Table of Contents
Dubai: Khushbu Sundar did not stop eating mutton biryani. She stopped eating a plateful of it.
The actor and politician, who has appeared in more than 200 films, has spoken about a four-year change in how she eats and moves, which took her from close to 98kg to around 58kg. She has described it as driven by health rather than appearance, and says she did it without cutting out the food she loves.
The knee was the turning point
Two things pushed her into it.
The first was watching herself on screen in Rajinikanth’s Annaatthe, filmed when she was at her heaviest, and barely recognising herself.
The second was physical. Climbing the stairs at home had become difficult, with knee pain and breathlessness. Years of injuries and surgeries had left her knees in poor condition, and her doctor advised her to take the pressure off them.
She began during the Covid lockdown. Her husband, director Sundar C, was already walking and doing yoga, and her children had started losing weight, which she has said gave her the push to begin.
Portion control, not elimination
The part of her account that has drawn the most attention is what stayed on the menu.
Mutton biryani remained. Instead of a large serving, she says she limited herself to roughly one bowl with a single piece of mutton. Ice cream and Indian sweets were not banned either, just eaten in far smaller quantities, and her daily chai kept its milk and sugar.
What she did cut was processed and fried food, and she has said she moved away from maida.
Her framing is about knowing when to stop rather than what to avoid, and she has been clear that she did not starve herself. She has also described leaning on protein to stay full, and avoiding late-night eating and eating out of emotion.
Walking, not the gym
There was no gym membership involved.
Walking became the core of it, with reports of 10,000 to 15,000 steps a day, kept up even while travelling for work. Yoga and bodyweight work, including planks and squats, filled in around it.
She has described splitting the day between a morning session and an evening walk, and doubling up later if she missed one.
Maintaining it is the harder part
By her own account, the weight loss was not the difficult bit.
She has said that sustaining it is the real challenge, and the real lifestyle change, which is the part most transformation stories skip.
Now 55, she has said she has no blood pressure or blood sugar issues, and has framed the whole exercise around health rather than how she looks.
Who she is
Born Nakhat Khan in Mumbai in 1970, Khushbu began as a child actor in the 1980 Hindi film The Burning Train before moving to Chennai, where she has now lived for around four decades.
Chinna Thambi in 1991 made her a star in Tamil cinema, and she went on to Michael Madana Kama Rajan, Annaamalai, Mannan and more than 100 Tamil films alone. She met Sundar C on the set of his directorial debut, Murai Maman, in 1995.
She has since moved into politics and television.
Weight loss plans are individual, and anyone considering significant changes to diet or exercise should speak to a doctor first, particularly where joint problems or other health conditions are involved.
