What is the secret of Madhuri Dixit’s glowing beauty and fitness? A wife, a mother, a superstar actress - Madhuri manages to maintain a balance between all these roles and yet gets the time to work out. How does she do it? We throw our queries at her and she bats them out of the park like a veteran. Her replies offer an alternative to the pain and gain routine followed by most stars. She shows us that exercise can be fun too. Excerpts...Fit for lifeI’m health conscious; you can call me a fitness freak. During a film’s promotion we begin our work early in the morning and by the time we go back home, we are exhausted. We don’t even get to work during these times. But we do some trickery to compensate. For example when I can’t work out, I get strict about my diet. I keep a close watch on my calorie intake. For example, if one usually eats 1200 or 2000 calories, then I go slow during those days. I don’t sponge off the full plate; I leave myself somewhat hungry. Then, when I get back to working out I go easy on my diet.Dance = ExerciseEarlier, I was always dancing because I had numerous dance numbers in films. So I never consciously had to work out. But now I don’t do so many films. So fitness has become a big issue. You step out of your home, sit in a car and reach your work place, where again you sit through the day. Then you come back home and sit in front of the TV. So you are sitting most of the time. That’s why a strict fitness protocol is a must these days.Rule bookMy favourite fitness discipline is dance and then comes cardio. I do cardio and upper and lower body exercises on alternate days. You need to do cardio to burn calories. But you also need to develop your muscles and that’s why you need to do weights. Your body shouldn’t get accustomed to a certain type of exercise; you need to change the routine. In between you should take heavier dumbbells and then get back to your regular ones. That way your muscles get a kick. When you exercise, you burn calories. But it doesn’t mean that you can eat sugar or sweets. I had to take great care of my diet and exercise during pregnancy because there’s no other option to stay fit.Hubby horseI keep bouncing off fitness ideas to my husband Sriram Nene. Since he’s from the medical field, his knowledge is great. But he loves to eat and luckily never puts on weight. As compared to him, I need to stay conscious about my diet. We often go work out together at the gym. I don’t have a personal trainer. There are trainers in the gym and I take their help. I’m constructing a gym at home now.DancerciseIn our country we love to dance while we find exercise boring. So we have found this great way for people to enjoy their exercise. I told my husband that dance is a form of exercise, just like cardio. Your heartbeats increase when you do dance moves, you use your limbs, do sit ups and perform so many movements. So he thought why not create a video. People already know the steps in my songs like Chane ke khet mein or Aaja nachle. So I took those iconic movements but instead of making them ‘dancey’, I conceptualised them like an exercise. We combined dance with exercise to create dancercise. Dancercise is a cardio exercise. You can check it out on my website. Taekwondo funMy children (Arin and Ryan) don’t need to exercise because they are running around all day. They play tennis and squash and also go swimming. In the US they used to play soccer. There were so many types of water sports there. I also sent them to Taekwondo classes. That keeps you fit because they make you run there. I used to stay back and watch. Then I thought why sit idle for an hour, why not learn it? They had a family class where parents and children could learn together. I joined that and started learning Taekwondo.Child menuChildren run around all day so their body must get adequate nutrition. Sometimes it gets difficult to make them eat. You have to make the food interesting or understand their psychology. For example, my elder son Arin can’t eat if you put all the food together on his plate. He starts feeling, “Oh my God, it’s too much!” So I make it interesting for him, and serve him small portions at a time. As for my younger son Ryan, he has no issues. He’s a happy-go-lucky kid. If we go on a long trip, I keep nutribars with me. Instead of buying them burgers, I give them these. Nutribars also accompany me on my shoots because often you don’t get healthy food and they come in handy.US vs usPeople are more disciplined in the US. Here, we have social issues. For example, if you are going over to someone’s place for dinner, you first come back from work, freshen up and then go. The traffic here is so bad that by the time you reach your host’s place, it’s 9.30 pm. Then, you chit-chat and eat only later. That’s why we have so many medical issues.In the US everyone isdone with their dinner by 8:30 pm.
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