Sunita Williams Dismisses Rumours About Weight Loss, Explains Her ‘Sunken Cheeks’

New Delhi: Recent pictures of Space Station Commander Sunita Williams from the International Space Station (ISS) had sparked speculation about the astronaut’s deteriorating health.

Sunita’s sunken cheeks in the pictures indicated the possibility of her losing considerable weight after being stuck in space for nearly 150 days.

However, in a recent video interview, Sunita dismissed suggestions of her deteriorating health and said that she weighs the same even today.

“…I think my body has changed a little bit but I weigh the same… There are a lot of changes that go on here… It’s funny, I think there’s some rumours around that I am losing weight and stuff… No, I am actually right at the same amount… we go weigh ourselves, we have a spring mass… Butch and I weigh ourselves the same way that I was when I got up here,” said Sunita.

She further said that her “sunken cheeks” and a change in her appearance was due to “fluid shift” in her body.

“I think things shift around quite a bit… you have a fluid shift where you know the folks in space… their heads look a bit bigger because the fluids even out along the body. But now, you know, we’ve been up here for a couple of months, we’ve been working out here. We’ve got a bike, we’ve got a treadmill and we’ve got weight-lifting equipment,” she informed.

“I could definitely tell that weightlifting, which is not something that I do all the time, is something that has changed me. My thighs are a little bit bigger, my body is a little bit bigger, we do a lot of squats. And just to go back to the treadmill…why… It’s because we are working on our bone density in our hips and in our feet. So, I think my body has changed a little bit but I weigh the same,” Sunita added.

NASA astronauts Sunita and Willmore’s eight-day space expedition got extended due to a technical glitch in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.

NASA said the astronauts have to wait until February to return to Earth on SpaceX as it is too risky to travel back in the troubled new capsule.