Fitness Funda
Mental and physical fitness go hand-in-hand. So, if yoga is my spiritual pursuit, dancing is my physical passion. The reason I have weighed a constant 50 kg for 10 years is because of my consistency in diet and workout.
Best Food Forward
I am mostly vegetarian and have four light meals a day, apart from loads of water and tea. To meet my protein requirement, I have egg whites four times a week, and fish occasionally. Breakfast is cereal or corn flakes with fruits, dry fruits and milk, or ragi porridge. And I need two cups of tea to make me feel alive.
Tea is a weakness. As a young girl, I picked up the habit from my mother (veteran dancer Daksha Sheth), who was always sipping tea from a thermos flask between dance breaks. Dancing makes you lose salts and fluids through sweating. Although tea is dehydrating, it works for me because I feel mentally charged.
At 11.30 am, I snack on fruits or biscuits, and two hours later, I have a carbs-rich lunch. It’s khichdi or roti, sabzi and salad, and another two cups of tea to wash it down. Dinner is light again. If I feel hungry late at night, I have some yogurt drizzled with honey.
But I do have a few dietary quirks. I hate low-fat milk. I’d rather have whole milk instead of diluting it with paani. I prefer sugar over artificial sweeteners because Sachin Tendulkar once told me they ruin the liver in the long run. Once he said that, I switched to sugar the next day.
Action Time
I was born flexible. I never had to work towards it. And the fact that I practice multiple dance forms gives me a strong, supple body. Recently, when I was part of a reality dance show, I was dancing 10 hours a day, burning more than 5,000 calories. So I didn’t mind eating three brownies a day.
On an average day, I work out for eight hours. At our dance school here, we start with yoga before moving to strength training, Kalaripayattu, and then slip into dance.
Yoga has been a constant, though. Even when I’m travelling, I reserve two hours for yoga. So, my yoga mat goes everywhere I go. It calms me down, and aligns my body and mind. Yoga wasn’t devised as a weight-loss programme; it’s a way of life.
Mind Business
When I’m low, dance lifts my mood. While competing for the show, my brother met with an accident and my grandmother was critical. Although I was disturbed, dancing proved therapeutic. I’d say, if you are down in the dumps, take a 45-minute break to play a sport or dance. Running is excellent too, because after a few minutes, you end up focusing only on running.
Au Naturel
With food, go back to your roots and eat natural and fresh ingredients. Nobody eats ragi anymore, for instance. In Kerala, we eat chamba rice — a wholesome, unpolished variety. And I’ve grown up drinking coconut water and lemon juice, not colas. We’d have to travel a mile if we wanted access to a shop that sold cola (smiles).
Practice Plan
Since I took to professional dancing at 13, I have lived a disciplined life, attending six classes a day and practicing endlessly. But it’s tough to be driven about your passion. There are days when I don’t feel like dancing, but that’s when discipline kicks in. Karna hai, toh karna hai, bas. Like the great musician Jascha Heifetz said – If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If it’s two days, my wife knows it, and if it’s three days, the audience knows it.
Author: Anand Holla
