Mindy Kaling Ridicules Critics Who 'Scrutinize' Her Appearance After Jaw-Dropping Weight Loss: 'I Truly Feel So Healthy'

Mindy Kaling had a thoughtful response when asked about critics commenting on her weight loss over the years.

"It’s sometimes no fun when one of your favorite actors loses weight," Kaling, 46, acknowledged in a new interview published on Tuesday, May 19. "You have an idea of what they were like when you grew attached to them, and it made them endear themselves to you."

Though The Office actress admitted it's "never a joy to be scrutinized," she admitted she truly "understood it as someone who consumes pop culture."

Kaling, who previously described herself as a "normal-slash-chubby woman," has been open about her weight struggles, which began in her childhood.

“Do I wake up every day being like, ‘I look amazing and I’m so gorgeous?' No, unsurprisingly," she confessed. "But I truly feel so healthy.”

The sitcom actress lost a significant amount of weight over the last few years and said her motivation was to "live at least 20 more years" for her three children: Katherine “Kit,” 8, Spencer, 5, and Anne, 2.

"When I was younger, I would want to lose weight because of vanity reasons," Kaling told Bustle. "Now I want to lose weight or have lost weight because I want to stave off things like diabetes. I had it on both sides of my family, and trying to avoid those kinds of things will, I think, help longevity for me, and that’s my goal."

Kaling explained she maintains her healthy lifestyle through food moderation and a fitness routine that includes running, hiking and strength training.

The Never Have I Ever producer candidly spoke about her body image issues in her 2011 memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?.

In the book, she wrote about implementing a "makeshift diet" in high school after a classmate told her she would "be really pretty" if she lost weight.

The multifaceted star said her method was to "eat exactly half" of the meal placed in front of her and completely cut out dessert.

The mom-of-three revealed she "stayed a pretty normal weight" until her freshman year of college, when she gained 35 pounds in the first six months.

It wasn't until pregnancy that Kaling shifted her mindset toward diet and exercise.

"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,” she told Shape in 2021. “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]."