1. Eat for energy. “If I eat too much before a show, I just want to sit down. Too little, and I’m starving. So I eat something small, like Quorn, a tasty meat-free protein, and green beans.”

2. Keep a food diary. Carrie has been tracking her intake for three years! She counts her calories on a regular basis, to see how it all adds up. “Once you realize, it’s like, ‘No wonder I’ve plateaued! No wonder I’ve been gaining weight!’” she says. “Little things really do add up.”

3. Enjoy your favorite foods, healthfully. In 2007 Carrie told SELF “My food indulgences are pizza, and I love… cheese. I have a big problem controlling myself with the cheese.” Two years later, it looks like she found a way to have her pizza and eat it too! Here’s her recipe favorite formula for a healthy, 250-calorie personal pizza: 1 Flatout wrap with 1/4 cup sauce, 1/2 cup fat-free or 2% cheese and loaded up with veggies.

4. Cut the sugar. “My sugar intake is way down, and I have a lot fewer breakouts. Now when I drink tea, it’s unsweetened. Or I’ll have water,” the start told SELF. “Also, I’m off soda. For so long, I’d have a Diet Coke with breakfast!”

Sure, you can probably tone up pretty quickly taking a Louisville slugger to headlights and slashing tires but it turns out that is not the way country idol Carrie Underwood maintains her rockin’ bod. Here are some of the slim and sexy superstar’s favorite fitness secrets:

1.) Make exercise accessible. “I have Exercise TV on cable. Jillian Michaels’s videos will kick your butt. She’s my trainer, and she doesn’t even know it!”

2.) Work toward an event. “Everybody has things they want to look nice for: anniversary, birthday, reunion. I’ll think to myself, Oh, that award show is coming up. Or, I have a photo shoot in four days! It’s nice to set goals.”

3.) Revel in success. “I love it when I feel good about myself. I’ll look at a photo and think, My arms look great!–and then I go work out my arms. Once you’re enjoying things about your body, you realize how much you want to keep them that way or make them better.”

4.) Favorite ab improver: “When I gain weight, it’s in the spare-tire area. I’ve told trainers abs are a physical impossibility for me. And every single time, they’re like, ‘Well, we’ll get you abs!’ So do I have them? No! But they’re as flat as they’re probably going to get. Push-ups work out everything. If you do them right, you’ll feel it in your abs. I do four sets of 10 to 20.”

Behind the Scenes: Carrie Underwood Cover Shoot

The singer rolled up to the set in sweatpants and brought her own snacks: a sandwich, a cup of tea and a bag of baby carrots. Carrie loooved the colorful options SELF’s fashion team brought to the shoot (check out what goes into creating the cover look!), but despite the glam treatment from our hair and makeup team, she admitted that she’s more comfortable out of the spotlight. When is she most confident? Watch our exclusive behind the scenes video from the shoot to find out!

(Source: SELF Magazine)

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Jennifer Love Hewitt may be rockin’ a bikini on our cover, but she has the same insecurities as every woman. “I’m a girl, after all!” says the 30-year-old actress. “For the most part, yeah, I’m happy with my body, but there are days when I’m like, ‘Ugh! Really? Why is it so hard to fit into my jeans?’

That’s when I say to myself, ‘I look this way because I’m supposed to. If we all looked the same, we’d be boring.’” Here, she reveals her stay-healthy-and-happy strategies as well as her work out that she uses to stay slim and confident.

Put your fridge on a diet To keep her food choices healthy and fresh, Jennifer hits the super-market every two days. “Instead of piling up food in my fridge that says ‘Come eat me!’ I keep enough for only a couple of days.

And I rarely have treats around that might tempt me late at night, which is when I usually crave something really fattening. What am I going to do? Drive out at 11 at night just to satisfy a craving? No, that’s crazy.”

Always eat lunch It’s no secret that over the last few years, young actresses have become fixated on being super thin, a trend Jennifer finds really disturbing. “Hollywood used to revolve around women with curves, like Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe,” she says.

“But now it’s so different. Not that long ago, I went to this celebrity luncheon, and I was the only person in the room eating. The other girls looked at me like I hadn’t gotten the memo, but I was hungry! All of these girls were afraid that if someone saw them eating, it would be a disaster. It makes no sense at all.”

(Source: Shape Magazine)

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The sexy mom of Sean, 3, and Jayden, 2, can credit her slamming new body in part to the Sunfare diet, a gourmet meal delivery company. Sunfare, which counts stars such as Eva Longoria Parker, Marcia Cross and Khloe Kardashian among its fans, incorporates a balanced, low-carb approach of three big meals and two snacks per day, all documented through the delivery system.

