How Melissa Joan Hart Got Skinny Again

May 29, 2009— -- Actress Melissa Joan Hart is the latest female celebrity to flaunt her trimmed down, bikini-clad body, on People magazine's cover, but the former child star wants people to know it wasn't easy dropping 42 pounds.

"For my 33rd birthday [in April], I wanted to get in shape. I started working pretty hard in January. When People magazine said, 'We'll put you on the cover in a bikini because we think you look pretty good,' I all of a sudden went into high gear," the actress said on "Good Morning America" today.

Hart, who starred in the Nickelodeon show "Clarissa Explains It All" and later spent seven years on television's "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," weighs a slim 113 pounds today, but she gained 55 pounds during her first pregnancy, and then after losing some of the weight she gained another 35 while pregnant with her second child.

And unlike so many Hollywood mothers whose baby weight seems to vanish almost immediately after giving birth, Hart's increased waistline didn't disappear as easily.

And images of the 5-foot-2-inch blond in her pregnant and post-pregnancy states regularly appeared in the media.

"My mistake is that I walked the red carpet, you know, after having babies. It definitely is out there. And I kept seeing it," Hart said. "I just was like, 'I'm going to be 33, and the baby's going to be a year. It's time to buckle down. There were so many pictures of me all over of me pregnant and heavy after baby."

Her wider waistline also had an adverse effect on her career.

"I think first and foremost, my biggest obstacle in my career right now is my own name. The fact that I have had success before, especially for such a long time with one character," she said. "So, that in itself is causing an obstacle in Hollywood."

"And then, on top of that, you put on baby weight and getting older," Hart said. "The young kids are in. Vanessa Hudgens, Miley Cyrus — to maintain that longevity is tricky. Losing the weight was part of trying to stay in the game."

The photos showed a much heavier Hart looking very different from the nearly nude star featured on Maxim magazine's 1999 cover.

"It became this huge phenomenon, but it got me so much publicity and it was so great and I, I was so proud of it," Hart said of her decade-old cover.