If you even know who Ricki Lake is, you know that she had a little bit of a weight problem. Look at her now! Wow…she lost 140 pounds from an all time high of 270 pounds! Amazing.

Even more amazing is that she claims she did it as smooth as turning on the kitchen faucets the old fashioned way. Hard work and eating right? No way. This cannot be true. When it is so easy for someone to have a surgery to prevent them from eating someone actually takes the healthy route and exercises? Blasphemy.

“I can’t believe I was a fat person for most of my life,” the former talk show host, rocking a sexy black Herve Leger dress (size small), told PEOPLE at a recent benefit for the New Space for Women’s Health, a New York City birthing center slated to open in 2010.

“I didn’t have surgery and I worked hard. There’s no secret. I’m active. I watch what I eat,” Lake, 40, adds.

“I’m just grateful that I have sons and not daughters because it’s that much harder,” she says.

Lake sticks to meals delivered by a service called Fresh Dining (“It’s organic, it’s fresh, and I still love it,” she says) but admits unpredictable factors in life could one day interfere.

“With the weight stuff I don’t have any answers,” she says. “Something tragic in my life could happen and I could balloon and gain weight. I can’t promise I will be like this forever.”

And with the holidays in full swing? “I will be really conscious because I have this book coming out and I want to look great,” she says. “I don’t need to lose anymore weight. [But] I don’t want to go backwards. So I’m not going to pig out this Christmas.”

Good for her. She always was sort of “cute”, but had all the pounds to prevent her from sort of “hot”. She looks a lot like that girl from SNL doesn’t she? What’s her name? I am really at a loss to remember the lady’s name here, but if you watch SNL you probably have an idea who I’m talking about. The one that played the girl who used to hold her hands under her armpits…lol

Photo by: Gary Gershoff / WireImage