Valerie Bertinelli, 61, is committed to working on her mental health just as much as physical health! The actress revealed her dedication to working on both during a Tuesday January 18 interview on The View. She opened up about her 50-pound weight loss in 2007, but said that even though she looked great, it had a negative impact on her mental health. The Enough Already author spoke about the changes she’s made since writing her book in the new interview.
Before Joy Behar asked about her much-reported on 2007 weight-loss journey, Valerie spoke about having the importance of weight loss ingrained in her as a child, seeing how her dad reacted to her mom’s fluctuating weight. The actress said that even though she was happy to wear a bikini “for the first time in a very long time,” she was still super self-conscious about her weight. “No matter how low that number on the scale would get, it was never quite low enough to keep me safe, and when it would rise, and it was higher, I would think, ‘Well that’s it. I can’t go out in public. People are going to judge me, and I’m ugly, and I’m fat, and I’m not worth anything,’ because that old lie from as a young child was repeating inside of me,” she explained.
She continued to say that she’s still trying to be healthy, but she’s not accounting for the numbers on scale as much anymore. “I haven’t weighed myself since I finished the book. I don’t plan on weighing myself anytime soon. My jeans still fit,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that I’m not going to take care of myself as well. I am going to try and eat more fruit and vegetables, drink less alcohol, eat less sugar, move my body a little bit every day so I can continue to climb my stairs everyday well into my 80s, but I don’t want to care so much what it does.”
Earlier in the interview, Valerie opened up about needing to do more than just eat right for a diet to really work.”Diets work! They totally work, while you’re on them, but if we don’t take care of our mental health and our emotional health, no diet is going to survive the maintenance as you gain back weight,” she said. The One Day At Time star also said that in 2020, she said that she managed to put her weight out of her mind, amid personal struggles including the deaths of her parents and her ex-husband Eddie Van Halen‘s illness getting worse in addition to the coronavirus pandemic. She said that all of those issues really put her body image into perspective. “Why do I give a flying fig what my weight is?” she said.