Valerie Bertinelli has spent most of her life in front of a camera. From the moment she became a teenage star on One Day at a Time in the 1970s, audiences watched her grow up, fall in love, become a mother, reinvent her career and eventually become a familiar face on food television. But there was another transformation unfolding alongside all of it — one Bertinelli has spoken about with remarkable openness.
For years, her weight seemed to become almost as much a part of the public conversation as her work.
In 2007, Bertinelli joined Jenny Craig and publicly documented her attempt to lose weight. She later revealed that she began the program at about 172 pounds. By 2008, she told Larry King that she weighed 132 pounds, marking a loss of roughly 40 pounds. (CNN Transcripts)
The change was dramatic enough to become one of the most talked-about celebrity transformations of the era.
Then came an image many people still remember: Bertinelli posing confidently in a green bikini for People in 2009. After years of feeling uncomfortable with her body, she had reached the weight-loss goal she’d been working toward. (ABC News)
But what happened afterward ultimately became a much bigger part of her story.
When the Weight Came Back
Maintaining the loss wasn’t simple.
By 2014, Bertinelli acknowledged that some of the weight had returned. A broken foot had temporarily prevented her from exercising, and photographs of her changing figure began attracting headlines again.
What bothered her most wasn’t simply gaining weight. It was the shame she realized she felt because other people could see it.
She publicly questioned why a woman’s changing body should become something she was expected to feel embarrassed about. (ABC News)
A year later, Bertinelli said she had regained about 15 pounds of the 40 she had lost and was trying to move away from constantly judging herself by the scale. (Entertainment Tonight)
For someone whose weight had been publicly tracked for years, that represented a significant shift.
Years Later, She Put On Her Old “Before” Clothes
Then, in 2023, Bertinelli discovered something unexpected in her closet.
She found the jeans and pink shirt she’d worn for the famous “before” photograph from her Jenny Craig campaign.
She put them back on.
But instead of seeing the woman in those clothes the way she had years earlier, Bertinelli said she saw her completely differently.
She explained that she still fit into the outfit she’d once regarded as her “fat clothes,” yet now felt more beautiful and emotionally at peace than she had back then. By this point, she had also stopped weighing herself altogether. (ABC News)
It was a striking reversal: the clothes hadn’t fundamentally changed, but the way she looked at the person wearing them had.
Her Latest Photos Show Another Side of Valerie
Recent appearances have once again put Bertinelli’s looks in the spotlight. In April 2026, she appeared at a SAG-AFTRA Foundation event in Los Angeles wearing a belted blue dress, smiling for photographers as she promoted Love, Again.
At 66, Bertinelli certainly looks different from the young woman audiences first met decades ago — and even from the woman who famously posed in that green bikini.
But there’s an interesting twist to the traditional celebrity weight-loss story.
Bertinelli herself no longer seems particularly interested in telling it that way.
In interviews surrounding her 2026 memoir Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect, she reflected on the years she spent criticizing her body and said her priorities had shifted toward acceptance and what her body could actually do. (People.com)
She even compared posing nude for her new book at 65 with posing in that famous bikini when she was roughly 20 pounds lighter — and said the newer experience felt more freeing. (People.com)
The Before-and-After Is Bigger Than the Scale
Looking through Bertinelli’s photographs across nearly five decades creates an unusual timeline.
There is the teenage television star. The young mother. The woman whose weight became tabloid material. The Jenny Craig spokesperson who lost around 40 pounds. The bikini cover that became famous. The years when some of that weight returned. And finally, the woman photographed today.
Yet the number on the scale is no longer how Bertinelli says she measures the transformation.
In 2023, she summed up the lesson she’d reached after decades of having her body publicly examined: health and personal worth aren’t defined simply by body size or a number on a scale. (ABC News)
That makes her latest photographs particularly interesting.
The physical changes are easy to see when photographs from different periods are placed side by side. But according to Bertinelli, the transformation that matters most to her happened somewhere a camera can’t quite capture.
For more incredible transformations, check out John Goodman’s 200-Lb. Transformation and see how Melissa McCarthy has changed through the years.
