Former beauty queen and actress Neha Dhupia has had a roller-coaster journey with weight ever since she became a mother to two children. After first giving birth to her daughter Mehr in 2018, she had son Guriq three years later. She is a proud momma, but like most new moms, she also struggled with weight gain. Now, she has lost 23 kgs! From running to yoga to watching her diet, the 43-year-old did everything to shed the extra pounds that she put on during her pregnancies. Her postpartum weight-loss journey was full of challenges, aches and pains. But as Neha says, it has been all worth it! To inspire other new moms, she has given a glimpse of her weight-loss journey, which started with self-love!

Neha Dhupia on weight loss

Neha Dhupia, who also runs Freedom To Feed – a platform to encourage women to breastfeed – shared a “long true story” about her 23 kgs weight loss journey. Before she shared her fitness routine, she started by saying “it was not easy … living with the weight or trying to shed it”.

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The 43-year-old actor noted that after both her pregnancies, the weight gain or living in a “larger body that I was not used to, was extremely tough to come to terms with. Every room one would walk into, there was always a conversation about weight or unsolicited advice that I took with head bob (because on most days, I was tired, plain tired of listening)”.

Neha Dhupia’s weight loss journey began with self-love

Neha Dhupia did not start her postpartum weight-loss journey by doing rigorous exercises from day one. She shared that Day 1 of her journey started over “a year and a few months ago with a sense of belief and self-love that ‘hey, come on you can do it too’.”

Neha Dhupia reveals her weight loss exercises

Soon after Neha Dhupia decided to lose weight, she called two of her “most favourite trainers — my run coach @mirandabrinston and my yoga sir @rohitflowyoga. She trained with both of them alternatively.

Running and yoga turned out to be the perfect physical activities for weight loss. Moderate and high aerobic exercises like running can help in reducing belly fat, according to a 2009 research published in the Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders journal. Yoga is a spiritual and wellness practice, which involves a series of asanas or poses. Yoga can offer diverse physical, behavioral, and psychosocial effects that may be useful to lose weight, as per a research published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2016.

Working out and trying to lose weight was hard for Neha Dhupia. “I felt the aches, the pains, the need to show up, the inability in my body to reach the optimum I had left it at, the fatigue which is hard to put down in words between two babies, work, a home that needs you 24×7 and of course, no shift in the way I looked,” she shared.

Neha Dhupia on weight loss diet

Her fitness routine was supported by a healthy diet. She had no sugar, no gluten, and ate early. She also took a break from food for 14 hours.

These dietary changes and exercises helped her in losing weight.

“To say I have reached my optimum best, I’d say I’m far far away. But to say I have given my best till now, I sure have. I feel better, fitter and far more confident than I ever did. As a mother-of-two and an actor, entrepreneur and runner, I could not be happier sharing this with everyone,” Neha wrote.

She also asserted that there are “no shortcuts, there is no easy way around it, there is also no rocket science.” You just have to “stay consistent, work hard and show up, especially on the days you don’t feel like it at all!”

Concluding her inspiring note, she said, “If you are feeling like I was a year and a half ago, and feel you need to do something about it … please do! Get up, get out, workout and love yourself! Because there’s just one you!!!”