This Is Big, Marisa Meltzer
This Is Big, Marisa Meltzer
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This Is Big
How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World -- and Me

Author: Marisa Meltzer

Narrator: Marisa Meltzer

Unabridged: 8 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/14/2020

Synopsis

From a contributor to The Cut, one of Vogue's most anticipated books "bravely and honestly" (Busy Philipps) talks about weight loss and sheds a light on Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch: "a triumphant chronicle" (New York Times).
 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, also 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 Marisa's own journey through Weight Watchers, she 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. 

About Marisa Meltzer

Marisa Meltzer is a journalist based in New York who for over a decade has covered beauty, fashion, wellness, and celebrity industries for top national publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. The author of three previous books, This Is Big, How Sassy Changed My Life, and Girl Power, she lives in Manhattan.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Maribeth on June 24, 2020

I'm not sure how to feel about this book. While I loved the chapters on the life of Jean Nidetch and the founding of Weight Watchers, I found the autobiographical chapters to be frustrating and dripping with privilege. I've been on Weight Watchers on and off (but mostly on) for the last three years......more

Goodreads review by Andi on May 14, 2020

This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. While I enjoyed reading the biographical information about Jean Nidetch and the history of diet culture in America, I found the memoir aspect of the book a bit lackluster. The author came across as deeply unhappy and did not seem to make much progress on th......more

Goodreads review by Jaimie on July 18, 2020

I LOVE this book. I HATE this book. I LOVE the honesty & HATE the honesty. Marisa Meltzer at times comes of as your typical overweight self hating woman who blames other people for her weight issues/problems on top of being extremely judgemental & privileged as hell! She also comes off as hilarious,......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on April 13, 2021

This book is sort of a memoir hybrid with Meltzer exploring the history of Weight Watchers though the lens of her lifelong battle with her weight. While she is very honest about how much she doesn’t like her body, the negative attention it attracts, her eating habits and her many attempts at weight l......more

Goodreads review by Zibby on April 05, 2021

It's about the woman, Jean Nidetch, who founded Weight Watchers. She has a successful entrepreneurial story that's been lost to history. It's about how she went from fat Brooklyn housewife to thin woman who lives in Brentwood and is a millionaire to founding Weight Watchers. It's also a parallel sto......more

Quotes

A Vogue Most Anticipated Book of 2020
One of Apple Books' Most Anticipated Books of 2020
A Washington Post Book to Read for AprilOne of People's Best New Books

"Her life changed dramatically as she realized you can live a big life at any size."—People

"A triumphant chronicle... Meltzer has created singular companionate text for those who know the agony of frustration surrounding weight as an issue, both personal and political. Acerbic, culturally astute and genuine, [Meltzer] makes exquisite company in the struggle."—New York Times

"Meltzer writes movingly of her own struggles with having a body, but her experiment isn't the exclusive focus of the book: It also chronicles the life of Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch, whose vaudevillian comic timing, retrograde ideas about fat and happiness, and unconcealed desire for fame and connection make her a fascinating subject."—Vox

"Marisa Meltzer's new Weight Watchers biography feels surprisingly in sync with the emotional arc of isolation eating."—Wall Street Journal Magazine

"If you've ever been critical of diets, diet companies, and diet culture in the past, you're going to love what Meltzer has to offer here."—Bustle

"Not a memoir of radical self-acceptance or saccharine inspiration, but a candid - at times dark - look at what it means to be an overweight woman in 2020."—Los Angeles Times

"This heartfelt, incisive book layers the story of Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch with the author's own lifelong journey through various fad diets. What emerges is a surprising portrait of a remarkable but little-known life in business, as well as a thoughtful critique of America's obsession with thinness."—Esquire

"This is Big...[finds] in Nidetch both a genuine pioneer - a woman who built a massive culture-defining business as a time when women couldn't even have their own credit cards - and a representative of many ideas about weight and health that are as destructive as they are enduring."—Vanity Fair

"Meltzer looks at her own pursuit of weight loss and uses it to illuminate our culture's relentless focus on thinness."—Washington Post

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