From high school bullies to navigating unrealistic Hollywood standards to losing baby weight, Mindy Kaling has been open about her health journey over the years.
Many fans met the comedian through her character on The Office, Kelly Kapoor, which debuted in 2005. In addition to recurring on screen, Kaling was in the writer’s room. During a season 5 episode, Kelly went on a diet inspired by Beyoncé — replacing meals with a cleanse that consists of lemons, cayenne pepper, water and maple syrup.
“We always think of a diet with a big groan,” Kaling said of the story line on NPR in 2011. “But I think diets are fun. I think it is an American pastime for a lot of women. I don’t know. I think that Kelly thinks of dieting as a fun hobby to have.”
That same year, the writer released her first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? In the candid memoir, she wrote about creating a “makeshift diet formula” in high school after a classmate told her she would “be really pretty if you lost weight.” As a result, Kaling “would eat exactly half of what was put in front of me, and no dessert.”
“Without exercising, I lost thirty pounds in about two months,” she wrote. “I remember waking up in the morning and looking down at my fingers and seeing they had shrunk overnight. Suddenly I was freezing all the time, like those skinny girls in movie theaters are always complaining about, and needed to sleep with an extra wool blanket. My face thinned out, and my belly went away. … I thought [my bully] Duante would finally leave me alone, but he didn’t.”
The actress explained that she “stayed at a pretty normal weight until college” when she gained 35 pounds during the first six months of her freshman year. She dropped the weight by introducing exercise into her life, but declared she would be “chubby for life” for four reasons: she has “no hobbies except dieting,” she has “no discipline,” men she’s “dated have been into me the way I am” and she’s “pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.”
As Kaling’s star rose, she became known for fashion — both as her character on The Mindy Project and on the red carpet.
“If there was an awards show or I was shooting something, I used to be the person that was like, I have to stop eating these foods, or six weeks beforehand, I’m only going to juice,” Kaling admitted on Today in May 2022, adding that she now opts not to restrict her diet, but eats in moderation. “I’m never going to stop being a foodie. I’m never going to be someone who can just have spinach and salmon every day. I just am really for the first time in my life, trying moderation, and I love it.”
The producer added that she no longer thinks of exercise as a punishment.
“Sometimes I’ll be like, ‘Well, I have four different times today where I have 10 minutes so let’s just walk instead of sitting down and checking Instagram,’” she explained. “So instead of it being like one chunk of exercise in the beginning of the day or none at all, I’m now just deciding that I’m going to be a more active person all the time.”
Kaling’s new approach to wellness came after she navigated losing baby weight twice. She welcomed daughter Katherine in 2017 and son Spencer in 2020.
Scroll through for more from Kaling:
From high school bullies to navigating unrealistic Hollywood standards to losing baby weight, Mindy Kaling has been open about her health journey over the years.
Many fans met the comedian through her character on The Office, Kelly Kapoor, which debuted in 2005. In addition to recurring on screen, Kaling was in the writer’s room. During a season 5 episode, Kelly went on a diet inspired by Beyoncé — replacing meals with a cleanse that consists of lemons, cayenne pepper, water and maple syrup.
“We always think of a diet with a big groan,” Kaling said of the story line on NPR in 2011. “But I think diets are fun. I think it is an American pastime for a lot of women. I don’t know. I think that Kelly thinks of dieting as a fun hobby to have.”
That same year, the writer released her first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? In the candid memoir, she wrote about creating a “makeshift diet formula” in high school after a classmate told her she would “be really pretty if you lost weight.” As a result, Kaling “would eat exactly half of what was put in front of me, and no dessert.”
“Without exercising, I lost thirty pounds in about two months,” she wrote. “I remember waking up in the morning and looking down at my fingers and seeing they had shrunk overnight. Suddenly I was freezing all the time, like those skinny girls in movie theaters are always complaining about, and needed to sleep with an extra wool blanket. My face thinned out, and my belly went away. … I thought [my bully] Duante would finally leave me alone, but he didn’t.”
The actress explained that she “stayed at a pretty normal weight until college” when she gained 35 pounds during the first six months of her freshman year. She dropped the weight by introducing exercise into her life, but declared she would be “chubby for life” for four reasons: she has “no hobbies except dieting,” she has “no discipline,” men she’s “dated have been into me the way I am” and she’s “pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.”
As Kaling’s star rose, she became known for fashion — both as her character on The Mindy Project and on the red carpet.