“When Britney is on Sunfare, she consumes approximately 1,100 to 1,200 calories per day,” a source reveals to OK!.

Britney doesn’t eat fruit or have fruit juice because of its sugar content. Instead, her meals consist of chicken, salmon, avocados and rice. Breakfast at the Pop Princess’ table would be egg whites and has turkey burgers for lunch limiting her total caloric intake to 1,200 calories per day.

She says “it may not sound like it’s much but it’s actually a lot of food if you eat the right things.” She has foregone the frappuccinos she used to enjoy so much but she admits to still drinking coffee.

The other major factor behind Brit’s renewed physique is good old-fashioned hard work in the dance studio and on stage. “Her outlet is dance,” the longtime friend says. “She’s still dancing at least two hours a day and sometimes she’ll rehearse up to eight hours a day.”

Still, says another insider, “It didn’t come easy. It was a long, hard road. Britney dedicated herself in such a focused way. We are all so proud of her, not just for her physical achievements but also for her mental and emotional ones.”

(Source: OK! Magazine)

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When Kirstie Alley stepped on the scale for the first time in 15 months, it wasn’t pretty. “I started screaming,” recalls Alley, sipping homemade fruit-infused water in her Hollywood kitchen. “It said 228 lbs., which is my highest weight ever. I was so much more disgusting than I thought!”

But looking back, Alley, 58, is hardly shocked. During her three-year stint as a Jenny Craig spokeswoman, she famously trimmed down to 145 lbs. after losing and keeping off 75 lbs. But since parting ways with the company in 2007, she had not worked out and banished her gym equipment to the garage. As for her diet, her small, low-calorie portions gave way to Chinese takeout and pasta drenched with butter. “I fell off the horse,” says the 5′8″ star.

Today, Alley says she is primed to hire a trainer, toss the butter and sign up for a triathlon in order to whittle her “schlumpy” figure back down to a bikini-ready 140 lbs. “I’m going to have to work harder than last time,” she says, but “I’m way excited.” In a candid interview, Alley sat down with PEOPLE’s Elizabeth Leonard to talk about how she piled on the pounds – and how she plans to get her body, confidence and – yes! – even her groove back.

Okay, how did this happen?
It started with New Year’s [2008], right after leaving Jenny Craig. When you’re a spokesperson for Jenny Craig, there’s responsibility. You have a person every week standing over you when you get on the scale, and I did it naked because those panties could weigh 30 lbs.! It was amazingly successful. But the first nail in the coffin was that I didn’t have to weigh in. I just sort of went wild.

Did you go right back to indulging in cakes and pies the way you did the first time you let yourself go?
It wasn’t the exact same M.O. My food demons are Chinese food, sugar, butter. A lot of butter. If I’m at the movies, usually I eat popcorn without butter, but I’d say, “I’m at the movies, so who cares?” And toast with butter. Or let’s say I had two cups of pasta and six tablespoons of butter on it. There was a lot of butter going on.

What else would you eat?
For seven months I was a vegetarian, and I can’t tell you how much weight I gained being a vegetarian! A vegetarian would probably be eating vegetables. But to me being a vegetarian meant I’m going to eat enchiladas with no meat, and I’m going to eat lots of bread, lots of carbs.

What weight do you want to get down to?
I have to be below 140 to really look good. I have to work my legs like crazy. Actually, do you want my real goal? My real goal’s always too low. I love the way I look at, like, 128. One time on Cheers, I weighed about 148 lbs., and they told me to lose, like, 20 lbs. Now, I’m 5′8″, so at 148 lbs., I wasn’t fat. But they’re saying, “You know, you need to lose 20 lbs.” So what does that put me at? 128. That’s where I keep getting this number.

Are you self-conscious?
I’m totally inhibited. When I’m overweight I will not go out. With my closest friends, yeah. But you wouldn’t see me at a premiere.

But you seem ready to turn your life around.
I’m ready to work. I messed up along the way, but I’m not going to concentrate on that. I’m gonna go, “You know what? Get back on the horse, lose the freakin’ weight, and then just move forward!”

(People.com)

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And yet as any woman knows, those innocent-looking strips of Lycra can be a terrifying sight – especially for someone just shy of her 49th birthday (April 23), who only two years ago tipped the scales at 172 lbs. – more than 40 lbs. over her goal weight for her 5′4″ frame. But after whittling herself down to 132 lbs. in about 9 months on Jenny Craig (for whom she serves as a company spokeswoman), Bertinelli, who had last worn a bikini when she was 20, was ready for a new challenge.

