Valerie Bertinelli is more than ready to say goodbye to summer.
On Sunday, the actress and former Food Network star took to social media to express her excitement for summer’s end while sharing a poolside selfie.
“August 11. The last dog day of summer. I have spent 64 years not knowing what that actually meant, so I looked it up,” Bertinelli wrote in the caption. “It has nothing to do with dogs and everything [to] do with Sirius, the dog star. The dog days of summer are the 20 days before and the 20 days after Sirius has become visible in the east when the sky is still dark right before sunrise.
VALERIE BERTINELLI EXPLAINS WHY SHE GAVE UP DRINKING: ‘THERE WAS SO MUCH SADNESS IN MY LIFE’
“And it’s hot as f—,” she continued. “Anyway, this is me waiting patiently for the fall equinox.”
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Last month, Bertinelli celebrated a major milestone in her alcohol-free journey, becoming six months sober.
“I don’t need anything to amplify my happiness right now,” Bertinelli told People magazine in April of her decision to stop drinking. “I feel high just on life. I recently went out to dinner with a friend, and I had ginger ale in a wine glass. And it felt like I was celebrating.”
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While Bertinelli told the outlet she hasn’t fully committed to giving up alcohol for the rest of her life, it’s working for her right now.
“I was still going through a lot of crap, and I knew that I wanted to be on the road of intentionally finding my core happiness,” Bertinelli, who finalized her divorce from second husband Tom Vitale in November 2022, said of her initial decision to give up alcohol. Food and alcohol were in her “toolkit for soothing and ignoring s— that I shouldn’t be soothing and ignoring.
“I would go out and have a fun time, drink, and the next day, I’d be so sad,” she added. “Because there was so much sadness in my life, and alcohol amplified it. I think it’s important to really not numb emotional pain.
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“Emotions are information,” she continued. “When I decided to really question why I was having a certain emotion, I was able to — most of the time — walk through it and get to the other side. I’m actually shocked at how hard it’s not [hard to give up]. Because, for a long time, I leaned on it. Right now, I love how I feel more than how the alcohol makes me feel.”
One month after no alcohol, Bertinelli revealed a positive outcome. She lost weight.
“So, here’s a nice little side effect of Dry January,” she said. “These jeans that I’m wearing were so tight a few months ago that I couldn’t comfortably button them. Now, they’re so loose it’s time for me to go down a size.”
