After the overwhelming success of Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight, celebrity nutritionist and trainer Rujuta Diwekar is out with her new book, Don’t Lose Out, Work Out. The lady behind Kareena Kapoor’s size-zero figure has written it in her signature in-your-face, candid, conversational style. Rujuta opens up on her inspirations and life hereafter.
How is your new book different from your earlier book Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight?
This one focuses on the other side of the coin—exercise. Other than that, it’s similar to the first one; it will educate without boring you with jargons, make you laugh and finally motivate you to work out and get fitter, leaner and stronger.
What made you to write your new book?
The readers motivated me to write. They had an appetite for exercise and just needed some guidelines on why, how and what of exercise.
Your inspirations and influences.
Everyday people, the ones I meet and even the ones I don’t. Their workout and diet stories overwhelm, move and inspire me.
Your daily routine.
Wake up, pray, work out, eat, work. It’s just that sometimes the pray part is a Bharatnatyam class, at other times an Iyengar yoga class and work is either meetings, consultations, writing, talking or conducting a retreat in a remote Himalayan landscape. Ah, yes and sleep. I sleep early and rise early.
The most important thing to stay fit according to you.
Discipline and commitment. All my famous clients have tons of it, I live off my clients’ virtues.
Working with celebrities.
It’s like a dream come true. They are the most committed individuals, they work hard and generously hand you the credit for their inherent good looks and fitness.
Your biggest challenge.
Beating the traffic in Mumbai.
Your passions, apart from fitness.
Trekking, travelling and studying scriptures. Looking for food, fitness, wellbeing stories.
Most memorable experience of training a celebrity.
Every moment with Kareena Kapoor is memorable. She has this spark of spontaneity and an agile, sharp mind. Among the most memorable ones is the first time she told me that ‘she’s looking like a stick’, it was within two weeks of following the diet. She’s very appreciative of her efforts, body, looks, work and relationships. I think every woman should learn that from her.
On fitness trends, both globally and in the country.
Globally and locally, trends come and go. Presently group exercise classes mixing outdoors and using body weight is in but what is important is to stay loyal with what works best with the body and a workout that is safe, technically sound and takes into consideration the latest fitness levels. What is out of fashion today can become the next big thing tomorrow.
Any reality TV shows in the pipeline?
None of the offers till now have appealed to me. But if there’s something on the lines of my DVD ‘Indian food wisdom and the art of eating right’, something that appeals to us to eat locally and follow oral wisdom on food and wellbeing then I would jump on board.