Valerie Bertinelli recently shared her journey toward healing on her Instagram with her fans. In the posts, she talked about the path she has been on and admitted that she doesn’t want to avoid her feelings with food and alcohol as her coping mechanism.
On June 10, Bertinelli posted a video of herself smiling, talking about how her lifestyle change affected her body positively. In the caption of the post, she admitted she was the one who allowed negative thoughts to affect herself:
“Back in November, I really started concentrating on my emotional and mental health. The harsh words and abuse can never be unheard and taken back, 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.”
After that, Bertinelli said she has been focusing on what made her body feel better, not the calories:
“Through therapy, journaling, meditation, and a slew of things you’ve watched me talk about on my feed the past year, I started to care about myself more and care how I treated myself more, which led me to also care about the nutrition I put into my body. Caring not so much about calories, but what are in those calories?”
Revealing she stopped depending on alcohol, Bertinelli continued:
“I also went dry in January. And I plan to do it again in July. I have cut back exponentially on alcohol, and I’m sure that has helped with releasing the weight I was carrying for protection. And it did protect me. I’m grateful for that. I don’t need protection any longer. I’m really starting to love myself. Deep down.”
In another post, she shared her childhood photo with her followers, saying she wants to take care of her inner child. Valerie also admitted that she was once a people pleaser, but this journey is for herself only:
“This is the little girl I want to take care of right now. The perpetual people pleaser. So please don’t come to me for diet advice. I have failed more times than I have succeeded. Releasing weight is a nice side effect for sure, but this journey has to be, for me, much more than that this time.”
Bertinelli wrote that she wants to feel her feelings this time, not avoid them using food and alcohol:
“I want to feel my feelings, even though they can be scary sometimes, and I do my best to get to the other side of them. What I don’t want to do is numb or avoid my feelings with food and alcohol any longer. That is the road I’m on, and doing my best to stay on. I want to live the rest of my life truly happy, finding the deep joy within me, and not just faking it until I make it.”
In February, Valerie posted a TikTok video where she admitted one of the positive side effects of giving up on alcohol was going down a jean size.