At 83 kilos, Bilwaa Vikram Sathe was not just lugging around extra weight; she was carrying the invisible weight of low self-esteem, energy dips, and the slow leak of self-belief. But somewhere between feeling stuck and scrolling past yet another “before and after” post, a switch flipped. This was not going to be another "maybe next month" moment. This was her starting line.

“I felt invisible,” she admits. “It was not about fitting into jeans. It was about not recognising the person in the mirror anymore.” However, there were no crash diets or detox teas; Bilwaa went headfirst into understanding her body. She learnt the science behind fat loss, protein balance, and how not all calories are created equal. With a meticulous regimen of fasted cardio, strength training, and a vegetarian, high-protein, low-fat diet capped at around 1500 calories a day, she began to chip away at the old version of herself.

The numbers speak for themselves: from 83 kg and 42 per cent body fat, she is now down to 62 kg with a leaner 30 per cent fat composition. Her sights are firmly set on hitting 18 per cent, not for Instagram clout, but because she knows she can. “It is still a work in progress, but I have built something I am proud to fight for every day.”

But the journey was not just measured in kilos or inches. Fat refused to budge from stubborn areas like her belly. Some days she would under-eat out of sheer lack of appetite, unknowingly stalling her progress. And like most of us in the age of curated timelines, comparison crept in. “Seeing others progress faster made me doubt myself sometimes,” she says. But instead of spiralling, she adapted. She stopped pausing and started pivoting.

Emotional hurdles added another layer, disrupted friendships and personal triggers threatened her focus. “But I learnt to detach with intention, not bitterness,” she says. A lesson that sounds more like spiritual wisdom than fitness advice, but it worked.

Her motivation came from within. “I visualised the strongest, most confident version of myself. That became my standard.” She tracked progress through strength, energy, and mindset rather than being a slave to the bathroom scale.

Her workout: six days of strength training with one muscle group per day, five days of fasted incline cardio, and a singular goal to preserve muscle while shedding fat. Her diet was vegetarian, structured, and stubbornly consistent, especially to avoid late-night hunger traps.

Now she feels lighter, stronger, and sharper and not just physically. She is the kind of person who no longer hides from mirrors, who wears what she wants, and who has discovered that discipline in one area spills into all the rest.

For those wondering where to begin, she has got some golden advice: “Start, even if it is imperfect. Eat enough protein. Forget the scale. Train your mind like you train your body. And do not do it for the gram; do it for you.”