Melissa Gilbert only found herself "as a woman" once she left Los Angeles

She told FoxNews Digital: "I looked at myself in the mirror several years back. I was living in Los Angeles, and I did not recognize who I was. I had overfilled my face and my lips. My forehead didn't move. I was still dyeing my hair red. I was driving a Mustang convertible. I was a size two in an unhealthy way. I looked like a frozen version of my younger self, and that's not who I was .

"I was stuck. could feel myself fighting it. And I said to myself, 'It's time to age.' I had to leave Los Angeles to do that - not Hollywood - Los Angeles specifically.

"I stop colouring my hair. I had [my] breast implants removed. I decided to just be the best, healthiest version of myself without this pressure to look a certain way, and it paid off in a huge way.

"I finally found my feet as a woman, fully, 100 percent strong in my own knowledge, in my own accomplishments. Everything got easier. And a bonus? I have a lot more free time not staring in a mirror, sitting in a dermatologist's chair, or sitting in a hair chair."

Nowadays, Melissa lives in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York.

The former 'Dancing with the Stars' contestant - who is now married to Timothy Busfield but has son Dakota, 35, with her first husband Bo Brinkman and 28-year-old Michael with her second husband Bruce Boxleitner - also admitted that as she has aged, she and her husband have "fallen more and more in love" as the years have gone on.

She said: "I think as I've aged, we've just fallen more and more in love with one another, which is such an extraordinary gift. And I think that's for so many reasons. I think for him, I am much more myself and so much more comfortable in my own skin because I'm through menopause because I am at this age."

"I love that we are together now at this point in our lives."