Even supermodels can let their guarrd down and get heavy. It’s not hard to just forget about yourself when you are taking care of kids, family, working full time..etc. One day you just wake up with twenty pounds heavier, terrible split ends and in desperate need of an eyebrow wax.

When former Sports Illustrated cover girl Kathy Ireland saw a photo taken by her son as she baked cookies at the family’s Santa Barbara house recently, the raw image took her breath away.

“He said ‘Mom, you look pregnant,’ ” Ireland tells PEOPLE in its latest issue. “I didn’t recognize the person I saw. I saw someone who looked overwhelmed, overstressed, overweight, over-everything.”

This is where supermodels and good moms differ from most of us. Instead of telling her insolent child to shut up and pass the cookies…she actually took this critique and used it as motivation to return to a healthy lifestyle. People will have more details about how Kathy shed those ugly 25 “mom” pounds in the next issue.

kathy ireland before after