Valerie Bertinelli is reflecting on her longtime battle with body image — and reminding others that beauty is far from skin-deep.
The “One Day at a Time” Golden Globe winner, 63, took to Instagram to share a mirror video of herself sporting the “fat clothes” she wore in her “before” photo for a Jenny Craig commercial. Bertinelli appeared in several ads for the weight loss company, beginning in 2007.
“I have done so much emotional and mental work to recover from years of pretending everything was OK when it wasn’t…” sighed the Daytime Emmy-winning Food Network star. “Health is not a body size. Health is not that number you see on a scale. Your worth as a human being isn’t dictated by your body. It’s not defined by your body.”
“I thought I was fat the last time I wore these clothes,” she continued. “[But] 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,” she said, making air quotes around those last two words. “That’s f—ed up.”
In the caption, Bertinelli noted that she has “been doing a lot of emotional and mental purging in the last year,” and more recently, purging of her closets to get rid of things that “no longer bring [her] joy.”
“These [‘fat clothes’] were in the back of my closet in my office,” she continued. “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. I continue to work on not suppressing or numbing my feelings with food or alcohol and here I am. I am enough.”
She urged her followers to “love yourself, every single part of you. YOU ARE ENOUGH.”
Bertinelli has spoken publicly about her weight loss and self-acceptance journey for years.
Back in June, she got candid about focusing on her mental health in the wake of her divorce from second husband, Tom Vitale.
That same day, Bertinelli shared several throwback photos of herself, writing: “This is the little girl I want to take care of right now. … I’m doing my best to take care of my heart and my head and recover from verbal and emotional abuse that I finally realize I did not deserve.”