Taapsee Pannu’s schedule while preparing for a sports-based drama (Rashmi Rocket) was so regimented that a timer dictated her bathing routine. She would wake up at 5 am for a two-hour sprint-training session. It was followed by a 12-hour filming schedule, and by the time she returned home, she would allot for herself no more than 45 minutes to head to bed. “I needed to sleep immediately to give my body enough time to rest and recover, because I had to be ready for the next day’s training. That was either a [sprinting] session, or a routine in the gym. The whole process was mentally draining. You begin to feel like a machine,” the actor tells mid-day, asserting that she would have failed to maintain that lifestyle if it wasn’t for the nutrition plan chalked out by Munmun Ganeriwal.

If the actor’s rather swift physical alteration for the film had raised eyeballs, her ability to lift the weights that she did instantly turned people dismissive. “They were convinced that there was no way I could have pulled it off without the use of [banned substances],” says the actor, crediting Ganeriwal for bringing about the change organically. In a soon-to-release book, for which Pannu has penned the foreword, the nutritionist doles out the secrets to creating the kind of lifestyle that enabled the actor to do so. We’ll give you a hint — it starts with the gut!

“While we began preparing for the film in 2020, Taapsee had been my client since 2018. We had already been working with her to address her nutrition [concerns], and by the time she had to prepare for this film, her gut health had been revamped. She was in great shape — physically, physiologically, and even as far as her fitness levels were concerned. Once your digestive system is in a state of balance, you can bring about a transformation of this kind in such a short span of time. But if your gut health is not good, then you may consume the best quality foods, but your body will be unable to utilise its nutrients,” says Ganeriwal. 

While Pannu says she inherits a poor metabolism from her mother, the nutritionist prefers to refer to it as “sluggish”. “We could notice that it was so because she had chronic and acute acidity. She couldn’t digest a lot of foods and had kept her distance from wheat and dairy. When you have such a metabolism, it is important to know that there are always ways to improve it.” 

As for the actor, she knew Ganeriwal’s methods would suit her when the latter, instead of presenting a nutrition plan, asked her to list her daily meals. “So, instead of telling me, ‘This is what you have to eat’, she asked me what I do eat, and then began to make minor tweaks to rectify the follies in my diet. That approach seemed to be sustainable. I have seen the kind of diets my [contemporaries] follow. And I always feared taking to them, because I love food. Fortunately, this plan looked nothing like that.”  

Ganeriwal says lunch is among the most essential meals of the day. Pointing to how most individuals have a “pre-breakfast comprising seeds and nuts”, and then a wholesome breakfast soon after, she says individuals, including actors, often skip lunch. “At 5 pm, they will feel hungry and eat whatever they can get their hands on, and then have dinner after that,” she laments. 

For Pannu, she chalked out a different plan. She reduced her breakfast to “the bare minimum”. By lunch time, Pannu was always fairly hungry. “She’d have her lunch at around 12.30 pm, and that was a fairly huge and substantial meal. You must remember that even if you have access to the best foods, if you eat them at the wrong time, they are still toxic.”    

Pannu asserts that the strength she developed during the process of sprinting and lifting was acquired by natural sources of food. “Even if that meant eating what I hate, like the five varieties of sweet potatoes that Munmun would recommend, I’d still do it. Also, I don’t know why people have a fascination with quinoa, which is not even an Indian-produce. I was always told to eat local. When I filmed in Mumbai, I was given meals that are grown here. When I was in Rajasthan, I consumed the foods that are produced there. The whole process of gaining muscle mass was done so efficiently that, after the film, I was able to reduce muscle size without losing their shape and definition, by only by reducing the amount of food I consumed.” 

The efforts bore fruit — as Pannu shifted attention from the running-based film to her next, Shabaash Mithu — which sees her as a cricketer — she was already in peak health. “Compared to the training of that film, Shabaash Mithu was like a being on holiday. Since I was already so fit, all that I had to do was learn the techniques of cricket. That was a game of the mind, not the body.”