In June this year, actor Genelia Deshmukh kick-started a six-week long fitness journey and documented the same on her vlogs on YouTube titled #GoGeneGo. Her stringent fitness regime finally came to an end on July 29 and she is elated with the results.
While she’s a regular at the gym, Deshmukh tells News18 that a six-week regime was important to help her take a step closer to her fitness goals. “I felt like I needed a much more concentrated journey to focus on myself and my health while continuing to do other things,” she says.
She reveals that she negligence in terms of diet, proper sleep and lifestyle in the past six months also nudged her to take her health more seriously, as she adds, “Going to the gym was something that was really tough. I started it post the lockdown because of the encouragement from Riteish (Deshmukh; husband-actor). I used to look for ways to bunk rather than being diligent and regular with it. I just wanted to get back into a routine.”
During the first week of her fitness journey, she took to social media and posted that she felt “unsure, unconfident, uncertain” during the process as she also got back to shooting after a decade. The 34-year-old elaborates, “I had to wake up every morning at 5am, work out, go to drop the kids to school and then go straight to shoot from there. Then I would shoot for an entire day and come back home at 9pm. I would try to finish my steps either at the shoot or after I came back. I would only sleep after that.”
Quiz her if getting back to films was also a reason to adopt a fitter lifestyle, and Deshmukh says, “It was definitely encouraging but it wasn’t the only reason. It was me not wanting to glamourise fitness. There are moments in my videos where you’ll see me doing steps in my night clothes.”
The Tere Naal Love Ho Gaya (2012) actor states that her takeaway from the past six weeks was to not let fitness take a back seat even amid a hectic schedule. “I want to say that for mums, fitness tends to take a back foot. That’s something that needs to change. You need to give time to fitness and yourself because it’s only going to help you,” she ends.
