Valerie Bertinelli talks dating, new cookbook and 'wistful' thinking about Eddie Van Halen

In a weekly series, USA TODAY’s The Essentials, celebrities share what fuels their lives.

There were years when Valerie Bertinelli stopped cooking, drained by the effort of uncoupling from a broken marriage.

"I just got tired of pretending I was happy when I wasn't happy," says the "One Day at a Time" and "Valerie's Home Cooking" star, as she grieved losing her mom Nancy and ex Eddie Van Halen in rapid succession in 2019 and 2020. Two years later, she divorced Tom Vitale, her husband of nearly 11 years. "I have maybe 20, 25 years left of this lifetime, and I want to live it authentically."

Bertinelli, 63, says she had developed a relationship with food that wasn't healthy. "In my toolbox of things on how to deal with any kind of emotion I'm going through that I do not want to feel, I take out food, sometimes I take out alcohol," she says. "Until I decided to truly feel my pain and walk through it and get to the other side, nothing in my life was going to change.

"And that's what I did. It was a really hard but incredibly fulfilling last two years, learning that I could run with the breeze in my hair and feel true joy."

Deglammed in glasses and a T-shirt, Bertinelli pets Batman, her Zoom-bombing cat, as she discusses her latest cookbook "Indulge" (Harvest, out Tuesday), dating again and finding joy.

'I’m incredibly grateful for him':Valerie Bertinelli is in a relationship after divorce

Valerie Bertinelli is done with restriction: 'I bought into diet culture'

"I'm the (expletive) poster child" for being food- and weight-shamed, she says. "I lose weight on Jenny Craig and I'm lovable? I was lovable before. That messed with my mind, I bought into diet culture hook, line and sinker like everybody else."

She got back in the kitchen again as a means of nourishing herself, both physically and emotionally.

The act of indulging "has been given a bad rap," she says. " 'I'm going to cheat this weekend.' It’s not cheating. We need to allow ourselves the pleasure of our lives. Food is a big, important part of my life."

What Valerie Bertinelli eats to start her day

"I'll scramble an egg with some greens, whether it be kale or spinach, and maybe put a little bit of cheese on top and then a tortilla and roll that up," she says.

She also loves toasted sourdough "with butter, peanut butter, some sliced banana and honey. Delicious. These are all foods I would have restricted myself from eating."

She's doing more plant-based cooking, and her favorite treat food is honestly pretty healthy

Bertinelli gravitates toward fruits and vegetables "just because it tastes good, and I know they have more vitamins and nutrients. I do try to get enough protein, but I don't restrict carbs because I don't like restriction."

Her preferred treat food? "A nice, crisp cold apple and (homemade) crunchy peanut butter. Oh, I love that."

The kitchen gadgets she uses constantly

"I use my Breville air fryer almost every day, either to roast some salmon or heat up a frozen pizza. I'm not ashamed to eat a frozen pizza. There's no judgment in my kitchen," Bertinelli says. "I love my coffee machine. I have an espresso and a Jura and I love them both."

What's on Valerie Bertinelli's cooking playlist?

"Obviously, I listen to Wolfie a lot," she says, referring to her musician son Wolfgang Van Halen. "When I was going through the worst of it, Kelly Clarkson. Those were anthems in this house. She knows how to write about pain and determination and growing from it really, really well."

Valerie Bertinelli is shrugging off speculation about her weight loss

"I've gotten to the point where I just don't (expletive) care what people think I’ve done," she says and recently told a commenter on Instagram that she isn't taking Ozempic. "If somebody wants to use weight-loss drugs, if they want to use Jenny Craig, if they want to use Weight Watchers − I am not here to judge how anybody wants to release weight from their body. I wasn't losing weight, I was releasing pain from my body, and that's the way it happened for me. 

"People look at pictures of me that were taken (at the Oscars) and say, 'Oh, my God, she lost it overnight!' Are you kidding me? You’re going to compartmentalize everything I've been through and just say, poof, I did it? I worked (expletive) hard on my emotions."

She and Eddie Van Halen were in 'a very wonderful place' at the end of his life

In one of the cookbook’s intimate essays, Bertinelli writes that "though we got divorced, Ed and I never stopped loving each other. Who knows, if not for cancer, we might have had a second wind," but "I'm pretty sure that is wistful thinking."

She clarifies to USA TODAY that "wistful is a very different word than wishful. It was a wistful fantasy that I knew would never be true. The love that Ed and I shared − and we did come to a very wonderful place at the end of his life − was our unconditional love for our son. My son was losing his father, I was in a relationship that was terribly wrong for me, and I was holding onto some sort of lifeline because of the years I had with Ed. I was madly in love with him when I met him, but our love changed. He felt like a big brother to me that I just wanted the best for by the time he got very sick. All I wanted to do was make it OK for Ed, make it OK for Wolfie.

"You fantasize and romanticize what you know really never could be."

Surprise! Valerie Bertinelli didn't expect it, but she's dating again

"I've met someone. And I'm incredibly grateful for him," she says. "It's unlike any relationship that I’ve ever experienced with a man. I don't want to say too much, but I feel incredibly blessed and lucky to have met him. I was going to die with my six cats and my dog and be incredibly happy doing it."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.