Lady Gaga has hinted that she suffered from bouts of bulimia as a youngster in a frank and honest talk at a school in the US.

The megastar was a surprise guest at the Brentwood School in Los Angeles at the weekend (February 4), speaking about women's issues to an attentive audience.

And, as the Huffington Post reports, the singer opened up about weight issues and the problems she had with eating when she was in high school. When asked by a student how she deals with body issues, Lady Gaga replied:

"I used to throw up all the time in high school. So I'm not that confident. And maybe it's easier for me to talk about it now because I don't do it anymore. 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.' It's really hard. But...you've got to talk to somebody about it. And the fact that you stood up in front of this whole room and said that is so incredible."

Gaga also lamented the the fact that she is made to look "perfect" on magazine covers and videos. She added:

"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."