This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World -- and Me

by Marisa Meltzer

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Author: Marisa Meltzer

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Hardcover:
ISBN 10: 031641400X
ISBN 13: 978-0316414005

Marisa Meltzer "bravely and honestly" (Busy Philipps) examines her life-long dedication to losing weight, which was transformed when she learned about the life of Jean Nidetch, founder of Weight Watchers.

Marisa Meltzer began her first diet at the age of five. Growing up an indoors-loving child in Northern California, she learned from an early age that weight was the one part of her life she could neither change nor even really understand.

Fast forward nearly four decades. Marisa, a contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Times, comes across an obituary for Jean Nidetch, the Queens, New York housewife who founded Weight Watchers in 1963. Weaving Jean's incredible story as weight loss maven and pathbreaking entrepreneur with her own journey through Weight Watchers, Marisa chronicles the deep parallels, and enduring frustrations, in each woman's decades-long efforts to lose weight and keep it off. The result is funny, unexpected, and unforgettable: a testament to how transformation goes far beyond a number on the scale.

Review

"Inventive...Meltzer's own experience with weight loss."―Bitch

One of Vogue's Most Anticipated Books of 2020
One of Apple Books' Most Anticipated Books of 2020
One of Bitch's Memoirs to Read in 2020

One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2020

"One writer describes her lifelong journey with Weight Watchers and exploration of its founder's life, finding the latter more relatable and moving than she expected."―Vogue

"Her story will resonate with readers who have struggled with weight and body image issues. A straightforward memoir of struggling with obesity and finding inspiration from the founder of Weight Watchers."―Kirkus

"Insightful...a thoughtful exploration of how to make diet choices on one's own terms."―Publishers Weekly

"This is Big is a brave, bold, funny, honest, riveting book that made me have every kind of feeling in the world."―Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown Up

"For anyone who has ever felt defeated by food, betrayed by their own body, embarrassed for not only lacking the willpower to change their habits but also embarrassed by the desire to change their own body, Marisa Meltzer sees you, has written this book for you because she is you. While simultaneously delving into the history of the woman who started Weight Watchers and bravely and honestly examining her own complicated relationship with food and weight, Marisa has written a book that perfectly captures our country's obsession with THIN and the struggle with obesity at this moment in history."―Busy Philipps, author of This Will Only Hurt A Little

"Marisa Meltzer is an ingenious writer. This Is Big expertly weaves together two engaging tales: the charming, funny, and often heartbreaking account of Meltzer's lifelong attempts at bodily transformation, and the little-known story of a largely forgotten American icon Jean Nidetch, the irrepressible, pathbreaking entrepreneur who founded the now billion-dollar company Weight Watchers in her modest living room in 1963."―Nancy Jo Sales, author of American Girls and The Bling Ring

"This book was so good that I devoured it (with no guilt)! Meltzer shows us, through honesty, rawness and deep vulnerability, the complexities of living in a body that doesn't adhere to society's narrow beauty standards in an era that holds up body positivity as gospel."―Mara Altman, author of Gross Anatomy

"A witty and meaningful look at our obsession with weight and dieting; blending the story of the founder of Weight Watchers with her own saga, Marisa Meltzer crafts an amusing story with universal insights.''―Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon - and the Journey of a Generation and Carrie Fisher; A Life On The Edge

About the Author

Marisa Meltzer is a journalist based in New York who has contributed to the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. She was born in Northern California and is the author of two previous books, How Sassy Changed My Life and Girl Power.