Zayn Malik has talked about his struggles with anxiety and playing live in the past, but his new autobiography sees the former boyband member open up about what he describes as an 'eating disorder' during his time in One Direction.

The 23-year-old Mailk published 'Zayn' yesterday, and one excerpt sees him talk about his time in the band in the months before he quit. "When I look back at the images of myself from around November 2014, before the final tour, I can see how ill I was," it read. "Something I’ve never talked about in public before, but which I have come to terms with since leaving the band, is that I was suffering from an eating disorder.”

However, when talking to Associated Press about the same topic, he seemed wary of using the phrase 'eating disorder', saying that he had never been 'diagnosed with one'.

"I realised that I wasn’t eating as much just down to the amount of work that we were doing. Our schedule was kind of crazy, so we were all over the place," he said. “It was just more down to losing track of, you know, actually eating, and being super busy and getting caught up with other things that 17- or 18-year-olds do, which normally entails them going out, drinking or partying."

via The Guardian