This Is Big

January 15, 2020
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.

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February 17, 2020
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.

February 15, 2020
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(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)