Continued from page 2

I Know What You're Thinking – I'm Fat !

Originally posted Thursday April 05, 2007 12:00 PM EDT

Her son Wolfie "started drums at 9 and guitar at 11," says Bertinelli (with Wolfie at home and, below, with Eddie in '89). "This past year Ed has been picking him up from school and they play together." Photo by: STEPHEN DANELIAN

Still she's hardly immune to cruel comments. "I hear people in the grocery store say, 'I thought she was a lot prettier than that.' And I'm like, 'I'm right here!' " She also admits to being defensive about her size in the past. "I was like, 'I'm going to get fat, and if nobody hires me then that's their problem because they have a warped sense of what a woman should look like.'"

She kept telling herself that even as she was trying "every diet – Atkins, Weight Watchers," she says. "I'd lose 10 or 15 lbs. but I never stuck with it."

Although she clearly wanted to lose weight, when the call came in February from Jenny Craig execs, "I was horrified," she says. (It's a tough job, being the one to tell a star she'd make a great diet pitchwoman. "It is tricky," says Jenny Craig Marketing VP Scott Parker. "But the Kirstie Alley story has made it easier.") Bertinelli gamely said she would try it. After losing 2 lbs. in a week, she signed on. Prepping for her first shoot, the ad folks "were picking me apart, but in a very kind way," she says. "Look, my ego is gone."

The night before officially kicking off her 1,200-calorie-a-day plan – which is accompanied by a walking regimen that requires a minimum of 10,000 daily steps measured by a pedometer – Bertinelli and her family indulged in a feast. "We went to Morton's and I had steak and lobster," she says. "I raised my martini and said, 'You are not going to see this in my hand until I lose 25 lbs. At 25 lbs. I'm having a martini.' " A few days later – and accompanied by two girlfriends who are dieting along with her – she stepped on the scale for her first weigh-in at Jenny Craig. "When it was Valerie's turn, she stripped down to her skivvies – I guess she is like most women who want to take everything off to get to the lowest number possible," jokes her pal Suzanne Ferleger, a homemaker. Adds Bertinelli: "It was hard, but then I ripped off my jeans and just let it go."