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

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

by Marisa Meltzer

Little, Brown and Company ·2020 ·304 pages
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About This Book

The true story of a cross-generational, beyond-the-grave -- and beyond-the-scale -- friendship that led to the first breakthrough Marisa Meltzer ever had in her quest for self-improvement. 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.


Reviews

"Nidetch's success in life, in business, and in weight loss motivated Meltzer to commit to the Weight Watchers program, and it inspired her to write a journalistic profile of the one celebrity who could help her most."

Carol Haggas· Booklist Read review ↗ Near the Top

"The result is a thoughtful exploration of how to make diet choices on one's own terms, rather than in 'fear of the final weigh in.'"

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Meltzer's extensive and very personal homage to Nidetch, as well as her wise and often witty analysis of weight and its inner meaning, can serve as direction for those seeking an ideal of external self-image."

Barbara Bamberger Scott· Bookreporter Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Meltzer interweaves her story of weight gain and loss with that of Nidetch."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Sometimes I related to an uncomfortable degree ..."

Lily Burana· The New York Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

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