Content warning: This story discusses suicidal ideation.
Lizzo is speaking out about a dark time.
The “About Damn Time” singer recalled her mental health taking a turn for the worse amid a lawsuit filed by her former dancers, and how it inspired her health and fitness journey.
“I started losing weight in the fall of 2023,” Lizzo, 37, wrote on a Substack post Nov. 23. “I was severely depressed. I had been the subject of a vicious scandal, and it felt like the whole world turned its back on me. I became deeply suicidal.”
“I cut off all my loved ones. I couldn’t trust anyone because during the scandal,” she continued. “Former close colleagues and friends (who I’d been on pleasant or neutral terms), started to come out and make things up about me. God knows why. I supposed to kick me while I’m down?”
As a result of the pushback she got during the time of the lawsuit—which she shared she was dismissed from in 2024—she was in a period of “extreme isolation” and anger, that she would typically fix with what she described as unhealthy eating habits. That is, until one day she decided to actively take a different approach.