Losing It: A Book Review

Valerie Bertinelli is so darn likable, I expected to like her book. I wanted to. I really did. I tried but it is not anything of what I expected. I thought it would be a celebrity autobiography or an inspirational diet book. Hopefully a good mixture of both. Wouldn't that be great? It isn't great and it isn't either of those things. There are no motivating ''before'' pictures. In fact most of the pictures are of surprisingly awful quality. Black and white pictures (some of which seem to be out of focus) give the book an amateurish look to go along with the tone and style of the writing.

As an autobiography it fails in giving the reader a true insight into Valerie's life. Every significant moment in her life is marked by a memory of her weight and who is responsible for however she is feeling at that point in time. In this tabloid culture that Valerie rants about she hypocritically does a massive amount of name dropping. Mackenzie Phillips drug use, who Valerie slept with, her stint of dating Stephen Spielberg, members of Van Halen and of course Eddie Van Halen is mentioned quite a bit in this book. Eddie's interventions and rehab stints are horrible for the tabloids to exploit but seemingly fine for her to go on about. Peppered throughout the book are her political views. She is a Democrat. She also states in the book she voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 because she felt a sense of warmth and genuineness from meeting Hillary. Seriously? Comments such as that make the book seem to be written by a sixteen year old girl. Her thank you's and acknowledgements at the end of the book read like a high school year book. Perhaps this is because she didn't finish high school due to being busing working on One Day At A Time.

As a weight loss book don't turn to this for inspiration. While tipping the scales at 170lbs seemed to be ''fat'' and a lot for her to weigh it is a dream for many women to just lose enough to get below 200 lbs. Valerie confesses to being an emotional eater and does not have her portions or emotions under control. Seeming to suffer from low self esteem she states in the book that she is searching for self acceptance and self love. Valerie does not discuss the Jenny Craig program until the end of the book and as with the rest of the book it is not very detailed. It does not give us real insight into how she worked the program. She loves the food but does not mention how much she was paid to do the program. Certainly being in the public eye helped keep her accountable and on the program. It has hefty fees for the rest of us. I have tasted a couple of the entrees with a friend who was on the program and didn't find it delightful as Valerie did. Seemingly effortless she wears a pedometer and walks about four miles a day. Perhaps I am skeptical but I don't find it that easy and I have a gym and a personal trainer. She mentions her boyfriend Tom and others that joined the Jenny Craig program too and 'poof' they lost weight too! I hope she keeps it off. That is my personal wish for anyone who is successful with weight loss regardless of their method but I don't think she has dealt with all the inner baggage that took her to 170 lbs. She does not mention once that her son Wolfgang is obviously overweight. She mentions Wolfie throughout the book and how being a good mother is so important to her but does not mention the weight of her son who looks like his BMI well could be in the obese range. That was the biggest disappointment for me. She passed along her bad eating habits or Eddie passed along his addictive behaviors to him but either way that teenager weighs too much and I don't think Valerie has a grip on her weight or why her deep vault of various insecurities led her to be overweight if she can't address that in her tell all style book.