These women are beautiful inside and out.
These women are beautiful inside and out.

Being a model may look very glamorous on the outside, but meeting those unrealistic beauty standards is a tough nut to crack. Model Erin Heatherton, a former Victoria’s Secret Angel is one such victim who resorted to extreme lengths to stay skinny.

Heatherton appeared on the “Fallen Angels” podcast that investigates the controversial history and cultural impact of Victoria's Secret, hosted by Justine Harman and Vanessa Grigoriadis.

The 32-year-old model earned her wings in 2010 but decided to leave the brand in 2013. During the podcast, she opened up about the extreme measures she took to meet the “Victoria’s Secret” standards.

"Where things started to go south for me was when I hit, I think it was 25 [years old]," Heatherton said in upcoming episodes of the C13Originals and Campside Media podcast in a preview obtained by PEOPLE. "There was this certain point where everything that I was doing just didn't yield the same results. I was just a little bit bigger. In retrospect, that's just biology and how the body works. You're not the same size when you're 18 to when you're 25."

Heatherton further revealed body image pressures pushed her "over the edge a little bit." Beyond dieting and exercising, the model said she also saw a nutritionist who "started me on this diet pill called phentermine [an amphetamine-like prescription appetite suppressant], which my therapist later called 'bathwater meth.'"

"I don't know. I was just like, 'Let me, Lance Armstrong, this because I'm renovating my condo. I can't lose my job right now.' I started injecting myself with HCG [a hormone produced during pregnancy called human chorionic gonadotropin]," she explained.

"I was just like, 'Help me lose weight. What do people do?' He suggested something this other model did that worked for her. This is this nutritionist to the stars, whatever. I don't know. I started like a diabetic injecting my stomach every morning," Heatherton continued. "I look back at it as like emotional cutting because I was so against everything that I was doing, but I was just reluctantly doing it almost to feel the pain or feel how wrong it was."

She also talked about the purpose of her being a part of the podcast, "I don't have any faith that these people really cared about me," she said. "You know what I'm saying? It's just about business." She said she did "a lot of work on forgiveness and is "not mad" and has no "ties" to Victoria's Secret any longer, but wanted to speak out to help anyone else struggling with body issues.

Heatherton is all set to appear in episodes 5 and 8 of the podcast.

Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

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