Remember Tara Deshpande? That graceful actor seen in Sudhir Mishra’s Is Raat Ki Subah Nahi ? Some would definitely remember her as an affable MTV veejay. Tarahas also added another feather to her hat — that of a chef. She has just recently launched her book on Konkani cuisine A Sense for Spice. Her fitness mantra is, whatever you eat or drink should be in moderate amount as excess of anything can come at a big price and might affect you adversely in the long run. “One should find a middle road and carry out his/her life in a moderate manner. Whatever you do in excess, be it eating or drinking, initially it might please you but at the same time the long term effects would be disastrous,” she underlines.
Tara is not the type of person who can eat just papaya and sprouts when she is on a diet as she loves to eat “good food and cannot compromise on the taste of the food.” Though that doesn’t mean she is not diet conscious. “I love food but food doesn’t love me,” she says with a laugh. She adds, “I am like any other ordinary person who gets tempted towards jalebis and vada pavs but as I’ve grown older I have to start thinking carefully about what I eat.”
She feels losing weight is a continuous struggle and you have to maintain equilibrium between what you eat and what you burn. “Some people have high metabolic rates and some don’t. Therefore, it depends from person to person.” The trend of being size zero seems totally odd to Tara. “I had no idea about size zero lean body figures and couldn’t even digest the fact that size zero exists. When you’re in your 20s, you get most tempted towards mouth-watering food but in order to maintain the ‘ideal’ Body Mass Index, one really has to torture one’s body. Also, women nowadays are so extra thin that they look abnormal.”
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Asking about how she differentiates fitness from thinness, she replies, “ Fitness doesn’t only mean, for how long you can run on a treadmill. Fitness is how healthy and happy, or how productive life you are leading. For instance, if you are asked to walk for an hour and you get tired, then you are just not fit. Much can be detected from blood tests as well. A lot of people who are too thin have too high cholesterol which you could not even guess.” She highlights the importance of water intake in one’s life. “I try to drink as much water as possible. I also drink a lot of tender coconut water because I like it. I drink some fresh fruit juices too. I avoid bottled juices because they have too much sugar in it. Also, when you exercise, your pores get opened and your impurities come out.”