But while she has absolutely no problem baring all for the camera, she is still keeping the identity of the baby's father very close to her chest.
The model and former wife of novelist Salman Rushdie stripped off for the latest cover of Page Six Magazine - modestly covering her baby bump - as speculation mounts over who the father of her first child is.
With the baby due in early spring, she opened up about gaining weight and life after her divorce, but still refused to drop any hints about the daddy.
Lakshmi, 39, who hosts US reality show Top Chef, said she is happy that she has gained some baby pounds.
In an interview with the magazine, which goes on sale tomorrow, she said: 'One of the reasons I think I've gained weight pretty quickly during my pregnancy is that I'm not exercising as much as I do normally... I can't. I'm feeling tired, and I have this business to run.
'You hope that with age, what you pay for in gravity, you gain in gravitas. I'm sure my thighs looked better when I was 25, but I think my mind is better today.'
But she admitted that she used to have to work hard in the gym to make sure she looked good for a photoshoot.
She said: 'You can eat and work out, or you can be the person who only eats a cucumber every day. I’d get really irritable if all I ate was a cucumber, so I have to work hard.'
Lakshmi married Rushdie in 2004 and admitted that she is still reassembling her life after they divorced in 2007.
Her main focus is the birth of her child and the launch of her new business ventures, including a jewellery line at New York department store Bergdorf Goodman and the American 24-hour shopping channel, Home Shopping Network.
She said: 'I [have been] reconstructing my life and putting it back together in a way that looked more appropriate to who I was. At this point in my career, I’m still growing. Jewels, spices and teas - I sound like Magellan.'
But she is still surprised that she gets recognised everywhere she goes - especially by children.
She added: 'I went to a bar mitzvah on the Upper East Side last year, and not to toot my own horn, but I might as well have been Michael Jackson to these 13-year-old boys and girls.
'There were something like 30 children around me, and they were all practically hyperventilating. I had this swarm of little kids going, "Oh, my god! Oh, my god!"
'Kids are so authentic, so pure, and they’d be telling me, "My sister and I had an amuse-bouche contest, and we need you to tell us who should have won." I think that’s really cool.'
Her pregnancy, which she announced at the beginning of October, was described by her doctor as 'nothing short of a medical miracle', after she struggled for years with endometriosis.
Lakshmi was discovered by a modelling agent at the age of 16 and said she was the 'first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York'.
In the early Nineties, she turned her passions to food and wrote a number of best-selling cookery books before
taking over as host of Top Chef in 2006, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award this year.
