Valerie Bertinelli Says She Was Taught That Weight Gain Made Her ‘Unloveable’ at an Early Age

Photo credit: NBC - Getty Images
Photo credit: NBC - Getty Images
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  • Valerie Bertinelli, 61, opened up about how early life impacted her relationship with food.

  • The Food Network star says she was taught at a young age that weight gain made her “unloveable.”

  • “I didn’t have a great relationship with food. I thought it was the enemy, and it’s not.”


Valerie Bertinelli grew up in an Italian family with an appreciation for a beautiful meal. “I actually started cooking long before I started acting, and I started acting at 12,” the Food Network star recently told Mashed. Her love of the craft grew all thanks to her Noni (the Italian name for grandmother), whom Bertinelli said proudly treated the kitchen as “her office.”

Unfortunately, though, the One Day at a Time star’s love for preparing food changed when weight-related societal expectations began creeping in. “Watching the way you get treated depending on what weight you are, changed my relationship with food for a while, unfortunately. I didn’t have a great relationship with food. I thought it was the enemy, and it’s not,” she recalled.

Bertinelli was taught at an early age that weight gain made her “unloveable.” In a January interview with People, she admitted to watching her dad mistreat her mom when she gained weight, and shared that a fifth-grade teacher once poked her stomach and remarked: “You want to keep an eye on that.” Pressures only grew when as a child actress, she felt constantly compared to her thinner co-stars.

In the early 2000s, Bertinelli joined Jenny Craig to promote its weight loss program. At the time, she lost 50 pounds, but it was in an admittedly unhealthy way. “I was starving myself and doing twice a day workouts,” she told People. “I didn’t take care of my head and my heart and I think it really starts with that.”

So, when she began to gain weight back, it was difficult for her to handle. “Every time I would gain an ounce, I would be unlovable, and so that made every number on the scale not sufficient for me,” she told Mashed. “Every number was, no matter how low it was, it wasn’t low enough, and when it was high, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s it. I am a horrible person, no one’s going to like me. This is ugly. I don’t want people to see me.’ It’s just no way to live.”

Needless to say, the experiences completely warped how Bertinelli viewed food and her body for a long time, and at 61, the star is finally unlearning harmful norms. It’s something she’s been quite open about with her fans—on Instagram, on TV, and in her new vulnerable memoir, Enough Already.

“Now, coming full circle back to enjoying food and enjoying serving it and creating it and showing people how I love them, that’s my love language—it’s cooking for people,” she told Mashed. “It’s really been a beautiful, full-circle moment.”

But the journey is still ongoing, and she reminds herself of her worth daily. “That is exactly what I meant through this [book] title,” she recently told Yahoo! Entertainment. “I am enough, already. Just accept yourself for who you are. You are enough, and I think everybody needs to know that—that they are enough.”

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