The Challenges Liam Payne Faced Post-One Direction Fame
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Payne, who at the time had recently ended his engagement to Maya Henry (they’d rekindle but break up again in 2022) and said he’d been sober for a month, talked about his renewed devotion to fitness. He shared that he had seen himself on TV performing on the BAFTAs earlier that year and didn’t look “how I wanted to look” after months of pandemic lockdown.
Hitting the gym again provided “the best outcome for me,” he said, “because I feel so much more secure in myself now and I feel like I know where I’m at again.” And once he was back at it, Payne continued, “I’m fairly good with keeping myself on the go with it…The only part of it for me was just alcohol, you can’t train and drink, you can’t do it all at once.”
“You’re either going to be a rock star,” he added, “or you’re going to be a star in the gym. That’s your choice.”
And in that case, having an addictive personality wasn’t the worst, Payne said, because “there’s a lot worse things to be addicted to than looking after yourself.”
Which is what he was trying to do when he checked into treatment in Louisiana, saying in his July 2023 video, “I kind of had to go away to get better.”