Office Star Mindy Kaling Lost Weight For All The Right Reasons

Mindy Kaling was one of the most popular stars of the hit NBC sitcom, The Office. She played Kelly, a vapid young woman with a tempestuous on-again, off-again relationship with Ryan, a particularly toxic coworker. Sometimes, it became difficult to separate the art from the artist: while Kaling is far from vapid, she did have a real-life, tempestuous relationship with Ryan actor BJ Novak, and some of their onscreen squabbles were actually inspired by their offscreen lovers’ tiffs.

These days, Kaling is borderline unrecognizable to her fandom because she has lost plenty of weight. Some are happy for her, believing that it’s always a good thing when their favorite stars take care of their health. Others think that she has lost too much weight due to sheer vanity and that she is pursuing unhealthy habits in the name of getting likes on social media. However, Kaling recently opened up about her motivations, and to the haters’ surprise, she lost weight for all the right reasons!

Why Mindy Kaling’s weight loss was controversial

Before we get to why Mindy Kaling decided to lose weight (and what her surprising secret is), we need to address the elephant in the room: why her weight loss was so controversial. For one thing, many think that she secretly started using Ozempic or another weight-loss drug and is lying about shedding pounds through healthy eating and exercise. To those who believe this, that would make the actor (who was never exactly fat) a hypocrite, a bit like the growing number of former “body positive” women who jumped at the chance to lose weight through a kind of cheat.

Mostly, though, the criticisms center on her motivation. Many of Mindy Kaling’s haters believe that she only lost weight because she is focused on vanity and desperately thinking that a new look will get her praise from fans online. On a related note, some think the vanity is tied to her career and that she wants to be skinnier because she will get cast in more roles. However, all of these assumptions are wrong, and you might be shocked by the real reason this Office star decided to lose weight!

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Worries about family health issues

Did Mindy Kaling actually decide to lose weight for vanity? She didn’t, although she’s the first to admit that, once upon a time, that would have been her chief motivation. The Office icon actually said as much in a recent interview with Bustle. The recent weight loss wasn’t driven by her need to look good, though, or a compulsive desire to get more likes on social media. No, Kaling lost all this weight because she didn’t want family health issues shortening her life!

In that same Bustle interview, she admitted that she has diabetes on both sides of her family. That puts her at an increased risk of developing this illness as she gets older, and the risks only get worse when she packs on any extra pounds. Fortunately, this works in reverse, too, and by losing weight, she lowers her risk of a diagnosis that could potentially become deadly. However, weight loss didn’t come naturally to Kaling, and she had to rethink her approach to exercise and eating in order to get the results she wanted.

Mindy Kaling’s weight loss secret? All things in moderation

As we said before, some cynics think that Mindy Kaling used Ozempic to lose weight. But she maintains that lost those pounds on her own, and we’re inclined to believe her. But that brings us back to the same question we always ask our own friends and family when they get a lot thinner: what’s your secret? In Kaling’s case, her secret involved unlearning some of the negative ideas that hold most of us back when we dream of getting down to something smaller than our current size.

In a Today interview back in 2022, Mindy Kaling admitted something most of us would find quite relatable: she really loved food, and she didn’t want to swap out her favorite dishes for healthier alternatives in the name of losing weight. Instead, she simply started practicing portion control and eating a little less of her favorite foods. Eventually, she did start eating a bit healthier (like eating more veggies and less red meat), but she’s the first to admit that she still indulges in her cravings from time to time. Ultimately, though, the first step in her weight loss journey was realizing that she didn’t have to sacrifice the foods she loved in order to get the body that she wanted.

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Losing weight, one step at a time (literally!)

As you might imagine, Mindy Kaling didn’t lose weight simply through eating healthier; she also began to exercise more. Just as she had to unlearn what it meant to eat healthier, though, she needed to unlearn some of her assumptions about exercise. In that same Today interview, she admitted that she held off on exercising because she thought that meant she’d have to do exhausting, 45-minute runs each and every day. Ironically, she didn’t get the results she desired until she realized that she could, quite literally, lose weight one step at a time. 

Kaling gave up on the idea of doing running of any kind, and she threw out the idea of meticulously tracking her steps. Instead, she just started going for a short walk whenever she had the time to do so. In this way, she made regular exercise a part of her daily routine. Between this and eating a little better, she was able to ditch the pounds and finally achieve the body of her dreams!