Demi Lovato Is 'Confident' of Her Body Image After Years of Struggle

"Extra's" Terri Seymour caught up with Demi Lovato at a Hollywood SoulCycle location, where she talked about her new album "Confident" and her new body image.

Lovato not only has confidence in her body, she has confidence in who she is, saying, "I feel great in my body today and that's something I've always struggled with, but more importantly, I feel confident in who I am and the things I believe in, what I stand for, the type of artist I want to be."

The 23-year-old recently went without makeup and Photoshop in pics for Vanity Fair. She explained, "Well, you can't get any more raw or authentic than no makeup, naked with no Photoshop… I wanted to show people that you can go from having body-image issues your whole life to feeling comfortable enough to show your body to the whole world without Photoshop."

Lovato also took her clothes off for Complex magazine and felt empowered doing it, "I've worked really hard on my body. This is the first time in my life I felt the freedom to do these kind of photo shoots. To go against everyone's standards and say, 'No, this is what I'm gonna do based off of what you think perfection is or what beauty is, this is just me,' that was so incredibly empowering."

Demi says her longtime boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama has been supporting her every step of the way. "Having encouragement especially from the one you love is very, very helpful; there's been so many years he's been telling me the same thing, he's been telling me, 'Now, you're beautiful and you've got a beautiful body and you're an incredibly strong woman,' but if I didn't have the confidence and hadn't learned to love myself, I would never believe it."

On her new album, which includes a tribute to her late dad, she shared, "You can expect honesty, authenticity, empowering messages, and a lot of confidence. This is the first album I've released since my dad passed away. I really wanted to write a song about it. When he had passed, I couldn't get myself to write it… It was actually last song on the album so it was really meaningful for me."

Aside from promoting her album, Lovato is also busy raising awareness on the issue of mental health, and has even taken her crusade to Washington D.C. "Mental health is something nobody really wants to talk about in our country because talking about mental illness and admitting you have a mental illness is so taboo. There is so much stigma around it, and for me having bipolar disorder and having struggled with eating disorders, addiction, if I'm willing to speak up about it, I want to make change. We don't treat mental illness like we treat physical illness. When you think about it, our brain is the most complex organ in the body — and a very important one at that."