Rana Daggubati had to gain 18 kg to look powerful

“When we undergo these kind of transformations, we tend to become injury-prone because we are not conditioned athletes,” says ­Rana Daggubati

“I am 32 years old and I’ve always been reasonably fit. But for my film Baahubali, I was required to gain 16 to 18 kilos. I weighed 90 kilos and it took me 12 weeks to achieve my target. To do so, I completely let go of cardio workouts and switched to heavy-weight lifting instead. My daily fitness regimen comprised two workout sessions – one in the morning that lasted for 30 to 40 minutes and the second one post shoot, for an hour. Since I had to build a lot of muscle, there was very little fat left on my body. In fact, I dropped four to five per cent of body fat in the process.

My diet too underwent a sea of change and was packed with carbs and proteins to hold the muscle. But I used to eat carbs only till 7pm. I’d consume eight to nine meals at regular intervals in a day, all of which were carefully measured and cooked mostly in olive oil.

However, since I packed much more weight on my body than my normal weight, every activity became more strenuous – I feel I could have done many action scenes more easily if I were lighter.

Additionally, I did a lot of weapon training too for the war scenes to look very Indian. Thankfully, this journey was smooth, although at the end of it I almost looked like an amateur body builder! Again I had to lose nearly 11 kilos for my film The Ghazi Attack, and getting back to my original body weight has been another challenge.

From HT Brunch, April 23, 2017

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