“I thought, If I’m so afraid of a bikini, there’s something wrong. And so I had to get back into one!,” Bertinelli says in the new PEOPLE, available on newsstands Friday.

And so – after about a year of exercising on her own while losing weight, primarily by walking 10,000 steps a day – she hired a personal trainer in December. Before long she was running up to five times a week. During what she calls the bikini “homestretch” – the last three weeks – she trimmed her daily caloric intake from 1,700 to around 1,200, and gave up her regular “splurge” glass of champagne. “It was crunch time,” she says, “like getting ready for your class reunion!”

The result? Bertinell says she is now in the best shape of her life. “I never, ever, ever had deltoids!” she says. “Oh my God, when I’m doing exercises and I see them pop out, I’m like, Yes!”
(People.com)

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Ready to dismiss the comment as typical teen exaggeration, she took a peek. “I didn’t recognize the person I saw,” Ireland confesses. “What I saw was someone who looked overwhelmed, overstressed, overweight, over-everything.”

But rather than hit delete, Ireland — the 5′10″ model whose killer body and piercing green eyes graced the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue three times between 1989 and 1994 — decided it was time to get her body back under control. “I wasn’t going to destroy the picture and pretend this isn’t true,” she says.

By candidly talking about her 25-lb. weight gain, Ireland, 46, wants to send a message to all mothers that, yes, even a former supermodel deals with the battle of the bulge. “I was just not making enough time to take care of me,” says the author of the new book “Real Solutions for Busy Moms.”

Ireland never intended to lose her way. The weight crept up incrementally. Once she hit her 40s, “things changed, and so did my body,” says Ireland, who has grown her business into a $1.4 billion design empire that now includes furniture, flooring, lighting, jewelry, skin care and apparel. “As my career expanded, so did my waistline.”

Balancing her role as C.E.O. and M.O.M. to Erik, Lily, 10, and Chloe, 6, with husband Greg Olsen, 50, an emergency-room doctor, Ireland also often found herself snacking on sweets as she shuttled the kids to school and their extracurriculars. “I was really eating unconsciously,” she says. “Sometimes I would have ice cream for breakfast! I had to have my sweet fix.” But once she saw Erik’s photo, she knew she needed to change her lifestyle.

Ireland reached out to her close friend and trainer Jenny Schatzle, who helped her slowly get back into a fitness and nutrition routine. “At first I was going to cut out bread and desserts, but that made me too cranky,” she admits. “I’m focusing more on vegetables and healthy fats like avocado. And I’m cooking with olive oil.”

Kathy credits her weight loss to three one-hour workouts a week (mix of cardio and weights), not eating ice cream or cookies for breakfast (like she used to) and giving up a sandwich with fries for grilled chicken salads.

Now with half the unwanted weight already gone, Ireland feels a huge difference. She recently celebrated her 46th birthday with a surfing session alongside her husband. The best part? “I could get the wet suit zipped up without sucking my stomach in!” Still, she insists, losing the weight is not for her vanity. “If I end up liking the way I look because I’ve made healthy choices, then thats icing on the cake — the kind of icing I can really enjoy.”

(Yahoo.com)

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She’s was on the cover of Vogue in a sleeveless silk sheath. Then there was the purple sleeveless Narciso Rodriguez she wore to the president’s joint session of Congress on Tuesday. And she’s on the cover of the latest People magazine in a lacy pink number, also without sleeves.

Those toned arms are becoming a trademark. And a source of inspiration for some women.

Rylan Duggan, a personal trainer who runs Go Sleeveless, a blog that instructs women how to tone up flabby arms and “eliminate bat wings,” said that in addition to asking how to get “Madonna arms” or “Kelly Ripa arms,” clients are now asking about getting “Obama arms.”

“The Obama effect has been that women of all ages have been inspired to take responsibility for their health and their body,” said Duggan. “As the first lady of the United States, at 44 years old, and with two young children, Mrs. Obama has shown the world that you are never too busy to take care of yourself and look good doing it too,” he said.

Exercise advocates are also fans. “She’s a great role model,” said Jessica Matthews, a continuing education coordinator for the American Council on Exercise. “Women shy away from strength training, because they’re afraid of big muscles. She shows nice toned arms and that it’s not going to lead to this myth of a bodybuilder type.”

