Former Miss World Yukta Mookhey has a word of advice for all those on a crash diet. "Don't diet at the cost of your health." Yukta's fractured her left hand. It's been an eye-opener for her and she's learnt the detrimental effects of dieting. "No more starving," says Yukta. "Doctors told me that I was calcium deficient because of all the dieting I did in the past three years," she says, "Now I realise that a drastic diet is not really worth it."

Having realised this, Yukta strongly feels, "The whole mind-set of being thin equates to being attractive must change." Yukta suffered a multiple compound fracture on her left hand last Tuesday, and had to undergo minor surgery. My uncle, an orthopaedic surgeon, asked me if it was worth starving myself like this," she says. Dr Pramod Vora, a specialist in holistic medicine, who's treating Yukta, says, "Many young girls suffer fractures due to brittle bones. It's because they follow the wrong technique of weight reduction and create a nutritional imbalance in the body."

Yukta started dieting in 1999 and lost about 7 kg. From aloo parathas and badam milk, her diet changed dramatically to boiled vegetables and fruits.Today, she eats and thinks differently, "We Indian women should be proud of our voluptuous bodies which have as much grace." Yukta's going to be more cautious now: "Eat the right kind of food and work out as well." Her family's thrilled too. Her 22-year-old brother Kanwal's written on her plastered arm—‘You look pretty even with broken bones`. But, no more broken bones, Yukta promises.