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Teri Hatcher opens up about posing in a bikini: ‘Here’s who I am at 55’

Days after posing in a bikini on Instagram, Teri Hatcher is opening up about her decision to show off her figure at age 55.

The former Desperate Housewives star joined the Today show on Tuesday to discuss her recent Instagram photo. Hatcher wowed fans last week when she posted unairbrushed front-and-back shots of her modeling a halter-neck bikini as part of a new fitness challenge.

Teri Hatcher is opening up about life at 55. (Photo: Mike Marsland/WireImage)
Teri Hatcher is opening up about life at 55. (Photo: Mike Marsland/WireImage)

“Well, this is my truth and being in this 55-year-old body actually feels liberating,” she wrote in the caption, adding, “I’ve finally figured out how to be comfortable in my own skin. Maybe not every day but a lot of them.”

In her new interview with Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager, the former Bond girl explained that she’d taken part in an 8-week fitness challenge and anti-inflammatory diet with the goal of being “in a better mental place” rather than shedding pounds.

But her slim figure did get attention when she posted the photo online at the end of the challenge.

“And so you had to turn in a photo of yourself at the end — that’s part of the challenge — but when I saw it, it wasn’t that I thought, ‘Oh, wow, look how great I look’ or anything,” she told the Today hosts. “I just felt like I wanted to be vulnerable. I wanted to say to women, to everybody, you know, ‘Here’s who I am at 55. This is it. I’m not lying. I’m a strong woman. I’m a strong person.’

“I think an important thing to me that I learned in the challenge was that exercise was not about looking good naked. Exercise was about mental well-being. So it kind of trickled out from there,” she added.

Hatcher went on to describe her anti-inflammatory diet, which includes “cutting out alcohol, or at least not making it your go-to reward at the end of every day,” as “empowering.”

The actress also called her 50s an “amazing stage of life,” after having raised a child (22-year-old daughter Emerson) and come out the other side of menopause.

“When I say like I feel the best, you can’t kid yourself like after menopause when you don’t have estrogen coursing through your body,” she shared. “You know, it’s no joke, the things that change. And I think more women need to be talking about that, so that we understand this sort of seven-year mysteriousness of hell that your body goes through.”

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