Women don’t have the hormones to develop huge muscles by strength training, unless they’re working out to an extreme or taking steroids, Matthews said.

Obama has said she exercises in 90-minute workout three times a week with a personal trainer. The first lady told People magazine that during an average day in the White House, she and the president get up at 5:30 a.m. and usually work out and have breakfast.

When Obama emerged with uncovered arms on Tuesday, some grumbled about her showing too much skin on an occasion where other women were wearing long sleeves or suits.

Boston Herald columnist Lauren Beckham Falcone wrote to Obama, “It’s February. Going sleeveless in subzero temperature is just showing off. All due respect.”

But others were amazed, like 25-year-old Jessie Rosen. After seeing Obama at the speech Tuesday, she went to the Adidas store in New York and bought two five-pound dumbbells. “It was her arms being so toned in spite of her life,” she said.

“This woman is redecorating White House, trying to raise two children and backseat driving the nation,” Rosen said. “She seems to have time to keep her arms toned, so why can’t I?”

It’s only the second day of Rosen’s new dumbbell routine. She does 15 minutes with four to five different exercises in front of her television, before going to bed. She hopes the arm exercises will get her ready for beach season and upcoming weddings.

But personal trainers say arm exercises alone are not enough to get toned arms. First, a person has to get rid of body fat from the body, meaning “you can’t spot reduce and just eliminate fat from the arms,” Duggan said.

Also, an exercise program has to target all major muscles of the body.

Personal trainer Matthews recommends moderate intensity cardio for 30 minutes, five times a week or vigorous intensity cardio for 20 minutes, three times a week.

Both cardio exercises and strength training are needed to speed up metabolism and burn body fat.

“Even if the goal is just the upper body, you want to train all major muscles,” said Matthews. “If you fail to strengthen the entire body, it limits lean mass. When we strength train, we are building lean body mass and decreasing body fat.”

Strength training increases muscle mass and revs up the body to burn fat at a higher rate, allowing for the lean muscle definition to show. Matthews recommends strength training twice a week, on nonconsecutive days to allow muscles to repair themselves.

“Women are just really terrified of weights,” she said. “They’re on cardio machines, elliptical for 60 minutes and wondering why they don’t see definition and tone. The missing link is strength training.”

The arm exercises sculpt the muscle underneath, which should protrude as the fat fades.

It’s unclear what kind of exercises Obama does to maintain her buff arms, but it appears to be both back and arm workouts, said Michele Vourliotis, author of “Amazing Arms: Get Toned Triceps, Beautiful Biceps, and Sexy Shoulders in Just Minutes a Day.”

“She may be working out on machine, dumbbells, bands or using her body weight,” Vourliotis said. Pick the option that seems most suitable to you, she advised.

So how does a normal woman, who doesn’t have a personal trainer or healthy meals from the White House chefs, get tight and taut biceps?

For beginners, Vourliotis recommends getting a suitable set of dumbbells (five pounds or more) and doing 12 to 15 of each exercise — bicep curls, tricep kickbacks to exercise the back of the arm, shoulder and lateral raises. Visit the American Council on Exercises library for detailed instructions on these arm exercises.

Everyone’s body is different and the definition in the arms can take a while to show, so don’t get discouraged if the results don’t show after just two weeks, trainers said.

“Certainly with strength training, you see great benefits in weights you can lift, within four to six weeks,” Matthews said. “When it comes to starting developing muscle mass, it really varies. There’s not a specific timeline.”

Another component is to maintain a healthy weight, said Marisa Moore, a registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

“Focus on a nice, balanced diet, with lean protein, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, that’s the way to maintain a healthy physique,” she said. “When you’re trying to maintain muscles, choose lean protein, like fish, chicken without the skin, eggs, beans. Those are great sources of protein.”

The protein portions should be four ounces during a meal.

It sounds complex, but Duggan is optimistic that women of any age, no matter how saggy her arms are, can improve.

“You can have toned and sexy arms at any age regardless of your current fitness level or how bad your arms are sagging right now,” he said.
(CNN.com)

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1. Yoga once every two days for two hours. She said that she seems to grow taller as yoga helped to straighten her spine.

2. She jogs everyday at 6am.

3. She never splurges on anything other than a few chips with salsa each night.

4. She does 20 minutes on the elliptical machine or treadmill at 5.7 mph at a 1.5 incline.

5. During “Friends,” she ate the same salad everyday for ten years. Now she’s on a “common sense diet” portion control, no processed foods and lots of lean protein, fruit and vegetables.

