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Bhakti Mathur

From a shy stay-at-home wife and mother to a world-stage bodybuilder, celebrity trainer, mountaineer, DJ and photographer, Kiran Dembla’s transformation is a reminder that life is what we make it.
Her journey shows there is no age limit to starting life’s greatest adventures and is captured in her 2024 biography, Fitness Machine: The Extraordinary Life of Kiran Dembla.
Dembla grew up in Agra, India, in a middle-class family. She had a passion for music, performing on stage and earning a master’s degree in Indian classical music. At 23, she got married and soon had two children, daughter Priyanka and son Kshitij.
“After marriage, my life was confined to the four walls of my house,” Dembla recalls. “Every day, I’d wake up, clean and cook. Ten monotonous years went by. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything I loved. I was tired of asking my husband for money for every little thing. I began asking myself, ‘What if I were financially independent? What did I want from life?’”

She began teaching music to children from home, but that was not enough. The stress and unhappiness manifested physically. At the age of 33, she weighed 76kg (168 pounds) – 24kg more than when she got married. Then she began having excruciating headaches.
“On some days, I felt as though my head would explode,” she says.
In 2006, she collapsed. The diagnosis: a blood clot on the right side of her brain.
“My husband and I were shocked,” says Dembla, who was put on medication for the following two years. “The medicines made me groggy and added to my weight gain. The doctor explained that a possible cause was excessive stress.”
On hearing the diagnosis, she thought, “Who would wake up at sunrise and cook for the family? Who would do the laundry, iron the clothes, buy the groceries? How long would it take for me to recover completely? Would I recover at all?”
This was her lowest point – a brutal awakening that her body had literally broken down from putting herself last.

Dembla was determined to take charge of her health. At the urging of a friend, she learned to swim.
“As I took my first dip in a pool, a feeling of ecstasy engulfed me. I had only worn traditional Indian attire till then; feeling comfortable in swimwear took days,” she recalls. Soon she was swimming three times a week.
Taking up yoga gave her peace of mind. “The asanas [poses] and pranayama [breathwork] calmed me down.”
Soon she joined a local gym. “In the beginning, I felt very [self-]conscious and walked on the treadmill. Gradually, I made friends with a few trainers, and they began guiding me in strength-training exercises. I couldn’t afford to hire a trainer.”
She developed a routine, arriving at the gym at 5am daily so she could get back in time to get the kids ready for school.
She changed her diet, eliminating fried food. For breakfast, she ate oats and Indian breads, idli or dosas. For lunch, she had a roti and cooked vegetables. Dinner was fruit, followed by ginger tea. In seven months, she lost the weight she had gained since her wedding.
More striking was that follow-up scans showed that a large part of the brain clot was gone, she says.

After that, Dembla trained to become a certified personal trainer and told her husband she wanted to open her own gym. They rented a flat, she sold her jewellery, took out a loan, and in 2007, SweatZone was born in Hyderabad. Soon, celebrities such as Bollywood stars Taapsee Pannu, Tamannaah Bhatia and Anushka Shetty began training with her.
Yet her own workout routine began to feel monotonous.
“I started itching for a new goal. I wanted to do something different. As my body felt better every day, I became obsessed with a new mission: building abs. I worked six days a week: strength training, cardio and ab-focused workouts,” she says.
She also began following a high-protein diet.
“I ate fish, chicken, eggs, protein shakes and prioritised eight hours of sleep.” Her hard work paid off; within eight months, she had a six-pack.
A photo of her new physique found its way to the Indian Body Builders Foundation (IBBF). They called her with an unbelievable invitation: to represent India at the 2013 WBPF World Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in the under-55kg category.
“I could not believe it! The honour was immense, but there was a lot of work to be done,” she says.
She began training with professional bodybuilder Dinesh Kumar – far different from training in a gym.
“The discipline needed was another level. The diet was stricter. As a mother of two with a past brain injury, my body had its own challenges. We trained with heavier weights, [fewer] repetitions and focused on one body part every day – biceps, triceps, shoulders, legs,” she says.

The competition required Dembla to pose in a bikini, covered in shiny wax to highlight the muscles. “Till the last moment I was anxious; even for my gym sessions I had not worn tight pants and tops, let alone a bikini,” she says.
Her trainer calmed her, saying, “Just focus on your routine. Everything else will fall into place.”
Two weeks before the competition championship, Dembla’s father-in-law died.
“At my in-laws’ house, there was no time to exercise and non-vegetarian food wasn’t allowed. So, I went around trying to find someone to boil eggs for me. My nephew even snuck me out and helped me go to the gym,” she says.
On competition day, terrified, she recited the Hanuman Chalisa – a Hindu devotional hymn in praise of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god. “I felt dizzy and sweaty from nerves.”
But walking on stage, a switch flipped. “I felt that I belonged.” As she hit her first pose, the front double bicep, any remaining shyness evaporated.
When the results were announced, Dembla had placed sixth out of 20 in her category.
“It was a miracle! I had fought hard to chase my dream. Everything had been uphill, but there I stood tall and proud, an athlete.”

Dembla’s children have been her biggest cheerleaders, her “stars”.
“They said to me, ‘Ma, do what makes you happy, follow your dreams.’ They were 14 and 10 when I was training for the World Bodybuilding competition. They managed their studies on their own. That was a big help for me.”
How has she managed to juggle so much?
“I just did everything I loved. So what if I started a little later than usual?”
She eventually circled back to her first love, music. At age 42, she became a DJ known as DJ KD Belle, and has travelled from Doha to South Africa, doing gigs at corporate events and weddings.
At 45, she became a trained photographer.
She took up mountaineering and summited Everest Base Camp five times, from 2014 to 2018. “It’s in the mountains that I feel deeply nourished,” she says.
Her secret to ageing well is to lead a clean lifestyle, eat simple home-made food in limited portions, exercise and drink plenty of water.

Her personal life also evolved. She and her husband divorced in 2021. She now lives in Hyderabad with her two dogs.
Keeping a six-pack is hard on the body in terms of training and diet, she realised. Her days of extreme training are behind her. She wants to age naturally and she listens to her body about how to exercise. For an hour every day, she does some form of physical activity – lifting weights, yoga, cardio, sometimes swimming.
Her message for women is: “Go beyond the conventional role of being a homemaker. There is only one life. Follow your passion without any guilt.”
Dembla’s story is not about becoming a superhuman, but becoming human, listening to that quiet voice and choosing, one brave step at a time, to answer it.
It is proof that the most powerful transformation does not start in the gym; it starts in the mind, with a single decision.
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Health & Wellness

Health

In 2006, Kiran Dembla collapsed from a blood clot in her brain. It kick-started a health transformation that completely changed her life


In 2006, Kiran Dembla collapsed from a blood clot in her brain. It kick-started a health transformation that completely changed her life.


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Health & Fitness

How this Indian mother lost 24kg in 7 months and became a bodybuilding DJ

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}In 2006, Kiran Dembla collapsed from a blood clot in her brain. It kick-started a health transformation that completely changed her life

In 2006, Kiran Dembla collapsed from a blood clot in her brain. It kick-started a health transformation that completely changed her life