The 29-year-old singer posted a series of tweets early Wednesday morning addressing concerns about his weight.
“By the way y’all wanna know why I’m so skinny?” he wrote. “It’s because @ 19 i was diagnosed with a hiatal hernia, I didn’t choose that. be kind to me..”
Carter also said his affliction is a “stress condition” that affects his appetite: “Basically I have an eating disorder.”
The former child star said that his brother, Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys, can vouch for him.
“I’m sorry, sometimes I really wish I did look better, or I eat more like y’all say, this life doesn’t come w much stability,” he said.
Carter continued, “No I don’t do drugs, yes I feel pain, I haven’t stopped working since I was 7 years old 22 years later and I still won’t give up.”
Carter previously took to Twitter to defend his weight in 2015.
“The way people talk about my weight is like high school times a million,” the singer tweeted, according to Entertainment Tonight, and later deleted. “Yes. I’m skinny right now. I’ve been very stressed and going thru some s— and felt like I needed to explain myself ‘cause so many people are asking me and talking about me being too f—ing skinny.”
“Just so we are VERY CLEAR I DONT so drugs,” he also wrote. “I smoke smoke bud but that’s it.”
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.