Vidya Balan has been in the news owing to the promotions of her upcoming movie Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3. She will be seen reprising the role of Manjulika and the fans can barely keep calm. Apart from the movie, Balan has also been making headlines due to her drastic weight loss and body transformation. She also opened up about struggling with the ‘fat girl’ label, something that affected her self-esteem. Here’s what she said:
Vidya Balan on not being able to lose weight
During the promotion of her upcoming movie Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, Vidya said she has struggled to lose weight all her life. She relied on traditional weight loss methods of slogging away at the gym, staying in calorie deficit but the results never lasted longer for her. With the help of a nutrition group, Balan was able to identify the root cause of her weight gain which was inflammation. She added that she had been eating palak and doodhi all her life without knowing that they didn’t suit her.
In an interview with Galatta India, Vidya said, “You know, all my life, I have struggled to be thin. I have dieted and exercised like crazy, and sometimes, I would lose weight, and it would come back. And then, early this year, I met a nutritional group called Amura (Amura Health) in Chennai. They said, ‘It is just inflammation; it is not fat’. So, they put me on a diet to get rid of the inflammation, elimination of inflammation it is called, and it worked beautifully for me and the weight went like that because they eliminated foods that were not suiting me.”
She added, “I have been a vegetarian all my life, (yet) I didn’t know palak and doodhi (spinach and bottle gourd) don’t suit me. We think all vegetables are good for us, but that is not the case. You have to figure out what’s good for you just because it is good for someone else, it may not be good for you.”
“They asked me to stop working out”: Vidya Balan
Another shocking factor of her weight loss is the ‘no-workout’ part. Vidya said that she has not worked out in the last one year and that her weight loss is the result of all the corrections made in her diet.
Vidya said, “They (Amura) asked me to stop working out. You know everyone has been telling me ‘Oh my God, you are your slimmest’ and I have not worked out all year. This is the first year that I have not worked out. And I want to say judgment around the body is brutal. A lot of times, people put on weight for various reasons because our bodies express what we are going through emotionally. Even I would not have believed last year if I had been told ‘Stop working out’. I used to be a beast in the gym. And I had people telling me, ‘You must not be working out at all’. And now, people tell me, ‘So what are you doing?’ and I am like, ‘No, I don’t do anything’. I am just enjoying myself and I am feeling healthier than ever. I am not saying you should not exercise but remember no two people are the same, we must respect our individuality.”
Vidya Balan on changing perspective on body image
Vidya’s weight loss experience has also helped her change her perspective on body image and societal judgments that come with it. She shared that throughout her career, she had been labeled as a “fat girl,” something that affected her self-esteem negatively and deeply.
She said, “People used to call me fat, and that would hurt my self-esteem. Now, people tell me, ‘So what are you doing?’ and I am like, ‘No, I don’t do anything.’ I am just enjoying myself and feeling healthier than ever,”
Vidya also spoke extensively about the way society perceives and labels body types. Vidya said that ‘fat’ almost ‘seems like abuse today’ but she chooses to constantly use the word ‘fat’ because ‘there are thin people and there are fat people’, and she ‘does not believe it is shameful in any way’.
She said today people say fat in a way where ‘it feels like you are fat-shaming someone’. But Vidya feels that you are ‘just describing the body size’ when you call someone fat, and all the judgment around the terms needs to go away.
Social and lead images credits: Instagram/balanvidya
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