Director-actress Jia Ling lost some 50kg through a strict diet and training regime to play an amateur boxer in Yolo.SINGAPORE – On screen, an unconfident, people-pleasing and overweight woman takes up boxing and transforms not just her body, but her life along with it.Over a year of filming, she kept up a strict training regimen and stuck to a diet to lose close to 50kg to play someone forever changed by her passion for boxing.
“It was a very agonising process that went very slowly,” she says. “But I never considered giving up.” The Hubei native, whose home town is known for spicy, flavourful food, now enjoys milder, lighter fare.While dieting was not easy, Jia says the intense training she had to go through to be an aspiring boxer was the most challenging.
In a behind-the-scenes clip, she is seen breaking down in tears after filming a scene of Leying in a sports bra making her way towards the boxing ring with her lean, muscular physique on full display. “There are other gym and training scenes in the movie where I mostly wore loose-fitting clothes to cover myself up because everything is in anticipation of one scene, which is meant to show the audience a protagonist who has been reborn.”
Over a year of filming, Jia Ling kept up a strict training regimen and stuck to a diet to lose close to 50kg to play someone forever changed by her passion for boxing. PHOTO: SONY PICTURES