14 DAY TRIAL // Former “Sopranos” star Lorraine Bracco has dropped 35 pounds (15.8 kg) in a health kick that started in 2010 and, to this day, she’s managed to maintain her new figure. She tells ABC News in an interview that it was actually her parents’ death that inspired her to overhaul her lifestyle.
Like most of us, Bracco needed a wakeup call to realize she was leading an unhealthy lifestyle, in which she let her food choices / cravings rule over her body and her health. Said wakeup call came when she had to take care of her aging parents, who passed away in 2010.
Looking at the medications they were given, she realized she wanted to live as healthier and longer life as possible, she tells ABC. She’s also included this story in her new book, “To the Fullest,” which documents her transition to a healthier body and a happier life.
“I said, ‘I want to be the best I could be.’ I want to live every day the best I can be,” the actress recalls. At the time, she weighed 183 pounds (83 kg) and she admits she’d let herself go.
However, once she made up her mind, she wasted not a second in getting things done: she hired a life coach and started working out, while also focusing on a healthier diet. She cut out sugar, dairy and most grains, and is now happy to brag that, once a “huge Twizzler eater,” she can now look at one without as much as a single thought about how amazing it would taste.
In fact, the star says, she’s come to dread her once-favorite treat. “I ended up spitting it out because I no longer have a taste for it. It was so sugary, it was almost like poison to me,” she says of her reaction one day when she decided to have a bite, for old times’ sake.
Bracco’s go-to snacks these days include gluten-free cookies, fruit and Kind bars. She always has them around to refuel after Pilates, which she does 3 times a week now.
“I am still a vibrant, contributing human being, and I am not dead yet. I laugh because I used to wake up and everything ached before I got out of bed. Now I jump out of bed! I'm doing something right,” the star says of how her new lifestyle has changed her.
Brocco’s book doesn’t come out until 2015, but she promises it will be well worth the wait. It will include recipes to lose weight and for weight maintenance, but also a “liver cleanse” because it will be “a body-mind-spirit thing.”