No Diet Day: Mandira Bedi trashes quick diets, urges people to find balance in fitness regimes

Mandira Bedi

Actor Mandira Bedi is one of the fittest actors in the film industry. Often posting inspirational work out videos and posts, she has always encouraged healthy diets. On International No Diet Day today, Mandira emphasises on the importance of finding sustainable diets and being able to find a balance between eating what you enjoy and also staying fit.

“Here’s the thing, in a fitness journey, how much ever we say that ‘I am going to hit the gym’, you can’t beat what you eat. It’s always 70 percent food and 30 percent exercise. If you work out, you can change that equation slowly. If you are going to gym but eating fried food or unhealthy shoot, it’s not going to show, ”says Bedi.

Jumping on the topic of several diets, which attract fitness enthusiasts to loose weight quickly, Bedi says, “There are tons of diet, I have tried them all, I have tried Keto. In my opinion, anything that forces you to put serious amounts of fat for fuel. Anything that causes you to take in so much fat can’t be good for your arteries, it cant be very good for your organs and heart. I did that for a little while, you do loose weight but once you stop, you get back all the weight.”

She adds, “Then I have done intermittent fasting for a long period of time. In some sense it works very well. The concept of your body, that when you don’t eat for a few hours and starve your body, your body goes into starvation mode and when that happens all the bad cells, including your ageing and fat cells get killed off first. But you cannot do any of these things for an extended or a long period of time because it does things for your metabolism. I did it for a year or so and that eventually slowed down my metabolism. You have to be really careful.”

To be able to indulge in your favourite food but also return to fitness regime when ‘holiday time’ is over is the need of the hour, feels the actor.

“At the end of the day you have to find a way to balance things out. There will be days when you that ‘I am on a holiday and I am going to allow myself to eat everything and when I am back, I will get back to my routine.’ I am able to do that. There are holidays when I am eating ice creams and pasta and everything and I know that when I am back in Mumbai I will reign things in and get back on track. At the end of the day, weight loss only happens with calorie deficit. That equation that works,” she says.

As someone, who has been part of television and film industry for over three decades, weighs in on the pressure artists have to fit into the expectations to look a certain type.

Does she have an advice for artists, who sometimes, in desperation resort to fad diets. “Here’s the thing, everybody tries it and realises it. I think everyone has to gain that wisdom with their own trial and error. If you want to be on a journey of good health and being fit, strong healthy then you have to find something sustainable. Even with me, I have tried it all. It’s trial and error for everyone and they have to find their own balance,” she concludes.

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