Ree Drummond, also known as the Pioneer Woman, has shown her support for Valerie Bertinelli.
On Monday 2 October, Bertinelli took to Instagram after she found the outfit she wore in her “before photo” as a spokesperson for the weight loss program Jenny Craig. “I thought I was fat the last time I wore these clothes,” she said in the video.
“I’ve never felt more beautiful, more at peace, more mentally and emotionally stable than I do today and I’m wearing my ‘fat clothes’. That’s f***ed up,” Bertinelli added.
Fellow Food Network personality Drummond was one of the many commenters to applaud the Hot in Cleveland star for her bravery. “Valerie, your honesty is so beautiful and you won’t ever know the extent of the positive ripple effect these posts will have on the women, both young and not-so-young, who see them,” the Pioneer Woman star commented.
In the viral video, Bertinelli was seen telling her viewers that numbers on a scale don’t matter when it comes to being healthy. “Health is not a body size. Health is not the number you see on the scale. Your worth as a human being isn’t dictated by your body,” she said, as she wore a pink button-up shirt and jeans.
She continued her vulnerability in the caption of her post, writing: “I have been doing a lot of emotional and mental purging in the last year. And the past few weeks, purging my closets and getting rid of things that no longer bring me joy. These were in the back of my closet in my office. I don’t know why I kept them, but now I’m glad I did.”
“It’s nice to see how far I’ve come emotionally,” Bertinelli continued. “I continue to work on not suppressing or numbing my feelings with food or alcohol and here I am. I am enough. Our bodies do not define who we are as human beings. A number on the scale does not define how much love your heart can hold.”
The Kids Baking Championship judge ended her caption by letting people know that they matter. “Please love yourself, every single part of you. YOU ARE ENOUGH,” she said.
In recent months, Bertinelli has been making some lifestyle changes in addition to prioritising her mental health. In June, she shared another video of herself going down a jean size.
“So it’s getting about time for me to probably go down another jean size. I can’t believe it. And this all started in November, the month I got free,” she said in the video, referencing her divorce from ex-husband Tom Vitale. “And I started really concentrating on my emotional and mental health. And when I started doing that, I started caring about the nutrition that I put in my body more.”
Bertinelli revealed that she has also begun to reevaluate the role that alcohol plays in her life, after she completed Dry January earlier this year and went down a jean size.
“So, here’s a nice little side effect of Dry January. These jeans that I’m wearing were so tight a few months ago that I couldn’t comfortably button them. Now, they’re so loose it’s time for me to go down a size,” she said in a TikTok at the time.
In the video, she said there were two reasons for her sobriety. “One, I want to try and cut down the cravings for my sugar. And I think alcohol exacerbates that,” Bertinelli said in January, adding that the other reason was to lower her stress levels.
“I want to calm down the cortisol in my body that has been raging for the last five, six years. I’ve been in fight, flight, freeze, fawn mode. And I want to go into rest and digest,” she said at the time. “I think cutting alcohol will help me do that.”
