{"id":643699,"date":"2026-10-28T10:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T10:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/643699\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T10:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T10:44:09","slug":"real-life-shortland-street-star-bella-kalolo-suraj-opens-up-about-her-health-journey-and-marrying-across-cultures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/643699\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Life: Shortland Street star Bella Kalolo-Suraj opens up about her health journey and marrying across cultures"},"content":{"rendered":"

She also experienced anxiety, even while doing routine tasks such as grocery shopping.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to sit in the carpark\u2026 I\u2019d stay outside my car for a good 30 minutes. Sometimes I\u2019d decide to go in if I\u2019d mustered up enough gusto in my body and my mind,\u201d she told Cowan.<\/p>\n

She opted for bariatric surgery because she had tried to lose weight many times, but it usually came back. She also did not want to use GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of people say, \u2018Why don\u2019t you just do it naturally?\u2019 Girl, I have tried up and down, round and round, side to side, back to front, paid lots of money for all the things.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also feared what she would be putting in her body if she went down the injection route.<\/p>\n

Kalolo-Suraj went to Turkey for the procedure because of the lower cost. She said it cost thousands of dollars less than in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

After the procedure, she noticed a big difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hollered at my surgeon, and I said, \u2018Hi, I\u2019m just wondering, where\u2019s my back pain gone?\u2019 It feels like there\u2019s so much more movement and freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another big part of her life has been marriage.<\/p>\n

She married personal trainer Suraj Kumar in 2021 after dating for four months.<\/p>\n

They met on the dating app Bumble and hit it off nearly instantly.<\/p>\n

What sealed the deal was a tray of eggs. Kumar was coming off a bodybuilding competition and Kalolo-Suraj thought she would provide a protein source that wasn\u2019t chicken at their first meeting.<\/p>\n

She said it \u201cdid the trick\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since then, the pair have been on a journey trying to meld their respective cultures and faith traditions together.<\/p>\n

Kalolo-Suraj grew up in a Christian home, with a mix of Samoan, Tongan, M\u0101ori, Chinese, German and Scottish ancestry. Meanwhile, Kumar is Indian, with a Hindu background.<\/p>\n

She said there were challenges crossing those cultural lines, especially for Kumar\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrevious to the marriage, they absolutely had things to say. Never to me, always to their son. I wasn\u2019t Indian and so I kinda didn\u2019t really make the grade.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was never going to shift for them because that\u2019s all they knew, and they wanted someone of their own caste and religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

After someone close to her gave them a word of caution, Kalolo-Suraj and Kumar were forced to confront some of those realities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat kind of made me go, \u2018Oh my God, what am I doing?\u2019 Suraj and I had a conversation, and we were like, \u2018No, let\u2019s do this. I wanna be with you. You wanna be with me. We love each other. Let\u2019s do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

They went ahead with the wedding and told his parents five months later.<\/p>\n

Now, they have found ways to embrace both sides at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve welcomed the way he prays. So I do puja [prayer] with him, and he does prayers with me, and so we encompass my God and all his gods. Because I can\u2019t just be here and be like, \u2018There\u2019s just the one true God\u2019. You know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me to have a better understanding, I had to let go of my own thoughts and processes because otherwise I would just be a sergeant major\u2026 and I don\u2019t wanna be that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Over the years, her relationship with her in-laws has shifted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came over last year for four months, and I\u2019m not gonna lie, that was a long time. We just had to learn how to live with each other because that was the first time I was meeting them in the flesh.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to learn a lot, and it was really great to be able to kind of not see eye-to-eye, to then see eye-to-eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or <\/a>listen to the latest full interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She also experienced anxiety, even while doing routine tasks such as grocery shopping. \u201cI used to sit in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1443,2840,3376,95,28748,430,21657,156,122480,134,1364,2203,315584,424,1362,279693,13617,111,139,11515,69,2680,5415,6115,272248,5411,4625,2737,5424,263678,810,377,2963],"class_list":["post-643699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-about","tag-across","tag-actor","tag-and","tag-bella","tag-celebrities","tag-cultures","tag-entertainment","tag-famously","tag-health","tag-her","tag-journey","tag-kalolosuraj","tag-life","tag-made","tag-marrying","tag-name","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nurse","tag-nz","tag-opens","tag-playing","tag-real","tag-selina","tag-shortland","tag-singer","tag-star","tag-street","tag-toa","tag-up","tag-world","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}