Jessica Alba is not one of those celebrities who will say she lost weight, post-baby, from “running around after her kids.” She is straight-up honest about how hard it was to get her body back. Her secret? She wore not one but TWO girdles. “It was brutal; it’s not for everyone,” she said, in a new interview with Net-a-Porter‘s The Edit magazine. “I wore a double corset day and night for three months. It was sweaty but worth it.”

his is probably my favorite interview ever with Jessica because she was refreshingly honest about her life as an actress, mother of two young girls, wife, and entrepreneur. For example, she recently started the Honest Company, which sells natural and eco-friendly products, and talks about how it was harder to get off the ground than she expected. “I had lots of doors shut in my face, which forced me to get behind the idea in a genuine way,” she says. “I would cry, tell Cash it wasn’t possible; I was crazy. And he would say, ‘Well, approach it differently. What can’t people wrap their heads around?’”

Also, she admits that she’s not good at balancing “it all.” I can totally relate to this idea—I admire women who can do three things at once, but I’ll never be one of them. “I don’t balance. I’m so embarrassed I was late [Alba was still on her way home when I arrived], but I was cleaning up and trying to be a good auntie to the birthday girl and a good friend to my girlfriend. I don’t balance well. I just try to do the best I can.”

Photoshoot by David Bellemere

Magazine scans