Exclusive: Vidya Balan says ‘offered roles I wasn’t before’ after weight loss

Vidya Balan returned to the big screen with the third instalment of the Bhool Bhulaiyaa franchise. Recently, the actor also opened up about her body image, embracing her unique journey, and how her relationship with her body has evolved over the years. In an exclusive interview with India Today Digital, Vidya revealed how, after her weight loss, she started receiving offers for roles she hadn’t been considered for before.
Looking back, Vidya shared that her journey toward self-acceptance began after The Dirty Picture. “I came to that point many years ago when actually my body had stopped responding to anything and this was post The Dirty Picture. I went through some hormonal issues, and whatever I did I was only swelling up more and more, but I told myself I shouldn’t let that hold me back. I realised that this is the body that is keeping me alive, and I am only sending it hate because I wanted it to be what it is not,” she told India Today Digital.
Vidya added that she found acceptance with the help of a healer she had worked with for 13 years. She shared, “My relationship with my body started changing. I started giving gratitude to the body. My health started improving because I think we don’t realise that it’s not just exercise, food, sleep, and water, but also the emotion that we put into our body, and a large part of this is because we hold in so much. Sometimes people put on weight because of fear, while some shed because of that. All of us express things differently and there is no right or wrong. It is impossible to have a yardstick to measure bodies. I know it is there, but I think it is wrong.”
She also explained that she learnt to embrace her body’s fluctuations, accepting herself fully and allowing that self-confidence to shine. However, she admitted that it did bother her when she couldn’t lose weight despite her efforts.
“I think I started embracing my body through fluctuations. I embrace myself and put myself out, doesn’t matter how I was feeling within, and that only helped me accept myself more,” she stressed.
Vidya continued, “The more I exercised, the more weight I put on. When I got in touch with a health institute, I went to them to figure out if I had an underlined medical issue, something to do with my gut. I had acidity very often. They told me that mine was not body fat but inflammation and that was the first thing that went. I had reached a stage where it was not about the weight, but I came across a life-changing revelation. I was putting more stress on the body, the reason why it was inflamed.”
She emphasised that a welcome by-product of this is that she was able to shed weight, but she was not chasing that.
However, has that changed the way the industry offers her work? Vidya revealed, “I stopped encouraging any comments about my body a few years ago. Now, of course, a lot of people are telling me you have lost weight, and I say thank you. I will say that I am being offered certain kinds of roles that I wasn’t being offered before. But having said that, because I have never seen it as a limitation, there has never been a dearth of work. I remember Zoya Akhtar telling me that I was the sexiest at my biggest. I hold on to that compliment because I am still trying to understand it fully. It sounded great.”
Vidya is yet to announce her next project. Before Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3, she was seen in Do Aur Do Pyaar.