Demi Lovato Was Bullied

Courtesy of Pedro Andrade, PacificCoastNews.com

She talks about weight struggles.

Demi Lovato described her unhealthy relationship with food in the past, but she hasn't talked much about the bullying she experienced as a kid, and how it developed into cutting. Demi's been through a lot, and she's opening up about it now.

Read: Demi Lovato Quits Sonny with a Chance

Demi was a compulsive overeater by the age of eight, and she remembers the regular harrassment that happened to her while in school. Not nice:

"I literally didn't know why they were being so mean to me. And when I would ask them why, they would just say, ‘Well, you're fat,'" she described.

"I was compulsively overeating when I was eight years old. ... So, I guess, for the past 10 years I've had a really unhealthy relationship with food."

Lovato just left her Disney show, Sonny with a Chance, saying that she wasn't ready to get in front of the camera. She will be concentrating on her music career, she told PEOPLE, and she wants to transition to other things.

Read: Demi Lovato Applauds Catherine Zeta Jones's Rehab Decision

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As for the cutting, which Demi Lovato denied in the past? That started at the age of 11, and Lovato comments:

"It was a way of expressing my own shame, of myself, on my own body. I was matching the inside to the outside. And there were some times where my emotions were just so built up, I didn't know what to do. The only way that I could get instant gratification was through an immediate release on myself."

I'm starting to go on a Demi L. overload! She's talked about being bipolar, having an eating disorder, cutting herself, going to a treatment center... I hope she stops the press circuit so she can concentrate on her recovery. Stress can sometimes provoke a relapse, and she's obviously trying her best to maintain.