Now, we have heard for years that Jen is an anxiety-ridden wreck and a serious chain smoker. So those cancer sticks may be helping her control her weight as well, but we cannot recommend it! (US Weekly)

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Tracy Anderson pulls down on resistant elastic bands strung across the ceiling; dances around the room; endlessly circles her arms. She moves her torso back and forth and sideways to strengthen the abdominals, and then lies on her — of course — taut belly for a series of butt-toning leg lifts.

To spend an hour working out with Ms. Anderson, with an iPod blasting and the heat cranked up, is to get a taste of what it’s like to prepare for a grueling concert tour, striving for that sinewy muscle tone. Or so you can tell yourself.

Maybe this is how it feels to sweat like Gwyneth Paltrow, bopping around your blond-wood home gym in the Hamptons, losing the pregnancy pounds with Ms. Anderson’s mat exercises and dance routines. “You really are how you move,” Ms. Anderson said.

Ms. Anderson, 33, worked out with a reporter recently in a rented space in Midtown, demonstrating her signature muscle strengthening and cardio dancing, which have won her two devoted clients in Madonna and Ms. Paltrow. With those celebrity names lofting her reputation, she is preparing to open a high-end $900-a-month workout studio in TriBeCa.

But those who join probably won’t be grunting and lunging alongside Ms. Paltrow or Madonna — Ms. Anderson trains them privately — and her employees will lead most workouts, not her.

Looking as if she subsists on birdseed, the pixie-ish trainer said she actually has “a big appetite.” (Don’t all thin people say that?) She is partial to cupcakes — anything with butter cream frosting — and, while she is now very mindful of nutrition, maintains that when she started out in the fitness business she was still a junk-food junkie, dunking Oreo cookies in containers of Pillsbury icing. “I was kind of like a doctor who smoked,” Ms. Anderson said.

It was about three years ago, while running a studio in Los Angeles, that Ms. Anderson came to the attention of Ms. Paltrow, who then told her friend Madonna. Now the bulk of Ms. Anderson’s time is devoted to the two stars: she essentially moves in with one, depending on whose career is in higher gear, while working with the other through video chats and custom DVDs, or by dispatching one of her associate trainers.

When Madonna was preparing for her “Sticky and Sweet” tour last year, for example, Ms. Anderson lived with her for nine months and then accompanied her on the road. Last summer, she trained Madonna during the day in Manhattan and took the train almost every day to the Hamptons to put Ms. Paltrow through a workout in the evening.

“Tracy Anderson is my savior,” Madonna said in an e-mail message. “After two Caesareans, three hernia operations and one riding accident that left me with 10 broken bones, she was the only one who could pull my body back together into one piece.”

Both Ms. Paltrow and Madonna have publicly testified to Ms. Anderson’s results on her DVDs and in magazine articles. Ms. Paltrow is also a partner in Ms. Anderson’s new 4,700-square-foot studio on Greenwich Street, which is to open in mid-March.

“It’s fun because it’s not like you’re running mindlessly on a treadmill,” Ms. Paltrow said. “I guess she learned how to make the muscles do certain things — it actually works. It’s not like you’re chasing this dream.”

People with limited finances may have to keep on chasing. In addition to the monthly dues at the new studio, members must pay an initiation fee of $787.50 for six months or $1,500 for a year. Ms. Anderson’s publicist, Julia Cuddihy Van Nice, said that “the studio is not disclosing any numbers” but that the response has been positive.

CHARTER members — the first 150 people who commit to a year and pay three months up front — will receive a 30-minute consultation with Ms. Anderson. The other members will work out with her staff. Or you can spend $29.95 to watch Ms. Anderson on one of her three DVDs available on her Web site, tracyandersonmethod.com.

Whether this kind of a niche workout studio can succeed in the current economy remains to be seen. Big gyms like Equinox and Reebok (where membership is $215 a month with a $1,200 initiation fee) are hustling for new members. And people who join Ms. Anderson’s studio might come with outsize expectations: counting on looking like Madonna or Ms. Paltrow, when those stars are putting in two hours a day, six days a week and have Ms. Anderson personally pushing them to do yet another set of crunches or one more cardio routine.

Ms. Anderson is well aware that she lucked out in being catapulted to prominence by two such high-profile clients. “It’s been a dream, for sure,” she said. But she had her dose of struggles along the way. She was forced to close her first studio in her home state, Indiana, because of the financial mismanagement of a business partner, according to her Web site.

