Kane Brown on the Bad Habits He Kicked to Fight ‘Dark Thoughts’ (Exclusive)

At the beginning of this year when Kane Brown took a look at himself, he wasn’t happy with what he saw.

But more troubling was how he felt: “Worthless. Really dark thoughts. I wanted to be in a corner left alone.”

Instead, the country star had to be onstage in front of thousands, promoting his newly released fourth album (The High Road) and heading out on a 43-city arena tour. “I knew I needed to make a change. I needed something that was going to change my headspace,” the 31-year-old multi-platinum-selling singer tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I didn’t feel there was anything better than changing the way I look.”

He began his transformation with a New Year’s resolution to give up the Zyn nicotine pouches he’d been addicted to for years (before that, he’d been dipping tobacco since high school). “It’s a nasty habit. My wife wanted me to quit for the longest,” he says of Katelyn, 33, a fellow singer whom he married in 2018, and who is ” a healthy, healthy person. She broke me out of a lot of my bad habits. I think she’s happier with how I am now.”

Next, he stopped drinking alcohol, which had become a crutch for him: “I’m an introvert, so onstage, alcohol would take me out of my shell. Now if I do drink it, it messes my throat up and I don’t like it. I don’t drink at all anymore, and I like it that way.”

Then in April, while on a tour stop in Canada, he and his bandmates decided to try a liquid fast. “We saw progress quickly,” Brown says. “And once I realized how tough it was, I didn’t want to put anything bad back in my body.”

Brown hired a coach for nutrition and fitness guidance and even changed his tour rider — instead of Doritos backstage, he began asking for protein shakes and fresh fruit. And he started working out two hours a day. “I love running. I didn’t know I liked it until recently, but it’s fun.” After seeing the results of his hard work, he’s determined not to backslide. “The other day when I was on the golf course, I ate a Snickers,” he says. “I almost smacked myself.”

Over the past few months, Brown says, he’s been introduced to healthy foods. “My diet is avocado, rice, turkey, eggs, chicken, quinoa, zucchini, asparagus.”

Fresh vegetables were rarely on the menu for Brown and his single mom when he was growing up in rural Georgia and Tennessee, where they at times experienced homelessness. “I was a food-stamp baby,” he says. Now “I’m locked in with the new stuff.”

And he’s even inspired his mom to get healthier: “She’s been eating way better, and she said she’s down some pounds,” he says. “I bought her a little treadmill because she works from home, so I she can just walk on it and check her emails. And she’s been walking around the neighborhood. My aunt is watching her calories too. My next goal is to see if I can get my Nana on it.”

At home in Nashville with Katelyn and their family (daughters Kingsley, 5, and Kodi, 3, and son Krewe, 15 months), Brown often gets up before the kids (previously he might stay up past 2 a.m. and sleep until afternoon) and has more energy to be a dad. “I can hold them for longer than 30 minutes, and my back’s not killing me,” he says. “I can jump in their bounce house with them. I can do anything.”

And his girls have taken note: “Kingsley, my oldest. She’s always like, “Daddy, flex your muscle. They’ve started wanting to work out with me,” he says. “They come up to the gym, and I’ll put kids’ workouts on the TV. While I’m doing stuff, they’re doing jumping jacks with the TV. And they’re always showing their muscles. It’s cool that they want to do what I’m doing.”

The singer says he has lost 24 lbs., can now run a 5:40 mile, and his body fat percentage is in the single digits: “I don’t think I really know my goal until I get there. Some days I want to look like a plastic toy soldier, and other times I’m like, ‘I don’t want to be too big.’ I just want to look like that mannequin you saw in science class. I just want to look like that.”

Brown’s biggest change, however, has been on the inside: “Getting in shape changed my mindset. I feel like I’m restarting my youth. I love everything it’s done to me, from the way I look to my mental state,” he says. “I want to give everything 100% now. And if I’m having a stressful day, I can find good things about life and about being here.”

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