Your calves, biceps and neck should always be the same size in inches. Mine are 16 inches - anything bigger or smaller and you know you're going wrong! Most men ignore working out the legs and glutes, not realising that they are the pillars of our core.
I believe that fitness needs to come from within you. You need to respect your body. Only then will you have the zeal to maintain it. For me, keeping fit is a part of my lifestyle.
As a child, I had no idea that I would end up in the film industry. My ambitions changed from wanting to join the army like my grandfather to taking up merchant navy as a career to running for India, and finally, investment banking while I was a student of economics honour. But during my college days, I began to get offers for modelling.
I know what it is to put on weight. But when I got back to my routine, my body knew how to react. That's muscle memory, and you'll be amazed at what it can do.
At times, I do Tabata, a high-intensity Japanese training regimen, in which I must do 20 seconds of a specific body part with 10 seconds of rest. This must be done eight times within four minutes. Your heart rate shoots through the roof, but you burn a lot of fat.
I have grown up watching Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan and the likes. These are actors who have changed with time. They have no shelf-life. They have immortalised themselves because they have evolved with time.
Almost 70 per cent of your fitness battle is won the day you realise what your body needs and when. I've made my own diets, and I decide for myself what works for me.
I have not taken my good looks seriously from the beginning. When I would be teased by my friends about my looks, I would just make a self-deprecating remark and let it pass.
When I was in New York, a lot of my friends were studying filmmaking and would bring their scripts to me, as I was a good script doctor. I would read their scripts and make corrections to them for $20 per script and was fascinated by films.
Many times an actor is stuck for the lack of choices. The same happened with me when I started my career. That was the time when mainly romantic films were being made, and that is what I was offered all the time.
Like everyone else, I have my quirks. For one, I have to own only black cars and the registration has to have eights. It's not something I can explain, it's just there. Another obsession I have is smell. I have to smell good all the time.
I think it is a combination of looks, aura, success, the energies that one gives out, the person you are and the person you feel like that makes you 'desirable.' When the outside world sees you as a man who is responsible for himself and his family, as a man who is fit and sensitive, it kind of ups your desirability.
Going to religious places gives me clarity. When I am sitting there, I am in a state of gratitude with my defence mechanism down and am open to receiving that energy, that gives me clarity as at that time, you are listening to your heart. The heart shows you the direction in life. The mind exists only to execute your emotion.
I think I'm close to lot of people in Bollywood, but I believe in evil eye, and I feel when I talk about friendships and relationships in public something somewhere goes wrong with it.
I would be lying if I said I'm not flattered being voted as the 'Time's' Most Desirable Man of 2012. Frankly, I have no idea how the desirability quotient is arrived at. If it is just drop dead good looks, then I have to thank God and my parents for it.
India needs a change - it cannot be ruled by 80-year-olds and by people who have done nothing for it.
I can bulk up very fast. I can lift heavy weights because, like most people, I started off with heavy workouts. That's stayed in my muscle memory. I feel horrible when I feel my jeans are getting tight. Workouts peace me out.
Physical attributes can make you appealing, but to keep the appeal going, one has to draw from within. You have to be a real person. Your fans and the people you associate with have to be able to see beyond your looks. You have to be a good friend, dutiful son and a good family man.
What challenges me is this - I want to walk out of a film with the experience of having done a film, not with a feeling that I have sleepwalked through it.
For me, what is most important is the element of surprise. If I can surprise you with every film of mine, that is exactly what I am trying to do.
