Parineeti Chopra Getting Real About Heartbreak To Her Lifelong Struggle With Weight

- Saumyaa Vohra

When Parineeti bursts into Le15 Café in Mumbai, post-shoot, her energy is infectious. The music, that’d been tempered for the sake of the interview, is upped a few decibels again when she states she has no intention of doing this on an empty stomach. When she uses the phrase “I’m a foodie!” it’s not a generic, empty, celebrity statement—it’s a theorem proved hence by the flurry of platters, laden with everything from caramel tarts to eggs Benedict that seem to materialise on the table Beauty and the Beast style, accompanied by the fond smiles of waiters that know her well. “You have to eat this!” she declares, as she spoons some darkened chocolate into liquescent salted caramel and ‘makes the perfect bite’ for us. As her limbs extend across the table, ladling morsels of a miscellany of food onto the plates of each crew member, it becomes clear that Parineeti is a star in the original sense of the word. We move away from the impromptu smorgasbord to finally get down to our chat, and, as she dabs away with tissue at some egg yolk that had sprung out in rebellion from her poached egg onto her dark dress, she mentions that (despite the dramatic weight loss that got everyone’s tongue a-waggin‘) she never quite renounced her love for food—just changed its ways. “I used to be an emotional eater—and a closet eater, at that. I’d eat when I was alone, pounding food. I was that person.” Changing that was doubly taxing because “I was never motivated enough to go to the gym. Even as a child, I didn’t care for sports. I hate that physical strain on my body—so I’ve got to look after what I eat all the more.”