“If there was an awards show or I was shooting something, I used to be the person that was like, I have to stop eating these foods, or six weeks beforehand, I’m only going to juice,” Kaling admitted on Today in May 2022, adding that she now opts not to restrict her diet, but eats in moderation. “I’m never going to stop being a foodie. I’m never going to be someone who can just have spinach and salmon every day. I just am really for the first time in my life, trying moderation, and I love it.”
The producer added that she no longer thinks of exercise as a punishment.
“Sometimes I’ll be like, ‘Well, I have four different times today where I have 10 minutes so let’s just walk instead of sitting down and checking Instagram,'” she explained. “So instead of it being like one chunk of exercise in the beginning of the day or none at all, I’m now just deciding that I’m going to be a more active person all the time.”
Kaling’s new approach to wellness came after she navigated losing baby weight twice. She welcomed daughter Katherine in 2017 and son Spencer in 2020.
Scroll through for more from Kaling:
Credit: Ron Tom/Nbc-Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock
2005
Kaling became a well-known comedy writer and actress after The Office premiered.
Credit: Picture Perfect/Shutterstock
2009
The star wasn’t afraid to take fashion risks as she navigated her own body image issues.
“On TV, if you were really thin, then you could be the lead. Otherwise, you had to be like 250 pounds, and you had to be the slapstick comic relief,” she explained on Good Morning America in 2021. “But what was crazy, what was left out, is just like this range of people which is a majority of American women over the age of 24. What if you’re like a [size] 12 and you want to just live your life and look cute and date?”
Credit: J Althaus/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock
2012
Kaling’s character on The Mindy Project, Mindy Lahiri, became a fashion and body image icon in her own right, once declaring: “First of all, I am not overweight; I fluctuate between chubby and curvy.”
Credit: Ken Matsui/UPI/Shutterstock
2015
In her second book, Why Not Me?, released in 2015, Kaling wrote about a 21-day juice cleanse ahead of a Mindy Project scene in a whipped-cream bathing suit with James Franco.
“Like every heterosexual woman and gay man in the country, I think James is a very mysterious and sexy weirdo … I didn’t want him to feel my bra-strap pudge on the set,” she wrote.
While she loved that she got to dress like “a slutty teenage hitchhiker and it felt great,” she spent her days laying “in my bed, grinding my teeth, waiting for dawn to break.”
Credit: Courtesy of Mindy Kaling/Instagram
2017
Kaling welcomed her daughter in 2017, opting not to reveal any details about the father of her kids.
“After I had my daughter I had to shoot a movie, like, two months later, so I was very much like, ‘Just give me grilled salmon and sautéed spinach. I’m going to eat that for three months,’” she recalled to Entertainment Tonight in 2022 of losing the baby weight.
Credit: Mindy Kaling
2019
“IDK who needs to hear this but,” the Four Weddings & A Funeral producer wrote via social media in July, “WEAR A BIKINI IF YOU WANT TO WEAR A BIKINI. You don’t have to be a size 0.”
Credit: Courtesy of Mindy Kaling/Instagram
2020
One year later, she gave birth to son Spencer in September 2020.
Credit: Courtesy of Mindy Kaling/Instagram
2021
Kaling posted a pic in a one-piece bathing suit in August 2021.
“I feel like in conversations about fitness and exercise, if you’re going to be talking about someone who’s healthy and fit, you have to be a hard body with, like, a six-pack. But that’s not really how it works, and I have learned to embrace [my body] in the past six months [since having a baby],” she noted to Shape three months earlier.
Credit: Courtesy of Mindy Kaling/Instagram
2021
The Sex Lives of College Girls co-creator joked about wearing “stretchy knits post-Thanksgiving” in November 2021.
Credit: Courtesy of Mindy Kaling/Instagram
2022
Kaling joked about dropping “thirst trap pics” with her new figure.
Credit: Courtesy of Mindy Kaling/Instagram
2022
“I eat what I like to eat. If I do any kind of restrictive diet, it never really works for me. I just eat less of it,” she explained to ET in April 2022. “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.”
Credit: Courtesy of Mindy Kaling/Instagram
2022
Kaling’s thinner figure made waves online in December 2022 when she rocked a white dress for a holiday party.
“I never wear winter white! I was always so worried about it not being flattering and also about dropping food on it,” she explained via Instagram.
