Kimora Lee Simmons lost 30 pounds recently, and she did it gradually and didn’t run out and diet her butt off right after the birth of her son, Kenzo, in May, 2009. Kimora did a bikini photo shoot with OK! and gave some vague quotes about how she lost weight by cutting out junk food, doing some cardio every day and running after her son. (Don’t they always say that?) I bet she worked a lot harder than she’s letting on, but I like how she says she felt just as sexy when she weighed a little more, and how she didn’t stress out over it. This is a woman who has zero issues with self esteem. Why should she? She landed Djimon Hounsou, the lucky bitch. She also says she’s a size 6 now, and unlike Kirstie Alley I believe her.

You look amazing! Have you reached your goal?
I don’t know if I ever had a goal. I was just trying to lose some of the baby weight I’d gained when I was pregnant. Kenzo was a year old and I was thinking about getting my life back. Now the baby is almost 2, and I’ve lost about 30 pounds since last fall.

Does it bother you to see photos from when you were heavier?
Well, I’d just had a baby! I’m not bothered about it. I don’t live my life with that pressure. I’m a mother, a wife, a businesswoman. I’m not an actress, so I don’t have that life where I have to be on stage. I have the TV show, I’m into production and I develop businesses. I don’t feel like I have to be a size 2. I’m beautiful. When I was pregnant, I was probably like a 10 1/2, but I don’t really know. That would be a guess, and now I’m more like a size 6. But I always feel sexy.

If I’m pregnant, I feel like I’m bringing a life into this world and I feel like that’s beautiful as well. Now I’m thinner and that’s a different kind of sexy – but it’s always sexy.

What is your diet-and-exercise routine?
I do very easy things. Running after a 1-year-old really will do it, and I have three kids. I do a little cardio every day, and it doesn’t have to be on a machine. I sometimes take a walk. I try to do it for a minimum of 30 minutes a day. I stopped eating junk food, like chips and candy. It’s about timing, portion control and eating healthy foods that fill you up.

What was the hardest part of losing weight?
Not eating all the great things I love, as if we had really broken up! And even now, I’ll have a little bread. I am not neurotic about it. I don’t do things that I can’t maintain as party of a normal lifestyle… It’s all about moderation and making substitutions. For example, I have cut back on my dairy and I don’t eat so much fattening red meat.

[From OK! Magazine, print edition, May 23, 2011]

Again, I’m not buying the “it was easy” line. It sounds like she really did change her diet around completely, and that’s hard work in itself. Still, I like her message that she felt sexy after she had a baby. She even said that most magazines are “fantasy” and that “we fix it or we airbrush it, and we have have a makeup team… I just don’t want the kids to think that we woke up like that. We have teams of people – hair, wardrobe and stylists.” That didn’t stop her from posing completely made up in three different bikinis with heels and getting her own photos airbrushed for OK! It’s not like she’s doing a Jamie Lee Curtis and posing in harsh lighting without makeup or Photoshop. Remember when her head was pasted onto another model’s body for her perfume ad? You know she signed off on that.

Photos below are from 4/5/11 and 5/4/11. Credit: Fame and WENN