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Packing for a recent Italian getaway with her longtime boyfriend Tom Vitale, Valerie Bertinelli knew one travel essential she had to have — her scale! “Yes, I brought my Jenny Craig scale with me!” says Bertinelli, who famously lost 40 pounds on the weight loss system. “I wanted to keep an eye on [my weight]. I said to myself, ‘Eat, have fun–and move your body!’” She needn’t have worried. Even after eating (pasta daily and, yum, all those oysters!) and drinking (red wine) her way through Rome, Florence, and Venice earlier this month, the 49-year-old actress only put on 3.4 lbs. “I ate everything I wanted to and forgave myself,” she told PEOPLE at the Cedars-Sinai Sports Spectacular Women’s Luncheon featuring a Tory Burch spring collection fashion show on Tuesday, “and 3.4 lbs. is all I gained! I can take that off!” The trick? Walking. A whole lot of it. In fact, Vitale and Bertinelli, who is training for her first marathon on April 19, clocked in a whopping 85 miles over their 10-day vacation. Always wearing a Bodybugg device to keep track of her steps, Bertinelli says: “The smallest number of steps we took in a day was 11,000. We never caught a cab.”
Even so, the indulgent Italian sojourn “didn’t really prepare me for the marathon,” admits Bertinelli, who turns 50 just four days after the 26.2 mile run, so it’s back to the grind. With less than a month to go, Bertinelli says, “I know my body can do this. I ran 14 1/2 miles before I left for Italy, and wasn’t sore the next day. So I’m just worried about the emotional part. I can’t let my brain remind me that I’m almost 50, not an athlete, and have never done this before. I have to get all that craziness out of my brain!” While she’s shooting to complete the race in under five hours, Bertinelli reminds herself, “I just need to finish. There are so many people depending on me, but I feel their love and their ‘You go, girl’ attitude. I don’t want to let them down!”
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