Marisa Meltzer Boeken

"A triumphant chronicle...acerbic, culturally astute and genuine." -New York Times From contributor to The Cut, one of Vogue's "Most Anticipated Books of 2020," that has something to "bravely and honestly" (Busy Philipps) say about weight and weight loss and which also sheds a light on Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watcher, an early and forgotten female founder 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.

Melzer shows us, through honesty, rawness and deep vulnerability, the complexities of living in a body that doesn't adhere to society's narrow beauty standards in an era that holds up body positivity as gospel.

The astonishing story of the billion-dollar brand and the iconic CEO who has transformed American retail.