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Book

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

Call Number

  • 920 M5288 (CEN)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York ; Little, Brown and Company, 2020.

Physical Description

xi, 290 pages ; 25 cm

Summary

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.

Contents

  • I was even a fat child
  • Is there a typical fat girl?
  • Fat is just who I am
  • Sharing is on a voluntary basis
  • We all want miracles
  • When I fall, I fall hard
  • What is her secret?
  • What does being thin mean?
  • The message is, I'm one of you
  • She'd had enough after one bite
  • Thin power
  • You're visiting the dark side
  • I'm a pusher
  • They'll all be gone by Valentine's Day
  • Living off the fat of the land
  • He broke the social contract
  • Eat, eat
  • but not too much
  • Healthy busywork
  • Yes, she's still thin
  • An inherent distrust of gurus
  • But I'm in control of the fork
  • This tastes sad
  • Losing weight can be magic
  • That's progress for me.

Subjects