Actress Shilpa Shetty has turned author with a book called The Great Indian Diet.
However, she does not think of herself as a fitness expert. “People should have discipline towards life. I don’t know. I don’t think if I am an expert on fitness. When you are writing a book, it cannot be subjective, it should be very overall [applicable to everyone]. It was not easy to write a book. There were challenges. There were lot of beliefs that I had, but I couldn’t use it,” she said.
The 40-year-old actress explained her reasons for writing the book. “A lot of people keep asking me how I maintain myself, what I eat and what I do. After becoming a mother I did put on weight. I lost all weight by doing right things,” she said.
“I wanted to share it [experience] with everyone, it is my way of giving it back to people all the love that I have got from them. Everybody can’t afford a dietitian or nutritionist or go to [a] slimming centre. There is a way to it [losing weight] and one can do it by having right kind of Indian food,” she said.
The book describes how nutritious locally grown and sourced ingredients are and encourages people to look for good health by eating Indian fare.
“The book busts the myth about having food that causes fats. I worked on the book with my co-author Luke, an acclaimed nutritionist. I couldn’t write a book without having theory and proof,” she said.
The Bazigaar actress thinks people have forgotten the benefits of eating Indian food. “We [Indians] have forgotten about our own food, we are going toward the West. We are scared to use ghee, oil. We are scared to have Indian food because we think it is fattening, [with] high sodium,” she said.
“The fact is Indian food is healthy. each spices or food item that we eat helps us in some or the other way. One should live a simple lifestyle, eat proper food like lentils, sprouts, yoghurt,” she added.
The book will be released on World Nutrition Day.
