Has Jennifer Lopez let herself go? Has she sworn off the gym and calorie counting?
Of course not — but she has chilled out, now that she's a 40 year-old mother of twins Emme and Max, 21 months (their dad is her husband Marc Anthony).
"I'm not the monster I used to be in the exercise department," Lopez says in the January issue of Allure. "You get past your 20s, you've got kids…you're kind of unmotivated."
The famously curvy singer-actress admits, "You want to be healthy and look good, but you want to do the least amount to maintain that."
When she does need to hit the red carpet or a performance stage (as she did at November's AMAs, where she slipped off a male dancer's sweaty back), the star practices a more vigorous and frequent gym routine. Food-wise, Lopez says she's a "big portion control person."
The star also offers Allure some frank insight into the childhood roots of her ambition: the unintended absence of her dad. "My dad worked nights and slept during the day, so we never saw him much," she says.
"He was a wonderful, loving father…but even so, I would lie in bed at night and tell myself over and over 'I know my daddy loves me.' I wondered about it…if because of his absence he didn't care about me or about us. And believe me, my dad was the best. But these little things happen to you when you're younger."
