Jessica Alba has opened up about a dangerously extreme diet she tried in her younger days — explaining she "stopped eating" to alter her body in such a way that she would be less likely to be "preyed upon" by men. 

"I was meant to feel ashamed if I tempted men," the actress said at the Goop health summit in Los Angeles, as cited in The Hollywood Reporter. "Then I stopped eating a lot when I became an actress. I made myself look more like a boy so I wouldn't get as much attention."

She explained that the pressure to take such an extreme approach actually originated with her own family — who advised her not to wear the Pepe Jeans she coveted, but accentuated her "voluptuous" body, specifically her "booty."

Alba said she was able to find more peace with food and her body after she became a mother — carrying, delivering, and nourishing a baby. “That was the dopest s--- I’d ever done," she said. "So then I came into my body as a woman finally."

Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow moderated the panel about women in Hollywood with Alba, Taraji P. Henson, Olivia Wilde, and Busy Philipps.