The Dangal Diet

K. Sunil Thomas gets the dope on Aamir Khan's food and nutrition regimen for his various looks in the phenomenally successful movie.

- K. Sunil Thomas

There's a lot to rave about Aamir Khan. Right now, of course, it is the super success of his latest film Dangal, which streamed away the once-rare 100 crore mark over its opening weekend. The film, based on the real life saga of a wrestling family from Haryana, is already one of the biggest hits of all-time in Hindi cinema, up there with Khan's own 3 Idiots as well as Dhoom 3 (beside fellow Khan Salman's Sultan, ironically, another wrestling-based biopic).

Less talked about, yet already a viral phenomenon online, is his formidable body transformation for the film. To play various stages in the life of his character Mahavir Singh Phogat, Aamir had to do something dramatic, even by the standards of a perfectionist actor like him. Instead of building up muscle to look like the younger Phogat and then easily laying on the kilos to play the role of the older guy, Aamir told director Nitesh Tiwari that he wanted to do it the hard way – put on weight first to play the older role, and then emerge fit and buffed for the younger role!

In his own words, “Though I went through body building to get a certain look for my film, this was one of the most dramatic body transformations (I have done) so far. The film has two phases - for one part, I had to put on weight. So, I weighed 96kgs with 38 per cent body fat and then I had to reduce to 9 per cent body fat within five months. That was a huge task.”