Valerie Bertinelli has been known for many things in her decades-long career, including her acting, cooking and authoring several books. Another is her weight fluctuation and partnership with Jenny Craig. In the past few years, however, she’s stopped looking at the number on the scale and focused on loving herself. Bertinelli continued those efforts by sharing a couple of throwback bikini pics, in which she clapped back at unrealistic body standards with an F-bomb and uplifting message for her followers.
Valerie Bertinelli’s career took off when she joined the CBS sitcom One Day at a Time in 1975 at the age of 15. Growing up in front of the camera couldn’t have been easy, and the actress once joked that she was “a master at losing weight,” because all of her life she’d lose weight, then gain it back, and the cycle continued. Bertinelli seems ready to jump off the carousel now, please, as she shared a couple of old swimsuit photos to Instagram:
These photos were taken in 2014, a couple of years after she famously lost more than 40 pounds on the Jenny Craig weight-loss program. As great as Valerie Bertinelli looks in the photos, the information she provides in the caption is pretty sobering. She wrote:
This is a 150lb body on a 5’4 frame. I don’t weigh myself anymore because this is considered overweight by [whose] standards I don’t know. It’s stupid and I believed them for far too long. I now, finally, know that I am a kind, considerate, funny, thoughtful woman. So please remember, who you are and what your character is, should never be overshadowed by what size you are or how much you weigh. You are enough. Just the way you are. Fuck ‘em 💜
Hell yes, Valerie Bertinelli! I love this call for people to find their self-worth in their character and how kind and thoughtful they are to others, rather than if they are considered to be at a healthy weight. It’s unbelievable to me that she was still considered “overweight” at 150 pounds in those photos, but a quick look at a BMI chart proves her correct.
Her decision to stop caring about her weight by those standards has definitely required her to say, “Fuck ‘em,” to some body-shamers over the years. She took to Twitter in 2022 to share one of the comments she got from a troll, which prompted an amazing response from Kelly Clarkson about punching negativity in the face with “all the positive, remarkable, intelligent, beautiful light that seeps from ur pores.”
Kelly Clarkson is another celebrity who’s seen changes in her weight over the past couple of decades since winning American Idol, and she and the Hot in Cleveland star have had real conversations about what gaining weight means in Hollywood on The Kelly Clarkson Show, not just for women like the former coach of The Voice and Valerie Bertinelli, but for the actress’ son Wolfgang Van Halen, who Bertinelli said has also struggled with negative self-talk.
How people view their bodies and their health is thankfully changing from past decades, but that doesn’t mean the change comes easily. It’s great to have people like Valerie Bertinelli dropping reminders to keep our expectations for ourselves realistic and that we are enough.
