Meet Dr Anjali Mukerjee; Celebrity Nutritionist Who Trained Lara Dutta During Her Beauty Pageant Days

It's been a wonderful experience knowing Lara (Dutta) during her beauty pageant days in 2000. I wish good things for her in her life and hope that she keeps glowing and looks radiant just the way she did when she was announced Miss Universe, says an emotional Dr Anjali Mukerjee, a celebrity dietitian who was an official nutritionist to the Femina Miss India contestants for 8 years consecutively (1997;2004).

It;s been 17 years from the time she counseled Lara for the beauty pageant. Interestingly, Anjali discovers that the actress is currently staying in her building in Bandra, Mumbai. She moved in to my building recently I guess as I could hear some whispers from the society members saying that Lara has been shifted here. While she stays in the A wing, I stay in the B wing and we haven;t really bumped into each other, says Anjali who;s met Lara only a few times after she won the Miss Universe title at various parties and events.

On the occasion of the actress cum producer;s 39th birthday today (April 16), Anjali, who is the Founder Director of Health Total , reminisces the good old days when she mentored Lara and her co-contestants including Priyanka Chopra (who won the Miss World title) while they went through an exclusive diet training under Anjali and her team.

Lara;s hotel stay and strict diet

Anjali recollects that 30 days prior to the beauty pageant, all the contestants including Lara were relocated to a hotel. Here, they had to follow a strict diet such that they looked in the best of their shapes on the big day.

The entire menu of the hotel was changed. She was not allowed to eat any hotel food, but only healthy and nutritious meals suggested by us to the chefs of the hotel, says Anjali.

Gulping down haldi-amla juice

Exercising and having vegetable juices were mandatory for all the contestants. Nobody wants to wake up and have amla-haldi juice straight out of bed! Therefore, we put through Lara and the other girls through a power point presentation at one of the banquets in the hotel making them understand the benefits of having vegetable juices, remembers Anjali. She mentions that all girls would have a tall glass of a red coloured juice comprising a beetroot, five carrots and two tomatoes after their morning exercise routines, which would help them detox. Soon after gulping down their glass of juice the girls would rush for the photo shoot.

Achieving toned body

The award winning nutritionist mentions that Lara already looked fit when she first met her. She stood out from the contestants; lot. She was articulate, had a perfect diction, accent and voice which beamed confidence, says Anjali who was impressed with the one to one meeting she had with Lara. She further describes it saying, Once she came to my clinic at Colaba, Mumbai. She told me that she wanted to focus on her health all her life and not just for the contest sake. While Lara looked fit and athletic, Anjali took to toning her body with proper diet chart.

Lunch-munch

All the girls were subjected to a healthy menu consisting of bean sprouts, clear chicken bok choy broth, whole wheat bread, piece of meat ; fish or chicken etc.

Lara had a sweet tooth

Actresses and models usually avoid having sweet; however Lara had a sweet tooth! In order to avoid the ill effects of sugar intake, the dietitian would help her with a dose of chromium. Workouts lead to low chromium levels in the body and thus one gets craving for sugar. But if an individual intakes sugar, it would undo the good effects of the exercise on your body. Thus, we used to give Lara chromium dosages or let her have natural sugar like dates and kishmish.

Apart from chromium, the actress would also have selenium intakes. It was also must as she would end up applying a lot of makeup, which has lead content in it leading to acne and selenium would work antiacne.

Lara Dutta-Priyanka Chopra and the cheat diet!

Lara and Priyanka apparently bonded well during their hotel stay. Anjali recollects that they would team up with co-contestants and would have late night parties in their rooms. They would also ask waiters to get desserts secretly in their rooms, however Anjali;s team would receive the entire list of all the orders and most of them would be sweets, she reminisces with a laughter.