Padma Lakshmi Embraces Her Stretch Marks in Racy Photo

The Top Chef host isn't afraid to embrace every inch of herself, including her stretch marks, which she proudly flaunted on Instagram.

Padma Lakshmi isn’t afraid to embrace every inch of herself.

The longtime Top Chef host, 47, shared a sexy and revealing photo of herself on her Instagram story early Thursday, reclining on her bed in a sheer white turtleneck sweater while proudly showing off the stretch marks on her leg.

“Hey stretch,” she wrote alongside her leg, as she looked off camera. Heart emojis were also used and placed around her head, as she smiled.

The model isn’t one to shy away from baring a little skin on social media. A week ago, Lakshmi shared a photo of herself from her early days modeling a tiny olive bikini with the caption, “Those were the days…”

Those were the days...

A post shared by Padma Lakshmi (@padmalakshmi) on Nov 10, 2017 at 3:30pm PST

In June, she also modeled a royal blue bikini, with the caption, “Week 5 of filming and hips getting rounder, thighs getting thicker…,” while poolside in Colorado.

The actress and host of Top Chef has previously told PEOPLE about how all the elimination challenges add up to about 8,000 calories per day when she’s filming. She even claimed to have gained about 17 lbs. in one season as she plowed through deep dish pizzas in Chicago.

“I’m the only person on Top Chef who consumes every single thing that’s made,” Lakshmi told PEOPLE last March. “And I’m doing this every day, for weeks on end. And so, you feel just drunk and full of food.” (Tom Colicchio, for the record, says he loses weight during filming.)

Once the season wraps, she goes into a total “food detox,” cutting out “alcohol, sweets, all dairy, except non-fat yogurt and cottage cheese, red meat, all things fried and all sugar.”

The fifteenth season of Top Chef is expected to premiere on Dec. 7.