Cosmic Girls' Dayoung Lied to Her Agency About a 3-Month U.S. Trip, Slimmed Down to 43kg Before Going Solo

Using "going back to my parents' place in Jeju" as her cover story, she actually flew to the U.S. alone and spent three months there working on music — this was the real script behind Cosmic Girls member Dayoung's solo preparation. She told her agency she was returning to her parents' home in Jeju, but in reality she went to the U.S. by herself, immersing herself in creating music for three months, planning to come back with a nearly finished album to convince the company. Throughout this entire period, she personally reached out to renowned dancers to learn choreography and contacted composers directly to commission tracks — handling almost every step herself.

She recently revealed her daily schedule from that period on MBC's *Omniscient Interfering View*, with the camera starting at 5 a.m. Dayoung said she'd wake up at this time even without any scheduled activities, because early morning was the only time no one would contact her — the only time that belonged entirely to herself. The moment she opened her eyes, she'd watch English motivational videos in bed to psych herself up, then put on a sheet mask while opening her laptop to study English. From 5 to 7 a.m. was her fixed study time, using the method of reading along with economic news articles, even absorbing difficult vocabulary along the way.

After studying, she'd prepare breakfast. She's recently been obsessed with baby radish (방울무), which is antioxidant-rich, low-calorie, and crunchy — an ingredient that's been catching attention in diet circles lately. For regular meals, she'd wrap vegetable sticks in gopchang gim (곱창김, a type of thick, crispy seaweed). As her comeback date approached, she'd enter an extreme fasting phase, cutting her intake to a tenth of normal — combining breakfast and lunch into a single protein shake, then having another protein shake or a salad for a late-night snack, ending her food intake for the day right there. This kind of restriction visibly weakened her immunity, so she relied on lemon water daily for vitamins. This is a personal practice she disclosed on the show, not health advice to be followed — the long-term effects of such extreme calorie restriction on the body still require professional evaluation.

After eating, she'd move on to at-home workouts: using a chair for support to do 10 reps of bench dips, 3 sets of 20 seated knee raises, plus 3 sets of 20 alternating hip dips. Dayoung revealed that in preparing for her solo debut, she'd already lost 12kg, currently weighing 43kg. She said the reason she pushed her body this far is that a single performance can run two to three hours, and without the stamina to match, she simply couldn't get through it.

She's also taken challenge videos extremely seriously — during promotional periods, she'd film up to 200 clips a day. Her reasoning was simple: she wanted to find a way to get picked up by the algorithm and get herself noticed.

After finishing all her scheduled activities, she'd still stop by the gym. She regularly rotates between four different PT gyms, since each has different operating hours, allowing her to pick whichever fits her free time that day. Even after spending an entire day dancing for challenge videos, she'd still put in another two hours on the stair climber. She said that exercising when you're most exhausted actually makes fatigue build up less than staying still would.