Ms. Anderson may weigh 90-something now, but at age 19, she was 40 pounds overweight and couldn’t slim down, she said. She had just come to New York from Noblesville, Ind., to be a dancer, studying at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

Later, at 23, she struggled with baby weight after giving birth to a son, Sam, now 10. (Ms. Anderson and Sam’s father, Eric Anderson — formerly of the New York Knicks — are separated but still live together.)

Her frustration at being unable to get back into shape prompted her to develop her own workout program. She studied the bodies of swimmers, volleyball players and classical dancers and sought to emulate Jane Fonda, for her hybrid videos of dance and aerobics. “She was absolutely dead-on,” Ms. Anderson said of Ms. Fonda. “You never saw her lifting crazy big weights.”

Ms. Anderson’s method involves focusing on accessory, or smaller, muscles and varying moves so that the body continues to be challenged. Her New Band System has eight elastic bands with different degrees of resistance that she uses for arm strengthening; her Hybrid Body Reformer — much like the machine used in Pilates — has a pulley system that works muscles from different angles. This equipment is not available to people exercising at home.

She said a woman should never lift more than three-pound weights. “Most gym programs overwork major muscle groups,” she said. “Repetition builds and bulks muscles.”

Not all fitness experts agree. “Once a person adapts to the light weight, they will not gain strength,” said Dr. Michele Olson, a professor of exercise science at Auburn University. “We should alternate between doing heavy weights with lower reps and lighter weights with high reps if we want our bodies to rest and continue to improve. But, there is no one single approach to exercise that can do everything.”

Charles B. Corbin, an emeritus professor in the department of exercise and wellness at Arizona State University, has seen one of Ms. Anderson’s videos and questions her emphasis. “Very high volume programs such as the ones on the video — with very difficult muscle fitness and flexibility exercises — are not for everyone,” he said. “In fact, for many, they can cause more harm than good” because of the possibility of muscle fatigue and injury.

Time will tell whether Ms. Anderson’s method ultimately works for an audience bigger than two celebrities. On her DVDs, she demonstrates everything, but she does not give much verbal instruction, so it can be difficult to tell exactly what she’s doing and whether a home exerciser is following correctly.

Just when you think you’ve nailed one of her dance combinations, the camera shifts from a full view to just her legs. You can lose track of the sequence and what comes next. And her counts for the mat exercises are all over the map — she lifts her leg back 32 times on the right side, then 26 on the left; does 23 back leg lifts on the right, then 37 on the left, and so on.

Jessica Matthews, the continuing education coordinator for the American Council on Exercise, said consistency in repetitions is important. “We want to make sure the muscles of the body stay balanced,” she said. “We should be doing the same number on each side.”

Asked about this later, Ms. Anderson wrote in an e-mail message: “Ha ha!! I am famous for my horrible counting! Don’t worry the results will be the same!!” (nytimes.com)

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Looking at Melissa Joan Hart’s new 113-lb. bikini body, it’s hard to believe it was only last summer she felt “horrified” by the unflattering bathing suits shots taken of her at a Southern California beach.

“I still read blogs about me discussing how fat I’ve become,” the former Sabrina, the Teenage Witch star tells People Magazine.

“Everyone still thinks I’m huge,” says Hart, 33, whose post-pregnancy body was the subject of cruel Internet attacks after she gave birth to sons Mason, 3, and Braydon, 14 months, with husband, Course of Nature lead singer Mark Wilkerson, 32. “But I’m not anymore!”

Hart understands the confusion. After all, the public has grown accustomed to seeing celebs get back in their skinny jeans mere weeks after giving birth. “There are enormous pressures put on you in Hollywood,” she says.

Her inspiration to finally get back in the best shape of her life? The women in her life, including her friend, actress Jaime Pressly, who has a son, Dezi, 2, as well as her own mom Paula, who gave birth to seven children “and is tiny!” Hart says. “I realized I didn’t have to be heavy just because I have kids.”

Adds Pressly: “She finally took the time to take care of herself. I’m blown away by how amazing she looks.”

Reclaiming her slim figure took Hart 14 months of hard work. “It didn’t happen by magic – it was as hard for me as it would be for anyone else,” she says. The fact that it took a little longer doesn’t bother her. “I didn’t want to take any time away from spending it with my sons,” she explains.

To get back in bikini shape, Hart worked with nutritionist Derek Johnson at New Metabolism to change her diet. She also hit the gym with her trainer Mark Harari at Pulse Fitness Studio.

As for how she feels now? “I feel amazing!” she says. “I had to prove to myself that I could do it. I had to give it a go!”
(People.com)

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