Spice Girl Geri Halliwell has a new interview and photo spread in Hello Magazine in which she’s featured lounging around on the beach in a white string bikini and playing with her daughter, Bluebell Madonna, two. Her body is enviable and toned to perfection yet the pop singer claims the only exercise she does is walking and mild non-strenuous yoga. She also says she eats junk when she wants and just makes up for it the next day with a better diet. Is this plausible at all?

What is your diet and exercise regime?
“I walk and I do yoga, but not the strenuous, hardcore Ashtanga style. Often, I just breathe and sit in one position for ages. It’s for relaxation. The most vigorous exercise I do is running around after Bluebell!

“I don’t have a strict diet anymore. I eat cake, crisps, sugar-free chocolate and chips if I want to. I can’t be bothered to follow a gruelling food plan. I’m a petite person and if I eat relatively healthily I’ll stay that way. It’s simple really. When I feel under pressure, I do eat cake but I don’t punish myself for that like I used to. I just eat more healthily the next day.”

[From Hello! Magazine, print edition, August 19, 2008]

I think she’s fibbing – or at least stretching the truth until it almost snaps, but that’s because I’m a person that always has to exercise hard to maintain any kind of fit physique. Heidi Klum says this same crap too about how she doesn’t work out and just runs after her kids. But maybe it’s true and the genetic gods just blessed them. They also probably eat really well and don’t have a lot of carbs.

It seems like Gerri used to work out really hard – she recently got off the Spice Girls tour – and maybe she just keeps this great body with maintenance. There were pictures of her out running with her trainer a while ago and she probably worked out with weights back then. It just makes me roll my eyes when women with such enviable bodies act like it’s so easy and gloss over the hard parts. At least Jennifer Garner and Gwen Stefani admit they busted their butts to get their pre-baby shapes back.

Halliwell also talks in the article about her past issues with bulimia and says she has trouble with always striving for perfection. She calls herself “a bit curvier… at the moment.. having done the tour.” If she’s “curvier” now I’d like to know where it went. She says she’s never had plastic surgery and that she’s trying to resist the urge but that “I’d never say never.” If she does get plastic surgery, I don’t expect her to tell. This is a woman who claims to just walk, do light yoga, and eat junk food.

Maybe I’m wrong though. They totally photoshopped her pupils out in these pictures so they probably made her fitter too, not that there was much work to do there.

Update: Halliwell was photographed on August 6 looking less super-fit, but still great, so maybe it’s true that she doesn’t exercise as much now and indulges when she wants. Compared to that recent photo, these pictures are either slightly old or airbrushed.

[Thanks to Anthony for the tip!]

Photos via The Daily Mail and Hello!