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Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time | 
enlarge | Creator: Valerie Bertinelli Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio Category: Book
List Price: $29.95 Buy New: $12.64 You Save: $17.31 (58%)
New (32) from $12.64
Avg. Customer Rating: 172 reviews Sales Rank: 427945
Format: Abridged, Audiobook Media: Audio CD Edition: Abridged Number Of Items: 5 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4 Dimensions (in): 5.7 x 5.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 0743572149 Dewey Decimal Number: 791.45028092 EAN: 9780743572149 ASIN: 0743572149
Publication Date: February 25, 2008 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Condition: Brand new audio-book on CD still factory-sealed in the shrinkwrap. Ships first class mail. 100% satisfaction guarantee or your money back!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com A Note to Amazon Readers (and a Q&A) from Valerie Bertinelli Dear Amazon Customer, Glad to see you here and hopefully purchasing my book. I've heard if you buy multiple copies it's a better experience--a better one for me! But seriously, I'm usually on Amazon, too. I've been buying books through the site for ten years. I enjoy reading the reviews. I get a good sense of the book, and I like to hear what other people have to say. Like in a traditional bookstore, I can look at the cover, peek inside the book, and check out the bestseller lists. Valerie - Do you have a favorite character from a book? I love Scout and Atticus from To Kill A Mockingbird.
- If you can be any character from a book, who would you like to be? I would like to be Scarlett and I would let Rhett know how much I love him.
- How do you decide what next book you want to read? If it's for my book group, whoever hosts the next gathering picks the book, so it's picked for me seven out of eight times. But on my own, I read reviews and ask people whose taste I like what they're reading.
- Where's your favorite place to read? Either lying in bed or on the sofa next to the fireplace.
- What is your favorite genre? I don't really have one.
Product Description
America's Sweetheart turned working mother gives a frank and inspiring account of her life backstage and in the spotlight. We all knew and loved Valerie Bertinelli years ago when she played the girl-next-door cutie, Barbara Cooper, in the hit TV show One Day at a Time. From wholesome primetime in America's living rooms, Valerie moved to late nights with the hardest partying band of the decadent 80s when she married rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen at the age of 20. Here are the ups and downs of teen stardom, of her complicated marriage, and of her very public struggle with weight. Surprising, uplifting, and empowering, Losing It takes you behind the scenes in Valerie's acting career and marriage. Despite Valerie's celebrity, her voice is so down-to-earth, honest, and appealing that you'll feel as if you're talking with a girlfriend over coffee. Funny and candid, Valerie recounts her attempts to maintain a healthy self-image while dealing with social pressures to look and act a certain way, and to overcome career insecurities and relationship problems familiar to the millions of women who struggle every day with these same issues. From marital turmoil to the joys of a new career, from being named among Penthouse's ten sexiest women in the world to overhearing whispers about her weight gain in the grocery store, this is Valerie's inspiring journey as she finds new love, raises a terrific kid, and motivates other women as a spokesperson for Jenny Craig.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 167 more reviews...
How can you not love Valerie? July 7, 2008 I have always been a fan of Valerie's. ODAAT was on when i was about 3 but I always caught it in reruns. Marrying Eddie certainly put her into a bigger spotlight and I began to relate to her. She is very frank about her weight, her marriage and her family. I have never thought she is fat and I was bummed at how hard on herself she was. But she is clearly in a better place now and seems like a wonderful mother. I gave the book to my mom after I read it and she also enjoyed it very much. I recommended the book to all my friends, you will finish it in a day like i did!
Just what I expected, and easy to read July 5, 2008 I found Valerie's story to be refreshingly candid. As a long-time fan and someone who has also recently lost a significant amount of weight, I was very interested in her story. This is not a "how-to" weight loss book -- actually, she doesn't spend a lot of time on that issue. But it is an honest look back at her life and how she got to where she is now. Enjoyable read.
Semi interesting subject matter, but should have been ghost written - this woman is seriouslly idiotic July 5, 2008 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I got this book for insight into what I thought was an interesting life. However, the book, which could have gone into depth about some really interesting times, only serves to show Ms. Bertinelli's lack of depth and intelligence. Yes, she comes off as sweet and well-meaning. But really, with all the problems going on in the world today, the biggest thing she has to say is commentary about her repeatedly gaining and losing 20 pounds? Seriously??
This woman's self-worth is measured by her weight, as she reminds us ad nauseum by relaying her current weight at every juncture in her life. She has no introspection about anything else in the world or her life. She treats Jenny Craig like the Messiah. (Wonder how Ms. B. will feel when her contract runs out and she gains all that weight back because obviously you can't sustain a healthy weight loss you achieved eating chemical cheese curls [Hello Exhibit A: Kirstie Alley]).
This could have been an interersting book, but instead comes of as a Jenny Craig commercial written by a nice, not very deep and not very intelligent woman who despite having lived some interesting times, lacks the intelligence and introspection to write about them in other than a superficial manner. The weight obsession is very immature, redudant and annoying (typical eating disordered behaviour, but not too interesting for the reader).
Check it out of the library if you are interested. Not worth the cover price. Not that much info on her marriage other than Eddie drank a lot and did a lot of coke, they both cheated, they didn't have sex very much, Eddie had good taste in gifts and they love their kid who now plays bass in van halen. Oh, and Val likes David Lee Roth now. There I saved you $25.
Oh, and what is up with the HORRIBLE inside picture quality. How could any publisher let that go to press??
Empty Calories July 4, 2008 3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Lite on insight, long on product plugs, this vapid autobiography appears to have been ghostwritten by Jenny Craig's publishing division.
Once an appealing young television personality, Bertinelli now seems content to be a self-absorbed diet shill who spends as much time here dithering over her yoyo-ing waistline as she does her declining acting career and failed marriage to a drug happy rock star. Then one day she discovered Jenny Craig. . . and the rest reads like the world's longest People magazine profile.
Look elsewhere for anything remotely resembling a shocking revelation--Bertinelli foolishly revealed all the juicy parts (and there weren't that many to begin with) on TV during a pre-publication media publicity blitz.
So what we're left with here is a book-length paid ad for Jenny Craig--only readers are the ones footing the bill. The corporate brown-nosing ranges from Bertinelli's alleged admiration for Kirstie Alley's "success" on Craig's diet program (Huh??? Has she looked at a tabloid lately?) to the inclusion of an unflattering, out-of-focus shot of Jenny herself, accompanied by the ridiculous caption "Isn't she beautiful?" (No, at least not here.) And--did she mention?--Valerie really does love Jenny's cuisine!
Yet despite her alleged new-found grasp of responsible eating, Bertinelli is apparently so busy admiring her svelte self in a mirror that she has somehow failed to realize that her seriously overweight son Wolfie now looks like a teenage Jenny Craig spokesperson just waiting to happen. And, with Mom's connections, he just might be.
Will be interesting to see whether she maintains her weight loss once her Craig contract expires and the TV talk shows have moved on to weightier matters than the dial reading on her bathroom scale.
Losing It....Lost it... July 3, 2008 IN my opinion Valerie could have been moe forthcoming with additional information in numerous places of this book. Although I enjoyed this book, it seems that everytime I was waiting for the big finish to a story or wanted more information, she would fail to follow up with details. Perhaps due to the fact that I am an investigator I get easily annoyed with half stories. Seems to me that if you are in half way then you either go all in or not in at all. You choose.
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