Gul Panag is unarguably the fittest Punjabi `kudi` in Bollywood, and after dabbling with modelling and acting, the sixth most-followed politician on Twitter has decided to juggle up AAP with a fitness app launched last month. She is out to train people on how to start with their daily jogs and tells you why the need. “Punjabis, I feel, have all the more reason to moderate their diet and back it up with physical activity.

There is a large section that continues to have the same platter as its previous generation that worked in the fields, exposing themselves to the threat of lifestyle diseases. Butter chicken is advisable, but unless it is a case of overfilling a vehicle with too much fuel,” she says. But how do you walk that tightrope? “Well, my favourite Punjabi dish is Moong-Masar ki Dal with lots of ghee, just the way it is relished in my village.

However, it depends on how much I`m working out those days. Metabolism has to be fined tuned so that the body has the capacity to take in the fatty foods,” she adds, insisting that she is very much into both AAP and app. “I was in Chandigarh on Thursday to attend a party meeting and now I am back in Delhi to promote the mobile app.

I really enjoy making people aware of health benefits, like a fitness activist of sorts,” says Gul, who grabbed the headlines by winning the Miss India title in 1999 and made a mark in Hindi cinema with `Dhoop` in 2003. Fitness comes handy in every role she plays. That of an actor, who needs to look fit and fab; an adventure show host who has to brave various weathers and air pressures; a politician who has to walk miles from dawn to dusk.

“When I was contesting for Miss India pageant, I didn`t have to worry about losing weight and this was a big advantage. Later when I joined politics and was campaigning in Chandigarh, I could go around meeting people the whole day, again thanks to my being fit. By the time my opponents would be exhausted, I would continue with events till the permissible time limit,” says Gul.

Owner of a production house, Gul says there are occasions when she feels that had she not been exercising regularly, she would have called it a day by the evenings. “But I find myself having the stamina to go on.” But hey, she has a confession to make.

Gul didn`t get into it on her own. “My father gets the credit,” she says. “I remember my father virtually dragging me for evening jogs when I was 16 or 17.

Like all youngsters, I thought it to be something that people do to lose weight. But I started enjoying it gradually, still unaware how staying healthy was helping me all through. He taught me by example,” she recalls.

The first big acknowledgement for her fitness came her way when she was studying at an international school in Zambia, where her father was posted as an Army officer. “There used to be a physical education examination at the end of the term and I left everybody else behind in a three-mile run. As a teenager, it came as a big boost to my self-esteem,” she recalls.

A well-known Twitterati with over 1 million followers, Gul say…