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"On the Fourth of July I, had this huge feast with lobsters and clams and corn on the cob and potatoes and pies and cakes and cupcakes. We figured out how much I was going to eat: two corns on the cob and two cookies, because I can’t resist those."
Friends help her out too. "I’m there as a sounding board," says best pal Kelly Preston. "It’s been challenging for her, but she made it into a big game and kept it fun. I go to her house and eat Jenny Craig too."
She also got active again, but didn’t go the personal-trainer route. "I’d have a friend over and we’d just blare music and dance," says Alley, who also took long walks. She also turned her L.A. living room into a gym, filling it with several resistance-training machines.
Before, when she weighed 200 lbs. plus, she couldn’t easily play with her kids. "It took me 10 minutes to stand up," she says. Now it’s different. "This summer, with my kids, it was me leading them: ‘Let’s swim! Let’s jump on the trampoline!’" Though they like and eat some Jenny Craig food, she says, they are not on the diet with her. "My daughter is thin. I don’t want her to have the message that you have to weigh 105 lbs.," says Alley. "But I don’t want her to have the message that you should weigh 300 lbs. We’ve talked about it."
Though Alley is blunt about the pressure to be thin in Hollywood – "If you’re not thin, you’re not going to work very much," she tells a woman at the Pierre – being overweight actually jump-started her career with Fat Actress. The series drew some positive reaction, but she doesn’t expect it will be renewed by Showtime next season. "I think (the network execs) have great concerns with me not being fat," says Alley.
Others guess they are less concerned with the drop in pounds than in viewers – Fat Actress lost 68 percent of its audience after the first two episodes. But giving up the show is small sacrifice, she says, for gaining "a nice appreciation of my body again."
Alley would like to do another sitcom, but first she plans to celebrate her weight loss with a trip to Italy at the end of the year. "I want to splurge on clothes, be with my children and have an amazing time. I want to go looking my best." Also on the wish list: "I would like to get married again someday, absolutely," she says. "Who knows? Maybe I’ll come back with an Italian husband!"
• By Allison Adato. Natasha Stoynoff in New York City
