This Book Is a Big Deal In a World of Thin People

Marisa Meltzer opens up about writing “This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World — and Me.”

I live in a world of thin people. I interview the famously thin — actors, models, musicians, influencers — but mostly I observe them. I know their habits, but I’m also aware that I am not one of them.

That’s a slice of Marisa Meltzer’s third book, This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World—and Me. The book tells the true story of Jean Nidetch, who overhauled her life from a frustrated housewife to pioneering weight-loss entrepreneur before she died in 2015.

But this is more than just Nidetch’s biography. Stylistically similar to Julie and Julia, Big is also Marisa’s story as a lifelong dieter who struggles to make peace with her weight. Marisa documents a year in her life on the Weight Watchers program, while weaving in the history of Nidetch’s business-building journey.

You might know Marisa’s work from the Me Time column in The New York Times, her Roxane Gay profile for Elle, or her Busy Phillips story for the New Yorker. She’s a brilliant writer, a former riot grrrl, a Brooklynite from California, and as much as she disagrees with some of Jean’s rigid philosophies, sees a bit of herself in the dieting mogul.