Lorraine Bracco on Maintaining Her 35-Lb. Weight Loss: 'I'm Doing Something Right!'

The Rizzoli & Isles star talks fitness and diet - and feeling great

Sylvain Gaboury/FilmMagic; Kristina Bumphrey/Startraks

She’s known for taking care of others in her roles as a therapist on The Sopranos and a meddling mom on Rizzoli & Isles, and Lorraine Bracco confesses that her caretaking tendencies in real life led to her gaining weight she just couldn’t shed.

At 183 lbs., “The last person on the ‘take care of’ list was me. I let myself go,” she tells ABC News. But it ended up being taking care of her aging parents that finally got her to turn her life around. “We were sitting there, dividing [their] medications, who gets what when. It was insane. I watched and realized, ‘I don’t want to go like that.’ I want to live every day the best I can be.”

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After her parents passed away in 2011, Bracco enlisted a life coach and cut out sugar, dairy and almost all gluten. And now, eating fruit and Kind bars instead of dessert, she’s lost her sweet tooth altogether. “I was a huge Twizzler eater … The other day I said, ‘I haven’t had this in three years,’ and I had half a piece,” she says. “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.”

Bracco has a new book, To the Fullest, coming out next year, which will share recipes, cleanses and tips — “It’s a body-mind-spirit thing,” she says. And despite the added benefit of looking fabulous in her clothes, Bracco’s mostly loving the extra energy she has. “”I am still a vibrant, contributing human being and I am not dead yet,” she says. “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.”

What do you think of Bracco’s body makeover? What’s your best great-energy secret?

–Alex Apatoff