Fad diets need not apply. If there’s one diet secret Vanessa Lachey can confidently share with her fans, it’s portion size, portion size, portion size.
![Vanessa Lachey Has Strong Feelings About People Who Clean Their Plates: Watch](/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/vanessa-lachey.jpg?w=1000&quality=86&strip=all)
“I think portion control is always the biggest thing that people can do, because it’s impossible to say, ‘Change the way you eat,’” the Top Chef Jr. host tells Us Weekly exclusively. “I have three kids, like, I’m gonna constantly be eating whatever’s on their plate. That’s just how it is.”
![Vanessa and Nick Lachey attend Sprint Sound Sessions at Webster Hall in New York City.](/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/487386175_nick-lachey-vanessa-zoom.jpg?w=1000&quality=47&strip=all)
To make sure she and her husband of seven years, Nick Lachey, stay healthy and fit, the former TRL host, 37, simply dishes out less food at dinnertime — otherwise they’ll eat every calorie in sight. “Nick will tell you, he was a kid where his parents were from the Depression era. So we were from the clean plate era. You had to clean your plate, so it’s still instilled within us,” she says. “I think just portion control for anybody. They’ll see a difference.”
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The focus on a healthy and restricted diet came after she welcomed her brood: sons Camden, 6, and Phoenix, 22 months, and daughter Brooklyn, 3. “It’s honestly harder to take time for myself to work out now that I have three kids, but when I do, I will say I feel better and I feel less lethargic,” she says. Still, she notes, she leaves the Peloton bike in their house to her 44-year-old husband: “I honestly can’t even fake that one. I’d rather spend time with my kids than an hour in the gym… So if I know I’m not going to be working out for a good amount of time, then [I] just make healthier food choices.”
When she does squeeze in an exercise session, she reveals that the 98 Degrees singer is decidedly not her workout buddy! “Nick hates working out with me. He’s like, ‘I don’t want to do legs. What guy wants to do legs? I’m gonna go over here and just work on my arms. I’m like, ‘Great, see you later!’”
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As for her favorite song to pump her up before a session at the gym, she hesitates to put a specific answer on the record. “Coming from an ex MTV VJ… that’s a loaded question,” says Vanessa. “But Foo Fighters is always a guaranteed go-to good one. Just get in the car — I mean I will be blaring it — and then I get in the gym, and then it’s on.”