'Food is in her Nature’

Does your day start by checking yourself out in the mirror, looking for signs of weight loss? Do you keep tabs on new fitness regimes? Has checking out weight loss products become part of your lifestyle? Has exercise become a chore rather than a fitness routine? Is thinking of weight loss driving you crazy day and night? If yes then Pooja Makhija, leading nutritionist to Bollywood hotshots Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor and their likes, revealed some secrets after the launch of her new book, ‘eat.delete’.

Pooja was inspired to write eat.delete after seeing the aftermath of the ‘Quick fix’ path to weight loss which is crashing the physical as well as mental health of many. So what is the solution? “Eat often and correctly”, this is the advice she gave to former Ms. Universe Sushmita Sen when she came to her wellbeing centre ‘Nourish’. Also she adds; keep eating something every two hours. She guarantees to be never caught without food and claims to carry a fruit or biscuit while travelling. The reason behind this is to ‘eat.delete’, meaning eating to delete. She says “the more you eat, the more your body will work to burn or digest the food you eat”.

For Pooja, ‘pet pooja’ is very important and that’s why she has anything from a fruit to a khakhara within half an hour of waking up in the morning. She also says that every fruit’s important irrespective of its sugar content, each has to offer something unique from its counterparts and that none should be ignored. After ‘pet pooja’ Pooja has a twenty minute workout on Power Plate three times a week.

Pooja being a nutritionist, its hard to imagine her falling sick, yet on the face of flu or Virus, even the nutritionist seems helpless. On that note, she says that the kind of food she eats, equips her to heal faster and keep her immunity on a high than someone who is unaware of the nature of food. She suggests some high quality protein food like Tofu, Soya, and Egg white, Dal in small amounts to help the body heal from the wear and tear of flu or virus.

Living healthy is not all about food, what about the stress which makes you binge on that chocolate cake or the stuffed samosa, how does she deal with the stress? Playing with children and her passion for working is her mantra to remain chilled. She explains that the aura of the clinic and helping people change their relationship with food and better their life is what makes her fight stress.

Pooja’s path as a nutritionist was set by her mother. She says 'food was in my nature' and when she took Home science, she realized her love for food. She claims her mother to be her guiding star and that the rest was done by destiny.  Today Pooja’s efforts have led to transforming many lives. She stresses that our body has a beautiful mechanism and one needs to trust it to work wonders.