Lady Gaga has revealed she battled with bulimia as a teen because she wanted to be a "skinny little ballerina".

The 25-year-old star made the revelation as she addressed a young women's conference in California, and told how her eating disorder had almost threatened her singing career.

Lady Gaga, real name Stefani Germanotta, said: "It's easier for me to talk about it now because I don't do it anymore. I used to throw up all the time in high school.

"Bulimia made my voice bad so I had to stop. The acid on your vocal cords - it's very bad. But for those of you who don't sing, you maybe don't have that excuse until it's too late. It's very dangerous."

The singer told how she began making herself sick growing up in an Italian-American household, eating pasta.

She said: "I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.

"I used to come home and say, 'Dad, why do you always give us this food? I need to be thin'. And he'd say, 'Eat your spaghetti'."

The Born This Way singer blasted the media for portraying unrealistic body images, revealing pictures of her are always altered to look thinner.

Gaga said: "Every video I'm in, every magazine cover, they stretch you, they make you perfect. It's not real life."

"I'm gonna say this about girls. The dieting wars have got to stop. Everyone just knock it off! Because at the end of the day, it's affecting kids your age. And it's making girls sick."