Kirstie Alley did it, Oprah did it, even Marie Osmond did it. I’m talking about the celebrity weight-loss sellout. Oprah lost, gained, and re-lost her weight, before coming to what seems to be a manageable truce. And poor Kirstie Alley is still making large (really large) headlines with her weight gain on tabloid covers.
But what about Valerie Bertinelli? Remember a few years back when she very publicly went on the Jenny Craig program and successfully managed to lose weight? She followed that up with the publication of her book, Losing It, which made it to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
I’ll admit I didn’t read Losing It. Part of that was out of mild chagrin that her book shared the same title as my own personal weight loss blog, but the much larger part was because I simply didn’t care to read how an extremely wealthy and privileged celebrity lost weight. With free Jenny Craig, endless hours with a personal trainer and no need to cook for your own family or — hey, try this one on — work, who couldn’t lose weight and have a totally kick-ass bod?
So you can see why I was reluctant to read Bertinelli’s follow-up book, Finding It. But read it I did. And you know what? I’m glad I did. You see, what Valerie Bertinelli does in Finding It is to address the least talked-about challenge of weight loss: keeping it off. Having been on this roller-coaster of weight loss more than once myself, I know that the hardest part is not the weight loss itself, but rather conquering the demons that got you fat in the first place. And that’s what Bertinelli really attacks in this book. As the jacket notes say:
…she’s hungering for another transformation — to become better, not just thinner. Forget the scale; the real change is happening inside…
And that, I know from my own experience, is the most profound and important (but least visible) change of all. To anyone who’s ever stepped on the scale with trepidation, this is an excellent read.