This is big How the founder of Weight Watchers changed the world -- and me

Marisa Meltzer, 1977-

Book - 2020

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 fun...ny, unexpected, and unforgettable: a testament to how transformation goes far beyond a number on the scale.

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Subjects
Genres
Biography
Biographies
Published
New York : Little, Brown and Company 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Marisa Meltzer, 1977- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xi, 290 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9780316414005
  • Author's Note
  • Prologue
  • Introduction
  • 1. I Was Even a Fat Child
  • 2. Is There a Typical Fat Girl?
  • 3. Fat Is Just Who I Am
  • 4. Sharing Is on a Voluntary Basis
  • 5. We All Want Miracles
  • 6. When I Fall, I Fall Hard
  • 7. What Is Her Secret?
  • 8. What Does Being Thin Even Mean?
  • 9. The Message Is, I'm One of You
  • 10. She'd Had Enough After One Bite
  • 11. Thin Power
  • 12. You're Visiting the Dark Side
  • 13. I'm a Pusher
  • 14. They'll All Be Gone by Valentine's Day
  • 15. Living Off the Fat of the Land
  • 16. He Broke the Social Contract
  • 17. Eat, Eat-But Not Too Much
  • 18. Healthy Busywork
  • 19. Yes, She's Still Thin
  • 20. An Inherent Distrust of Gurus
  • 21. But I'm in Control of the Fork
  • 22. This Tastes Sad
  • 23. Losing Weight Can Be Magic
  • 24. That's Progress for Me
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Booklist Review

As a journalist whose beat includes celebrity health and fitness trends, Meltzer's lifelong weight-control battle might have made her, a journalist whose beat includes celebrity health and fitness trends, an unlikely and uneasy candidate for constant meetings with uber-thin trendsetters, yet she faced them with plucky aplomb. Beneath the gutsy facade, however, was a woman perennially searching for the perfect diet. Like so many others, Meltzer hit upon Weight Watchers, less out of a sense of possibility than a perceived affinity for the organization's founder, Jean Nidetch. Here was a woman, a New Yorker like Meltzer, who turned her own daunting dieting battle into a billion-dollar industry. 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. Meltzer's engaging history of Weight Watchers and candid account of her own dieting journey is a frank and affirming portrait of the ways women, in particular, have always coped with health and self-image.WOMEN IN FOCUS

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Meltzer (Girl Power) delivers an insightful look at the business of weight loss, illustrated by her own attempts at it, and by those of late Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch. Meltzer begins by describing her relationship to the ubiquitous weight loss company, which, she once felt, existed only to torment her--Meltzer was a Weight Watchers dropout by the age of nine. After coming across Nidetch's obituary in 2015, however, Meltzer was surprised to find her longtime bête noir both relatable and inspirational--a woman who lost 70 pounds, and kept it off, and confronted 1960s sexism to found a now-global company. Meltzer explores how Nidetch and Weight Watchers changed with the times, in the '70s moving into creating exercise plans, nutrition educational campaigns, and other offerings outside of its originally single-minded focus on dieting. One especially intriguing point Meltzer raises is the innate narcissism in dieting--both her own and that of the celebrities she regularly interviews for magazine profiles. 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." Agent: Jen Aevitas Marshall, Creative Management. (Apr.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Parallel stories of a woman on Weight Watchers and the life of the woman who created the diet program.When New Yorker and New York Times contributor Meltzer (Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music, 2010, etc.) came across the obituary for Jean Nidetch (1923-2015), the housewife who invented Weight Watchers, she decided she wanted to join the program and to learn more about Nidetch. As the author writes, she has struggled with her weight since she was a small child, and she was intrigued to learn how Nidetch overcame her own issues and created the internationally known diet program. Meltzer interweaves her story of weight gain and loss with that of Nidetch. The combination creates an informative picture of what life is like for obese women who constantly obsess about food. Nidetch's biggest downfall was eating boxes of chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies in the bathroom where no one could see her. It took an incident at the grocery store, when she was mistakenly identified as pregnant, to set her on the track to creating Weight Watchers. "To say that it was a moment that she would never forget," writes Meltzer, "that would define and transform the rest of her life, is an understatement." The author followed the program for a year and offers details about each month. She tried out various meetings but quickly got bored with her meals and eating only her allocated points for the day. Meltzer also discusses other diet plans, her struggles with finding men in her life who accepted her without judgment, and the frustrations she felt that her weight often defined her in other people's eyes before they got to know her. 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.