Valerie Bertinelli was married to a rockstar. She is a star herself. She has a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame—and a rockstar son.
But behind more than 50 years of success was a painful battle that fans didn’t always see.
Her weight.
Her relationships.
And, most painfully, the harsh words that made her believe for years that her body was somehow connected to whether she was lovable.
Now, at 65, Hollywood’s sweetheart is losing more than weight.
She’s unloading the emotional baggage that she carried for decades.
And what she has learned is something so many people need to hear:
Your body is not what makes you lovable.
When Valerie was only 14, she appeared in an episode of the TV series Apple’s Way and caught the attention of Norman Lear, who was responsible for many of the touchstone TV shows of the 1970s.
She was eventually cast as Barbara in One Day at a Time, the daughter of Bonnie Franklin’s character Ann Romano and sister to Mackenzie Phillips’ Julie.
By the time she was 22, Bertinelli had earned two Golden Globe wins for her performance in the popular series.
And during those years, she also found love with rockstar Eddie Van Halen.
They married in 1981 and remained together until 2007.
They had one son, Wolfgang, born in 1991.
Even after their divorce, Valerie remained close with Eddie. When he died of cancer in 2020, she was at his side.
Her career continued.
She appeared in Touched by an Angel, later starred alongside the legendary Betty White in Hot in Cleveland, and eventually became a beloved celebrity chef, hosting shows like Kids Baking Championship and Valerie’s Home Cooking.
From the outside, it looked like she had everything.
But behind the scenes, Valerie was fighting something much more personal.
Throughout her career, fans watched her weight fluctuate.
At 47, she weighed 172 pounds and became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig.
Two years later, she had lost 50 pounds and celebrated her 49th birthday by posing in a hot green bikini.
It looked like a victory.
But Valerie later admitted that she had been starving herself and working out twice a day to look that way.
And when the photo shoot was over, the weight began coming back.
“I didn’t take care of my head and my heart,” she admitted.
Then came the words that revealed just how deep the wound really was.
Bertinelli said body shaming had followed her since she was young.
While filming One Day at a Time, a reporter once told her she looked like “a ton of lard” standing next to Mackenzie Phillips.
But the hurt started even earlier.
“I watched my father treat my mother badly when she would gain weight,” Valerie recalled.
Then she remembered something a fifth-grade teacher did.
“I had a 5th grade teacher poke my belly and say, ‘You want to keep an eye on that.’”
Imagine being a child and hearing that.
Imagine learning that lesson before you even understand what it means.
Valerie said she learned at a very young age that when you gain weight, you’re not lovable.
But decades later, she finally began unlearning that belief.
“And what I’m learning is that your body is not what makes you lovable.”
That realization became part of a much bigger healing journey.
After her marriage to Tom Vitale ended in divorce in 2022, Bertinelli began focusing on the mental and emotional work she had neglected for years.
She has spoken openly about emotional and mental abuse and how easily it can be dismissed because there are no visible injuries.
She turned to mindfulness, journaling, therapy—and especially humor.
She even tried rolfing, an intense manipulation of the body’s connective tissue, which she described as painful but ultimately helpful because of the release it brought.
“I worked really, really, really hard. Physically definitely. I wish to God I had worked just as hard on my mental shape.”
Then came the sentence that perhaps explains her entire journey:
“But when I don’t work on what’s eating me, I’m going to start eating.”
And something began to change.
In a video shared with fans, Valerie revealed that her waist size was shrinking.
She couldn’t believe she was about to go down another jean size.
But the most important part wasn’t the jeans.
It was why the change was happening.
“This all started in November, the month I got free,” she said.
She had started concentrating on her emotional and mental health.
And once she began caring for her mind and heart, she naturally started caring more about the nutrition she put into her body.
Then she shared an incredibly honest realization.
“The harsh words and abuse can never be unheard and taken back,” she wrote.
“But here’s the thing, I wouldn’t have taken them in and believed them in the first place, if I hadn’t been saying harsh and unkind words to myself first.”
That message touched thousands of people.
Fans told her that seeing her gave them hope.
One said Valerie had inspired her to get up, get moving, and get out of her funk.
Another told her how much happier she had become because of Valerie’s journey.
And Valerie had another revelation.
She had “cut back exponentially” on alcohol, which also helped her lose weight.
But even that was part of something deeper.
She said the emotional load she had been “carrying for protection” was something she no longer needed.
“I don’t need protection any longer. I’m really starting to love myself. Deep down…”
Then she gave her fans a message that feels bigger than weight loss.
“Please be kind to yourselves. You deserve it. We all do. We are enough.”
Since freeing herself from her marriage to Vitale, Valerie has also been asked if she is ready to start dating again.
Her answer?
Absolutely hilarious.
She lip-synced to a song and answered with a simple:
“The f— no.”
For now, it seems Valerie is choosing herself.
She has said social media allows her to connect with kind people and hopefully help others feel better about themselves.
“Treating each other with kindness starts with ourselves.”
And then there is that famous green bikini.
The one from her 49th birthday.
She still has it.
It’s tucked away in a drawer.
But Valerie revealed something people may not expect:
The bikini was a size large.
“Even at the lowest weight I’ve been in decades, I was still wearing a large,” she said.
“Everybody’s shape is what we should be celebrating.”
And perhaps that is the real lesson in Valerie Bertinelli’s story.
She spent years believing she needed to change her body.
She spent years hearing cruel words.
She spent years trying to become smaller.
But now she understands something far more important:
She was never unlovable because of her body.
She was never less worthy because of a number on a scale.
And she never needed to earn love by becoming thinner.
Today, Valerie is learning to love herself—not because she has reached some perfect weight, but because she finally understands that she was enough all along.
And as for her son Wolfgang?
He’s following in his father’s footsteps as a rocker and has even opened for Metallica.
Valerie has built an extraordinary career, raised a rockstar son, survived heartbreak, endured criticism, and faced some painful truths about herself.
But perhaps her greatest transformation isn’t the one people can see.
It’s the one happening inside.
She is finally learning to be kind to herself.
And that may be the most beautiful thing of all.