Valerie Bertinelli Is Leaving Her Weight ‘Shame’ Behind By Throwing Out Scales And Not ‘Judging’ Herself

Sep 05, 2022 by apost team

Actress Valerie Bertinelli has come out to share more about her personal journey with her weight and has vowed to give up weighing and judging herself. The “Hot in Cleveland” actress, who once said she felt “like the most famous dieter in America,” is on the road to self-empowerment and love on the heels of the release of her memoir, “Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today.”

Bertinelli has been in the media spotlight for a long time, having started her career as a child actress in the sitcom “One Day At A Time,” which ran from 1975 to 1984. In the series, she played the role of Barbara Cooper Royer alongside Mackenzie Phillips, who played her character’s sister. She recalled in her book that, at the time, she constantly compared herself to Phillips, even telling a journalist once that she felt like “a ton of lard” next to her.

“I had pretended to be the bubbly upbeat all-American girl but in private, I have rarely thought of myself as anything but a failure,” she wrote.

But even before becoming a teen star, Bertinelli had suffered scrutiny in her younger years. “I watched my father treat my mother badly when she would gain weight,” she wrote in the memoir. “I had a 5th-grade teacher poke my belly and say, ‘You want to keep an eye on that.’ So I learned at a very young age that when you gain weight, you’re not lovable. And what I’m learning is that your body is not what makes you lovable.”

In 2009, determined to win her battle against her own body, she posed for the cover of People magazine in a bikini two years after becoming a spokesperson for Jenny Craig at the age of 47. 

While Bertinelli looked stunning in the pictures, it didn’t give her the inner peace and satisfaction she had been striving for.

“I wasn’t trying to get healthy or deal with the reasons I had gained weight over the years,” she explained in the memoir. 

“I had split from Ed (Eddie Van Halen) and I refused to take money from him. As a single working mom I needed to make money. Jenny Craig was a good job,” she wrote, referring to her divorce in 2007 from the rock star. She added she had lost 50 lbs for the cover but it all came at a hefty price of “starving myself and doing twice a day workouts.”

Looking back on that shoot in 2020, she made a surprising reveal.

“The funny thing is, the green bikini was a size large. Even at the lowest weight I’ve been in decades, I was still wearing a large,” she said, and added: “there's a lot of pride and a lot of shame associated with that cover. I worked really, really, really hard. Physically definitely. I wish to God I had worked just as hard on my mental shape.”

In her book, Bertinelli also disclosed that after the shoot, she regained almost all the weight she had worked so hard to lose.

“I started to gain weight as soon as the photo shoot ended. ... Some people can look like that without doing that but not me. And there is shame for being part of the problem to make other people think they could do it. I bought into it hook, line and sinker, but I didn’t take care of my head and my heart and I think it really starts with that,” she wrote.

Now, Bertinelli is choosing a different path for herself rooted in self-love and acceptance.

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Bertinelli wrote in her book that in 2020, she was resolved to lose a stubborn 10 lbs, “the same 10 lbs. I had been trying to lose for the past 40 years,” before she realized as she made her way to the scale, “No. I can’t be doing this again.”

Two years later at 61, the Food Network star is set on carving out a new journey for herself — without a scale.

“The goal is to live in the moment and not according to the scale,” she wrote.

She admitted this may not be easy as she has “a lot of decades of thinking I have to look a certain way for people to accept me and to like me.”

“We’re all part of this diet culture that isn't actually helping us, our mental or emotional health,” she added. “I’m trying to dismantle all of the things I learned that are ingrained in me. And I’ve learned there are many people that feel the same exact way that I do. Some of us were taught the wrong things.”

And one of the first steps she is taking is cutting out everything that has been unhelpful or caused her grief. “I gave up the damn scale,” Bertinelli wrote. “I haven’t weighed myself since I finished writing the book and all I know is every time I put on my jeans, they fit. I don’t have to lay back and put them on! Every time I want to get on the scale, I think, ‘Why would you do that Valerie?’ Because it’s not about the number. There’s not going to be before and after photos. Whatever happens happens.”

“I’m done judging myself,” Bertinelli added. “I want to be kinder and more accepting of myself.”

What do you think of Valerie Bertinelli's weight loss journey? Do you relate to her struggles with weight and self-improvement? Let us know and send this on to family and friends.