, when you get to that point when you black out, you don’t give a s--t about anything.”

Now, JoJo is healthier than ever and working on a new record.

Celebrities Who Opened Up About Mental Health

 

More From Hot 107.9