'I was afraid to eat apples': Bikini model-turned-online fitness guru with three million YouTube fans reveals her eating disorder battle while telling all women to NEVER diet 

A popular fitness guru and vlogger has vowed to never diet again after she detailed the depths of the eating disorder she developed while training for a bikini competition that left her afraid to even eat fruit. 

In an emotional video, Cassey Ho, the 29-year-old founder of popular YouTube channel and website Blogilates, revealed to her 2.8 million subscribers that she struggled with 'some form of extreme orthorexia', an eating disorder characterized as an obsession with eating only healthy foods, for a year and a half after competing in a bikini contest. 

'I was scared to eat apples; like I was frightened of bananas, and I just didn't want to touch a grape because I thought that it would make me fat and it would make me gain weight,' she confesses to her fans. 'I was super obsessed.'

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Healthy attitude: Cassey Ho has revealed that she developed an eating disorder after losing 16lbs for a fitness competition in 2012. The 29-year-old, who has gained the weight back, has vowed to never diet again

Coming clean: The fitness guru shared her story in an emotional video that she shared on her Blogilates website and YouTube channel 

Cassey explains that she decided to enter a bikini competition focused on muscularity and body composition four years ago after she quit her job and moved back to California from Boston. 

The YouTube star, who lost 16 pounds in eight weeks, says the experience was both exciting and awful.  

'It was one of the most terrible times of my life because it actually spiraled me into a type of an eating disorder,' she admits.

Cassey goes on to say that looking back she isn't proud of the way she achieved her body for the competition, explaining her grueling workouts and bland diet were not 'sustainable'. 

In order to prepare for the competition, Cassey started working with a retired bodybuilder who was familiar with the type of discipline that is required for a fitness competition.

New perspective: Cassey said that looking back on her training, she isn't proud of how she shed the weight for the contest 

Grueling process: Cassey, who is pictured 16 (L) and nine (R) days into her weight week training, worked out for a total of four hours a day and consumed only 1,000 calories a day 

During her eight weeks of training, Cassey was required to work out a total of four hours a day, three hours with her trainer in the morning and one hour of cardio at night by herself. 

According to her new coach, the fitness classes she was teaching didn't count toward her daily workouts. 

Cassey was also put on an equally grueling diet, eating only tilapia, chicken breasts, egg whites, lettuce, broccoli, and protein powder. If she wanted extra flavor on anything, she was only allowed to use lemon juice. 

'I was cloudy in my head. I could barely think, and all I really worried about was how close I could get to getting those [Victoria's Secret] abs,' she says of her 1,000 per day diet. 'I was so vanity focused during this time; it was weird.' 

Cassey explains that during those eight weeks the people around her noticed a significant difference in her mood. Instead of exuding happiness like she used to, she was cranky and snapping at those around her. 

Happier and healtherier: The Pilates lover is pictured doing a starfish plank last year

Miss new booty: When Cassey shared this picture on her Instagram page this week, she joked that the secret of having a 'bigger butt' is to arch your back 

Every day when she got to the gym the former bodybuilder would put her on the scale. Weight loss would be applauded, while a lack of progress lead to accusations that she wasn't working hard enough for she was cheating on her diet. 

Cassey admits that the whole experience was so daunting that she doesn't even weight herself anymore. The fitness star explains that there was something about reaching that goal that kept her dedicated to the strict program.   

'Never in my life have I ever had flat abs and a six pack. I am just not born with that,' she says of her natural body type. 'If i want to lose weight, I have work out super extra and I have to eat super extra clean.' 

Cassey admits that she started to 'fall in love' with the way her body looked, including her 'thigh gap' and streamlined abs. However, the day before her competition, her trainer advised her to do 45 minutes of cardio, sit in a sauna for at least an hour, drink only eight ounces of water, and take diuretic pills to flush the water out of her body. 

While Cassey says she followed most of his suggestions, she drew the line at taking diuretics because she feared it was too dangerous for her body.   

Not born that way: Cassey said that aside from the 2012 bikini contest she never had flat abs and a six pack before 

Pretty popular: The fitness guru and YouTube star has 2.8 million subscribers as well as well as 1.2 million followers on her Instagram page 

Tough times: Cassey, who is pictured at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas earlier this month, said she struggled with her eating disorder for a year and a half after the bikini contest but still put on weight 

'I literally probably could have ended up in the emergency room,' she says. 

Cassey notes that many of the women at the competition had large breasts and curvaceous derrieres that she just couldn't compete with. 

'When I got on stage and lined myself up against all the other girls, I suddenly felt like a piece of meat,' she explained on her blog. 'Wait, why was I putting myself in this position to be physically judged against other girls based solely on the size of my waist, the roundness of my butt, the perkiness of my boobs?'

After it was all said and done, she didn't end up making it into the top five. That night she and her family went out to celebrate, however, after eating half of the slice of cheesecake she was lusting after, she ended up doubled over in pain with cramps. 

'This is actually a real symptom of starvation. Some people even throw up after starving for so long that once they eat something, their stomachs completely reject it,' she wrote. 

After the competition, Cassey says she shortened her workouts to only one hour a day and started incorporating sweet potatoes and broccoli into some of her meals. 

Social media star: Cassey said gaining weight was particularly embarrassing for her at the time because it was noticeable on her YouTube videos and blog posts  

Finding herself: he fitness lover said she eventually started to eat what she wanted and gave up working out, which lead to her loosing a lot of the strength that had made her a star

Be happy: Four years later, Cassey said she has learned to love her body. She has given up on dieting and she is urging other people to do the same 

However, Cassey was alarmed to see that she was gaining weight. In her video, Cassey explains that she was so embarrassed by the weight she was putting on because it was being documented in her vlog posts. She tried restricting her diet more but nothing seemed to work. 

'For me as a fitness instruction my strength and my confidence are everything to me,' she says, admitting that looking back she was working out and dieting for all the wrong reasons. 

A year later she gave up and started eating whatever she wanted and stopped working out. And while she didn't put on any weight, Cassey felt awful that she had also lost her physical strength. 

Cassey says she finally realized she would rather be 16lbs heavier than her competition weight than spend half of her day at the gym and the other half counting calories. The Pilates lover notes that her workouts are now about 'feeling good'.  

'Why the heck the all women everywhere judged by the way they look and what the number is on the scale,' she asks. 'Seriously, why does that matter? It doesn't show how good of a fitness instructor I am. It doesn't show how good of a person that you are. That number on the scale means nothing.

A the end of the 15-minute video, Cassey vows to never go on a diet again and urges her subscribers to join her and take a pledge to live a healthy and fulfilled life that is not based on a number on a scale.