Actor Sana Saeed recently opened up about her battle with bulimia, an eating disorder (ED) in which a person repeatedly eats too much and then forces themselves to vomit. She shared her journey on Instagram to help anyone suffering silently “feel less alone in their story”, she tells us, adding that growing up , she had never heard the terms ED or bulimia.

The actor, who made her debut as a child actor with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), says, “I carried so much shame, thinking I was the only one dealing with this,” adding, “For six years, I had no name for what I was going through. Eventually I came across a book that gave me the language for it. That’s when the healing began, and it took four years to recover.”

The pressure of losing weight, she says, began back in college: “That was the era of size zero, when skinny was in. My world complimented weight loss and nothing else, not how you felt, not whether you’d gone hungry all day.”

This also translated when she made her way back to the screen in Student Of The Year (2012). “Being on camera, being commented on, having your appearance be part of the job description... It can turn a normal relationship with your body into a much more complicated one if you’re not careful.”

But the turning point for her came when the reason for healing got bigger than herself. “I remember telling myself that if I got married, I’d never actually enjoy a date with my husband if I was busy worrying about food. If I had children, I never wanted to pass this on. I had to heal.”

Now, she’s permanently settled in Los Angeles, running her own production house with husband Csaba Wagner. “Starting over somewhere nobody knows your history is humbling, but it also cleared space for me to decide who I actually wanted to be,” she says.

The year 2022 ended on a high note for Sana Saeed, who took to Instagram to announce her engagement with beau Csaba Wagner in Los Angeles. The actress was taken by surprise when Csaba went down on his knees and proposed to her.

In an exclusive chat with BT, sharing her excitement, Sana says, “I expected it to happen sometime soon but didn’t know when. So, I was quite surprised. On December 28, we completed a year of dating and that’s when we got engaged. I got the pictures and posted them and the reel on December 31.”

So, what about marriage? “We are of course thinking of marriage. I want my family and my best friends to figure out their visas. We will also decide whether we want to get married in India or LA. So, that’s in the process. We are mainly looking at tying the knot by the end of this year. My family is most important and I am not getting married without them. We have decided to have a buffer time for us because it’s more likely that my mom, sisters, and brother-in-law will have their visas in place by the end of this year,” she replies.

Sana has been in LA for the past few years; she went there to study acting and filmmaking. She met Csaba, a sound designer and a director of a company, over a year ago and started dating soon after. Talking about how they met, she says, “He designs sound for films, games and commercials. It’s like two creative people coming together. ”

Sana says, “We have so many things in common – our love for movies and understanding cinema in depth. I met him on a dating app. I had never been on one until my friends here pushed me. The rest, as they say, is history. It’s quite interesting when we tell people that we met on a dating app”

The much-in-love couple is yet to meet each other’s families in person. Sana shares, “Csaba is an American citizen from Hungary and has lived in LA for more than 11 years. His family lives in Hungary. So far, we have met each other’s families virtually. I can communicate very little with his parents because they mostly speak Hungarian. So, I communicate with them in sign language with Csaba explaining everything to me (laughs!). Also, Hungary is on the border with Ukraine, so it’s very difficult for us to fly there right now. Hopefully, we will come to India very soon because my family is extremely excited about meeting him.”

While Csaba isn’t exposed to Bollywood, Sana plans to introduce him to Indian films starting with her most popular movie, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (KKHH), in which she played Shah Rukh Khan’s daughter Anjali.

The actress says, “The concept of watching a three-hour film is new to him. We have been wanting to watch the film together but something or the other keeps coming up. So, it’s definitely due and the first Indian film he will watch will be KKHH.”