After giving birth to a baby girl last November, Alia Bhatt is back to yoga and her fitness regime, but is in no rush to look a certain way. “Listen to your body” is her mantra, something that she has learnt over the years as an actress and now as a mother. In a chat with Bombay Times, she particularly stressed on this aspect of body positivity. She told us, “I really want to talk about this. A lot of women struggle with their new appearance post pregnancy. They tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves to get back to looking a certain way. Everyone wants to lose weight and I can relate to that.”

She added, “I love food, I love to eat and I had to lose weight because films are a visual medium and you need to look healthy.”

Alia said, “You have to look appealing. In today’s age, with every picture appearing on social media, girls even before pregnancy are constantly worried about how they look. Women should take a moment to appreciate their bodies.”

The actress had a special message for new mothers like herself. She said, “So many pieces have to come together and things need to go right for you to bring a baby into the world. I want you to appreciate your body for keeping you safe during that time. It’s not just about getting back in shape, but building your immunity, and then, everything will follow.”

She continued, “Now when I work out, I don’t do it to become thin or make my waist look smaller. I do it to be healthy. The idea is to be fit and not starve yourself by following some unhealthy diet. I made a decision to never be hard on myself even if there’s extra bloating or chubbiness here and there. I am going to celebrate it. I won’t torture myself. Just take effort to remain healthy, like eat your veggies, include protein in your diet, do yoga and go for a walk. Do basic things to be healthy. Take a moment to appreciate yourself.”

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In a post she shared on Instagram last December, Alia wrote, “One and a half months post-partum, after gradually re-building my connection with my core, and with full guidance from my teacher, I was able to attempt this inversion. To my fellow mamas, listening to your body post delivery is key. Do not do anything your gut tells you not to. For the first week or two during my workouts, all I did was breathe, walk, find my stability and balance again (& I still have a long way to go). Take your time, appreciate what your body has done. After what my body did, I have taken a vow to never be hard on myself again. Childbirth is a miracle in every way & giving your body that love and support that it gave you is the least we can do (sic).”

A month and a half after her delivery, Alia Bhatt took to her social media handle to share an update on the progress she had made in her fitness journey. In her motivational post to all new mothers, she encouraged them to “listen to your body post-delivery, and not do anything that your gut tells you not to”.

And while the actor stated that the three weeks that followed her delivery were spent in “walking and finding my balance” alone, her yoga trainer, Anshuka Parwani attributes her ability to return to ship-shape post-pregnancy to her active lifestyle. “Alia is mindful of her habits, and for her, listening to her body is key. She was active from the get go, and her [training] pattern was similar to what Kareena [Kapoor Khan] followed,” says the trainer who catered to both actors during their pregnancies.

Admitting that pregnancy can be emotionally challenging for women who “haven’t seen their body in a certain way”, she says staying active is integral to positively impacting the parasympathetic nervous system. “This in turn affects your hormonal system as well.”

She encouraged Bhatt to work towards breaking a sweat during her training. “As long as we were being safe with the [choice of] exercise, we were still adhering to a holistic practice.  The suryanamaskars that we followed were challenging. Since it is easy to lose muscle mass during pregnancy, we continued to train with light weights to retain the muscle tone. Apart from resistance bands, body weight was also employed in her regimen. So, as long as the practice is alerted keeping one’s safety in mind, one can follow a well-rounded regimen.”

Weeks after her delivery, Bhatt caught the attention of social media users when she left Parwani’s yoga studio, with fans commending her for shedding her post-pregnancy weight in no time. However, Parwani says a discussion on weight-loss never occurred between the two. Using medical opinion to decipher when it would be safe for her to resume training, she brought Bhatt back to the studio after four weeks.

“It’s important to know that this period can vary for each woman. Some women may need three months of rest before resuming. With Alia, we worked on bringing the muscle-memory back, because returning to the original routine after nine months is hard. Building the mind-body connection, and core strength are the aspects that pose a challenge. Also, you need to be mindful of avoiding injuries both during and post-pregnancy. This is because the process of delivery alters the body and the muscle strength. Alia started with breath work, and then progressed to mobility training. Subsequently, we worked on core and pelvic floor training.”

Bhatt’s nutritionist Dr Siddhant Bhargava tweaked her diet frequently to ensure that she was on track to gaining no more than the nine to 11 kilos that is recommended during pregnancy. “While ensuring that [the health of the actor and the baby] were addressed, we’d take a call on adding or reducing [calories] after studying her scans. Alia’s diet comprised comfort food, whether that was dahi chawal, or anything else that she wanted. We usually calculate every gram of food, including the oils and vegetables she consumes. But during her pregnancy, we didn’t have a very strict routine.”

Like he would while creating a diet chart for a pregnant woman, Dr Bhargava added iron supplements, folic acid, and a good share of greens and fruits in her diet. Sugars, on the other hand, were eliminated. “There are too many myths associated with pregnancy, and women are encouraged to have large quantities of ghee and jaggery because these are considered healthy food items. These recommendations were born out of a good place, but if you consume these foods unchecked, it could cause trouble. All of these things lead to excessive weight gain. When you add extra sugar to a pregnant woman’s diet, the chances of developing gestational diabetes increases. The child could also develop insulin resistance. So, we did not disregard traditional nutritional advice, but found ways to work around them.”

While Dr Bhargava paid heed to the fact that the actor would want to return to shape to resume her work in the industry, weight-loss, he says, was not part of their conversations. “Only three weeks after her delivery did we take up any diet-centric conversations. Post-pregnancy, one’s calorie requirement increases. Breastfeeding takes away a large part of your caloric intake, and we wanted to make no compromises there, because we wanted the baby to receive the best nutrition. Now that it has been three months, we’ll start adding some restrictions to her diet.”

Prod him if Bhatt follows a low-carb diet, and he responds in the negative. “She consumes about 80 grams, which is equivalent to four rotis.”