Jul 21, 2011 20:41 GMT  ·  By

Rosario Dawson is flaunting her enviable, swimsuit-ready body on the cover of the latest issue of Shape Magazine. Asked about what she does to look this good, the actress admits she does lots of Pilates and eats healthy.

While her love for Pilates is relatively new, she’s always been very careful about what she eats, she says in the interview.

Nevertheless, she also knows that it’s not healthy to stress too much about how you look: as long as you’re healthy and you feel good, that should be enough to get you through the day, no matter what others say.

In order to feel good, Rosario makes sure she never denies her body anything.

“Whether it craves fresh vegetables or foie gras nothing makes me feel better than having something I really enjoy,” she says.

“The stress you put yourself through for having a treat is probably a thousand times worse for you than the sugar you just had,” the actress adds.

Of course, growing up in a very healthy eating-focused family also means that she rarely indulges in excessively unhealthy treats, so the above statement should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

“My mom was practicing vegan and raw diets years ago, so I understood eating healthy at a young age. We even belonged to the local co-op,” the 32-year-old star explains.

“I mean, we had Spam too, because we were poor and had to take whatever we could get, but we stopped eating white bread when I was 6,” she adds.

Recently, she also discovered Pilates and how wonderful it is for her posture and energy levels. For how amazing she looks, Rosario is not really a fan of working out.

“After just a couple of weeks, I noticed a physical change, especially in my posture. Now I stand different, I sit differently,” she says.

“I don’t love working out, but I can honestly say I miss Pilates and how it makes my body feel. And there’s nothing like it when those endorphins kick in,” Dawson concludes.