120. Losing It

Losing It - And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time by Valerie Bertinelli


Pages: 273
Finished: July 6, 2008
First Published: 2008
Genre: autobiography, memoir
Rating: 2/5

Reason for Reading: I enjoyed watching One Day at a Time as a child and always though Valerie was beautiful. Needing to loose weight myself, I though her weight loss story might be inspiring.

First sentence:

Some people measure depression by the medication they take or the number of times per week they see a therapist.

Comments: This is more of a memoir than an autobiography. While it does go chronologically Valerie only tells bits and pieces of her life. Running throughout the book she talks about her poor body image even as a skinny teenager, though she didn't start dieting until she started gaining weight at a much older age. I was very disappointed in this book.

Valerie's acting career is skimmed over mercilessly. One Day at a Time gets a brief discussion, Touched by an Angel gets even less page time and her many made-for-TV movies are only mentioned by name. Most of the book is spent talking about Eddie Van Halen's various drug and alcohol problems along with his volatile relationships with the various lead singers of the group. Valerie talks of how this affected her and her family but there is so much of it that it became boring especially since I have absolutely zero interest in this rock group to begin with.

Valerie's weight loss and Jenny Craig experience was relegated to the last two chapters and very quickly told from the first phone call to the final results. I was hoping this book would be an inspiring weight loss story, instead I found her words made it sound so easy and fast and simple to lose weight. "Hey, just call Jenny!" ... yeah, right.

I will give her credit for being candid in this memoir. She didn't skip over the ugly parts and talks about her own drug use and adultery. I was surprised with the profanity in the book, though. This probably won't bother most people but there was more than I was comfortable with. I do not like swearing in narratives and I guess I just didn't expect Valerie to be the type to cuss so much.

If you want to read the story of a woman who survived a rock star marriage and an alcoholic and drug abuser husband then you will probably enjoy this book. But if you are looking for the story of Valerie's acting career or looking for weight loss inspiration this is not the book for you.