Hannah Brown is opening up about an interaction she had with a pageant director that took a toll on her mental health.
In PEOPLE's exclusive first look at Monday's episode of the new Facebook Watch series At Home with the Robertsons, the former Bachelorette, 26, talks with Korie and Sadie Robertson about some "objectifying" comments that "really messed with me."
"I had a director of a pageant, she emailed me a picture of another girl's body and said, 'I need you to look like this in your swimsuit before this time,' " recalls Brown, who has been candid in the past about her body image struggles.
Continuing, she says, "And it killed me, it really did. I would go a year without eating carbs. It really messed with me a lot and I dealt with some anxiety and depression because of it."
"That's so objectifying," adds Korie.
Back In February, the former Bachelorette star recalled that while her struggles with her body started at a young age, things reached a peak once she entered the pageant world.
"I remembered I was hungry. I was so, so hungry," Brown recalled in a YouTube video as she described one "extreme diet" she went on after a close friend told her she should only eat and drink liquids to lose weight.
"As soon as I stopped [dieting], after the pageant, I was literally starving, all the weight came back on and more," she said. "That was really hard for me, so that started the constant yo-yo that I've had for so long."
Brown said that her struggles continued throughout the years, including during her time on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, where she said being around "all these beautiful women that are all so small" was hard for her.
Competing on Dancing with the Stars in 2019 also reinforced those negative feelings about her weight. "It's hard when you're always around other beautiful, professional women that dance," Brown said. "I was so hard on myself."
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While Brown has "definitely struggled with accepting the way my body is," she said that nowadays she's focusing on self-love.
"The whole issue with it all was I didn't have any self-worth through all that," she said at the end of the video. "I'm like, 'No, Hannah! Cut the crap and learn to have a healthy lifestyle and accept how your body is.'"
"I needed to dig deep emotionally in who I want to be," she added. "Thank goodness I've grown and changed and so has my body."
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