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Mindy Kaling Reacts to Fascination Over Her Weight Loss Transformation
For Mindy Kaling, staying healthy is a long-term project.
“When I was younger, I would want to lose weight because of vanity reasons," she told Bustle in an interview published in May. "Now I want to lose weight or have lost weight because I want to stave off things like diabetes.”
As the mother of Kit, 8, Spencer, 5, and Anne, 2, quipped, she needs to "live at least 20 more years."
But the 46-year-old also gets that, because she's famous, the more visible results of her efforts to feel good on the inside are going to attract more attention than her blood sugar levels.
"I know people are really interested in my body and the changes in my body," the Never Have I Ever creator told People in 2023, "and I think it's flattering—and sometimes it's just a little much."
And she's been on both sides of that coin, having her body scrutinized for being one way and another.
Kaling once recalled being in a writers room in the mid-'00s where it was suggested that another person's character should tell hers that she could lose 15 pounds.
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
"This is my greatest insecurity and someone just called it out," she said on Good Morning America in 2021. "It's really devastating."
She's also been criticized for losing weight, as if she was betraying fans who liked her just the way she was.
"It’s sometimes no fun when one of your favorite actors loses weight," Kaling acknowledged to Bustle. "You have an idea of what they were like when you grew attached to them, and it made them endear themselves to you."
It's no fun to be on the receiving end of that, either. But, she added, "I truly understand it, as someone who consumes pop culture.”
So, why not her, too? And yet, Kaling has been way too busy actually being on her wellness journey to pay too much attention to all that noise. Here is what she has shared about her efforts to feel great and, if she happens to like how she looks at the same time, so be it:
Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Feld Entertainment, Inc.
Working Out Is Win-Win
"If there's one thing I've learned about working out," Mindy Kaling told E! News in 2022, "it's that I always feel happy and joyful after I do it."
Mindy Kaling/Instagram
Just Get Moving, Mom
Since the birth of her first baby, Katherine, in 2018, "Just looking for small windows of time and making the most of those has completely changed things for me," the Mindy Project alum, now a mom of three, said. "I will go on a two-mile walk after dropping my kid off at school and call a friend from high school to catch up on the phone. It doesn't feel like I'm working out, but I am, and I enjoy that I get to socialize too."
As she quipped to People in 2023, "I basically live in workout clothes so I can get it in, get an extra mile in."
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What "Being Fit" Looks Like
"In my 20s, I had this very certain idea of what 'being fit' really meant," Mindy told E!. "You had to run a seven-minute mile and eat this amount of carbs and proteins. It took me a long time to realize that there are lots of different ways to be fit."
There are even assumptions of what a trainer should look like, she added, and there are people of "all different shapes and sizes with specialties in different types of movement."
Mindy Kaling/Instagram
Figuring Out Food Postpartum
With a movie to shoot two months after giving birth to her daughter in 2018, "I was very much like, 'Just give me grilled salmon and sautéed spinach,'" Mindy recalled to Entertainment Tonight in 2022. "I'm going to eat that for three months.'"
After son Spencer was born in 2020, however, she didn't have the motivation of imminently being on camera to refine her eating habits.
But "any kind of restrictive diet, it never really works for me," the Office alum said. "I just eat less of it…I wish there was something more juicy or dynamic about the way that I've lost a little bit of weight, but that's the way I've done it."
Matt Winkelmeyer/VF23/WireImage for Vanity Fair
Balancing What's On Her Plate
"I know what I’m supposed to be eating—you know, more leafy green vegetables and keeping red meat to a minimum," Mindy told Prevention in 2024, the same year she welcomed her youngest child, Anne, "and for me personally, I also try to keep dairy at a minimum."
She tries to stick to her meal plan "not when I have all the time in the world," she explained, "but especially when I feel stressed out, because that’s when I feel like I make a lot of my big health mistakes."
Leon Bennett/Getty Images
Stronger Than Yesterday
Mindy knew the time would come when she had to add strength-training to her routine, "but so much of the focus when I was younger was, 'How do I be skinny?'" she recalled. Now she's all about those weights and is "seeing first-hand just how important it is."
Mindy Kaling/Instagram
It's Not a Numbers Game
“I don’t weigh myself," Mindy said on Today in 2022. “To me, the most amazing thing is that all my clothes kind of fit. It’s so easy to get ready and that's great. I feel happy about that.”
Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
Confidence Rising
Up to logging 20 miles a week of either hiking or running, "I'm feeling really confident in my body these days," Mindy told People in 2023, "which is not something that I've been able to say for my whole life, unfortunately. I feel great."
Mindy Kaling/Instagram
What "Healthy" Really Means
"For me," Mindy explained to People in 2022, "healthy is working out, moving my body a lot, keeping hydrated, and then not having negative connotations around working out and making me feel like if I don't do this, then I won't be something else."
Mindy Kaling/Instagram
Rules for 2026
Cheers to all of it.
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