New York, Sep 18 (IANS): Actress Demi Lovato says she wants to be a role model for teenaged girls dealing with the pressure of looking skinny.

The actress has come a long way since checking into treatment almost a year ago, and says she "was dealing with the pressures to be thin."

"There was nobody out there for me to look at and say maybe this is unhealthy," Lovato, who battled eating disorders, revealed on an episode of the "The Ellen DeGeneres Show".

"I want to be that for a 13-year old girl at home deciding whether or not to eat dinner, or an 18-year-old girl deciding whether or not to keep her breakfast down."

"It was the time in the tabloids when very, very skinny girls were on the cover of every magazine, and that's what I was looking up to. That's what I had to idolize. I don't want that for young girls to idolize," she added.

Lovato says she's grateful for her "meltdown", reports people.com.

"So many things were going great in my life, and then all of a sudden my personal life just went down at crazy speeds. I had a negative breakdown and it changed my life forever," she said.

"But if I hadn't gone into treatment. I don't know if, one, I'd even be sitting here today, [or] two, if I'd be alive today," she added.