Kate Hudson Opens Up About the Challenges of Losing Pregnancy Weight

Kate Hudson can still remember a time when she didn’t feel her best self, physically.

“Remember when you had that first baby and you gained like 150 lbs.?” Chelsea Handler jokes to the actress on Wednesday’s episode of her Netflix show Chelsea. “It was like Shallow Hal, remember? Oh my God.”

Hudson — mom to Bingham “Bing”, 5, and Ryder, 13 next month — and the audience laugh before the Almost Famous star, 37, says she actually enjoyed the weight gain that came along with her first pregnancy.

“I loved it too — I relished in that moment of my [life],” she says.

There’s one specific instance that occurred the month before her now almost-teenage son‘s birth that Hudson remembers extra fondly.

“I had this Christmas party and I don’t know what I was thinking — I put on a size 2, like, spandex Versace dress. I was two weeks away from having Ryder — I must’ve been 200 lbs.,” she says. “And I wore these white Ugg boots and this dress, and I was so happy.”

She continues, “And I open the door [to the party] and I was like, ‘Merry Christmas!’ and there was Ben Stiller. And he just started to laugh. And he was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re huge.’ ”

In all seriousness, the actress and author — whose book Pretty Happy: Healthy Ways to Love Your Body encourages readers toward living a healthy lifestyle without putting too much pressure on themselves to be “perfect” — says it was a bit of a wake-up call in conjunction with advice from her OB/GYN.

“Even my doctor was like, ‘You know, you should try not to eat so much,’ ” she recalls. “And then after I had Ryder, that was when it sort of hit me … and then, trying to lose the weight and being in that year of my life was really interesting, ’cause then all of a sudden you have the baby and then all of a sudden you’re 70 lbs. overweight.”

“Then all of a sudden you feel very scrutinized, then all of a sudden you feel like you need to hurry up and [lose the weight].”

Continues the actress, “And it was actually emotional ’cause I couldn’t lose the weight. You plateau. Anybody who’s had that moment in their life, it just sucks.”

Handler and Hudson commiserate that dieting is “a bummer,” but the latter insists she started shedding the pounds for the right reason: her health.

“There’s a catch-22 — it is just about health, isn’t it?” she says. “So you have to then say, ‘Well, f— the people who are scrutinizing me, but I do want to get healthy. I don’t want to keep the weight on like that. I don’t want to get discouraged.’ ”

Speaking of Shallow Hal, Hudson says that one of its stars, Gwyneth Paltrow, is her go-to pal for parenting advice.

“She’s very structured and I’m a little bit like [more laid-back],” the Deepwater Horizon star says. “She’s just really great at it. She knows what she’s doing.”

“She’s good with the relationship advice and she’s good with parenting advice — she’s good with any advice,” Handler agrees. “She kind of has her s— together a little bit too much, if you ask me.”

The women joke good-naturedly about how their friend Paltrow is currently on a liver cleanse, but point out that the way she lives her life is commendable — both for herself and the way it rubs off on her son Moses, 10, and daughter Apple, 12.

“I think sometimes people don’t understand that she actually really does put that effort into her life and it shows in her kids, and it shows in how happy her surroundings are and how healthy she is,” Hudson says.

“She’s gonna live until she’s like 107,” Handler says as the two laugh.

“And Chelsea and I won’t,” Hudson adds.

This article originally appeared on People.com