Fitness guru Rujuta Diwekar shares her secrets to getting a body like Kareena Kapoor's - without cutting out the foods you love.
Bollywood fitness revolutionary Rujuta Diwekar sounds like a dream diet guru. The nutritionist to stars such as Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Arora will ask you to toss out your weighing scale, will chart out a diet plan lined with your favourite food and will even admonish you for not eating nine small meals a day.
Diwekar had just finished jotting down a diet plan for Bollywood's latest eye-candy, south Indian star Asin Thottumkal, before this interview.
The star - who enjoyed a stellar debut with the gore fest Ghajjini - cannot survive without her daily dose of coconut curry and rice. But Diwekar does not blanch at the thought of loading her client with calorie-laden coconut goodies.
"There is nothing called good food or bad food. My philosophy is to eat the food that you love in the right quantities at the right time. That way, your body will never crave for certain kinds of food. Asin loves her coconut curries and dal. So naturally, her diet plan has plenty of that," says Diwekar.
Bollywood royalty Kareena Kapoor - who started the size-zero trend in the Indian entertainment industry - followed Diwekar's instructions to the last letter. Upon Diwekar's intervention, the curvy Kapoor became a stick-skinny screen siren.
"Bebo [Kareena Kapoor] and I share a very special relationship. She is a girl who loves her parathas and paneer. I understood that and I ensured that her diet plan includes all of that.
"When she shot for the lime-green bikini sequence for Tashan, she was in her best form. But what amazed us was that her weight loss was being monitored more than the Sensex [Indian stock market]."
Diwekar - who charges as much as Dh7,000 for a two-month session - feels her meteoric rise to fame as a celebrity fitness instructor could be attributed to her honesty. "I think celebrities also deserve to be told the truth. My job is to inject some logic and educate them about the myths that are floating around. Very often, I have seen many people who are intimidated by them and end up giving wrong advice about dieting and weight loss. I never do that. If they have unrealistic expectations, I feel it is my job to tell them that they have some impossible targets."
Fortunately for Diwekar, her clients are both pragmatic and disciplined. Her patrons include Konkona Sen Sharma, Saif Ali Khan and Indian business tycoon Anil Ambani.
"In my experience, my celeb clients are the most disciplined and dedicated set. They understand my diet plan and then there are no questions asked. And because I plan their charts according to their tastes, the tendency to binge-eat or cheat never arises."
Known to tackle matters heads-on, Diwekar has penned a book titled Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Weight, which has sold thousands of copies.
"I have a problem with the weight loss industry. They have injected the belief that eating is bad and to abuse your body in the name of dieting is OK. I mean, suddenly you are told that the food that you have grown up eating - like the Indian staples, parathas and paneer - should not be eaten. My philosophy is all about eating your favourite food and losing weight at the same time."
The well-being guru even goes to the extent of advising her clients to choose a burger and fries rather than skip lunch due to hectic schedules. She is also known to accommodate strange eating quirks such as allowing a certain Bollywood A-lister to down three spoonfuls of ghee every morning.
"Preity [Zinta] is a typical Punjabi girl who loves her ghee and milk. And I am OK with that. Stars or not, many of us have hectic schedules. The key to being healthy and fit is to plan your meals well in advance. And that is where I come in."
Healthy eating during Ramadan:
Here is your recipe to staying away from the fast and feast syndrome. As Diwekar puts it, Ramadan can be a spiritual and a bodily cleansing experience if you are well nourished.
Step 1: Break your fast with a handful of dates and juices. Do not eat everything in one go.
Step 2: About one and a half hours later, have a wholesome meal with some chicken, red meat and rice/bread. The reasoning behind all this? By grading your meals, your body will be able to secrete the digestive juices. If you stuff your stomach at one go, then the body will suffer.
