Modeling didn’t come easy for Gigi Hadid. Yolanda Foster’s 20-year-old daughter revealed to Daily Mail Australia she used to cry to her mother after agencies told her she needed to be thinner.

“My thighs were huge, they were like rock!” the Guess model revealed of her body, which had an athletic build thanks to her love of volleyball. “I had like crazy muscles and I [ate] like a man — more than the man that I eat like now, like a bigger man — and it was crazy but at the time I didn't care what my body looked like, I just wanted to be the best volleyball player I could be so it didn't really matter to me.”

But soon the Tom Ford model got the modeling bug and when she first went to different agencies in New York City, Hadid recalled, “A lot of them were like, ‘You have to lose a lot of weight.’ I would cry at night and my mom would be like, ‘We’re going to find the right people.’”

“It’s funny because once you start to embrace what you have, it starts to be what you’re known for,” the breakout star continued. “I’m kind of the model that everyone thought would always be the Guess, Sports Illustrated girl, then when I started to do high fashion stuff…people were like, ‘Oh so we can have a girl with like thighs and a butt in a Tom Ford campaign, cool.’”

Of course, Joe Jonas’ girlfriend admits she has to watch her diet and maintain her figure, but she’s not looking to conform to the modeling norm.

“Once I started modeling, one of my things was like yeah, I don't need to be a man volleyball player but I also don't want to be like two pounds soaking wet,” Bella Hadid’s older sister added. “And that's always something that I was very strong minded about, I just want to be a healthy role model and I haven't swayed from that at all.”