Indian actress Pooja Bhatt is proving that she is only getting more vibrant and full of energy with age. Bhatt, 51, shared a black and white Instagram reel of herself wearing a black one-piece swimsuit, getting drenched under a beautiful waterfall. "Back to my reality! ✨" she captioned the post. "So happy to see this ❤️❤️," commented fellow actress and pal Sangeeta Bijlani. How does the veteran star stay fit, happy, and healthy inside and out? Here are the lifestyle philosophies she swears by.
Bhatt's go-to healthy meal is a brown rice bowl with protein and vegetables. "Rice that is milled and polished to remove the bran and germ components, leaving only the starchy endosperm, is known as white rice," say the experts at Harvard Health. "But that refining process also strips away key nutrients. Compared with white rice, brown rice contains much higher amounts of fiber, certain B vitamins (B1, B3, B6, and B9), magnesium, potassium, and iron. Research suggests that swapping white rice for brown rice may improve blood sugar levels and help with weight control."
Bhatt is proud to play older-women roles that are still romantic. "Women are made to believe that this means the end of their life, the end of desire and the end of sexuality," she says. "But to be able to play a woman who is in the throes of that and still has her impulses and follows them through is something that is a rarity."
Bhatt is an animal lover who considers her pets non-negotiables in any relationships. "If I get married again, it has to be that someone who can go through life with me and my six dogs and four cats," she says. "Any man I need has to want to be with me — one day I will be placid and another day I can be like a tsunami, so I say that if you can't deal with a tsunami, don't even come close to me."
Bhatt wants women in the industry—and out—to support each other. "We are our own worst critics," she says. "If you're not going to be kind to yourself, nobody's going to be crying for us. So, I think empathy begins with yourself. Treat yourself right. Allow yourself to fail. And then the world will be a bit more accommodating. I think that women fall into that trap more often than not. So it's not something that only men thrust upon us. We somewhere take that and we kind of reinforce that. We do that by really not having each other's backs in many ways. Making other women pay the price for what we could not be or what was some way thrust upon us."
Bhatt no longer drinks alcohol, and is open about her journey through sobriety. "We try to cover up many things. But four years ago when I decided to quit drinking, I decided to be open about it," she says. "I began my career with a film like Daddy, which was about a young girl getting her father who's an alcoholic to stop drinking. And there I was dealing with the same problem. I reached out to people to let them know that it's something that could happen to anyone. Women especially need to be a little bit more open about that. And I was overwhelmed by the response that I got from random strangers."
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