The Drew Barrymore Show; Michael Tran/FilmMagic
Valerie Bertinellisays that she was fired as a spokesperson for a diet company after she started to gain weight again.
TheOne Day at a Timeactress reflected on the incident — and why she refuses to let her weight define her — during a game of "Memory Bank" onThe Drew Barrymore Show. For the segment, which sees stars reflect on moments from their lives, Bertinelli brought an image of herself wearing a white dress to her Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in 2012.
"You look stunning," hostDrew Barrymoreremarked upon seeing the snapshot displayed onscreen behind them. To which Bertinelli responded, "And I felt so horrified."
Michael Tran/FilmMagic
In the years prior the event, Bertinelli explained that she had documented her weight loss as the face of an unnamed diet company.
"I had started a diet program and then became their spokesperson in 2007 and I had lost 50 pounds," she said. "And then life started to get the better of me, and I wasn't taking care of my mental and emotional health, so the weight started to come back on."
Looking at the photo, Bertinelli continued, "And this was the last year, I believe, that I was with this diet company. And they fired me, eventually said, 'We can't keep going with you because you're gaining weight again.'"
TheHot in Clevelandstar pointed out that the floral dress that she's wearing in the photograph is a size 12. "I remember thinking, 'But size 12's not that big!'" she recalled. "But I had gotten down to a size 4 — which waswaytoo small for me and impossible for me to maintain."
Bertinelli shared that her weight has always been "up and down, but pretty much, basically, this weight my whole life that I am right now, and I'm a size 10 now." She added, "And I would've been horrified then being on the diet program being a size 10. But right now, it's about my mental and emotional health."
Fighting back tears, Bertinelli noted that she's in a much better place these days. "My mental and emotional health — even though I'm getting teary-eyed — is so strong right now," she said. "I'm so strong and firm in who I am and, no matter what people throw at me, I know who I am and I know what kind of person I am and it doesn't matter how much I weigh."
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She continued, "What matters is who I am, how I treat people. Period!"
She also revealed that she still has the dress from the ceremony. "And it fits me just fine," she said. "It's a little less snug than it is there, but I just. If anything, it doesn't matter what size we are. What is our heart? How do we treat people? Period!"
The Drew Barrymore Show
To which her fellow Drew Crew member Ross Mathews added, "Preach, Val."
Barrymore, meanwhile, noted that she hoped that "we've also come some distance between just saying skinny and fat as opposed to like, what is healthy for you."
"You're right!" Bertinelli agreed. "What is healthy for you? What is healthy mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically?"
Bertinelli previously opened up about her body image struggles in an October episode of the Daytime Emmy-winning talk show.
"I just think there's some sort of… I think all of us have a little bit of body dysmorphia, because we've been trained to think that we're not enough and our bodies are wrong and they're not," she said at the time. "Our bodies are our bodies. Our bodies are beautiful. Just put it in everything and anything you want to put it in!"
The Drew Barrymore Showairs weekdays on CBS.
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