Home > Work > This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World (and Me)
1 " Denial, particularly self-denial, is its own kind of pleasure. "
― Marisa Meltzer , This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World (and Me)
2 " I can say that all this focus on appearance while I was on Weight Watchers kept me really busy—I filled my life with healthy busywork. "
3 " Rather, I’m the kind of person who makes watercolors of sunsets in the summer while drinking cocktails on my roof, who reads a book a week and goes to French movies. My friends often cite my life as being an inspiration to them, and I have quite rigorously assembled something that looks really good from the outside. But that performance has always been a stark contrast to how I feel about myself. "
4 " Tomorrow will have a diet in it, maybe not a go-for-broke diet or even one that involves tracking calories, but I will always be conscious of what I eat and how much I exercise. That’s why body neutrality doesn’t feel like a good fit: I’m never going to stop wanting to be thinner or to stop chasing it. I know my life will always be this way, and I’m okay with that. That acceptance, even if it’s an uneasy one, is my new normal. "
5 " An essential truth about being a woman is that we have so many internalized messages that we are not enough that we might spend our whole lives coming to terms with them. And weight is sometimes the physical relic left behind from this struggle. I have been afforded the privilege to concentrate on this unfairness, but those ideas have seeped into other parts of my life as well. Who gets to move through the world with ease? It shouldn’t just be those in the pinnacle of power, a white man of a certain socioeconomic status or a young woman who looks like a supermodel. Dieting usually requires us to choose to live smaller lives—and by smaller, I don’t mean in pants size, I mean in experience. Losing weight is a tithe you never quit paying. It’s relentless. You can sacrifice everything at the altar of the bitch goddess of weight loss and it ultimately won’t be enough. "
6 " Well into my mid-thirties I considered dieting my biggest secret. I wish I could say it was a thrilling one, like dating my college TA, but it’s more like waxing my upper lip—I didn’t ever want to talk about it, and I’d rather people thought I never had to worry about it in the first place. "
7 " My friends often cite my life as being an inspiration to them, and I have quite rigorously assembled something that looks really good from the outside. But that performance has always been a stark contrast to how I feel about myself. I had a gut feeling that Jean Nidetch knew all about that soul-killing mismatch. "
8 " I want my body to look good to me first and to the rest of the world second. I want to be someone whom I’d aspire to be if I were another woman or whom I would desire if I were a man. But I also want to reach some level of acceptance of the body I have, regardless of my weight. "
9 " I know there are people who claim to enjoy dating, just like I know there are people who claim to enjoy a cold shower in the morning. "
10 " I have been single for some time, and when I say “some time,” I mean so long that I have acquaintances who have gotten married, divorced, remarried, and had two children since I last had a serious boyfriend. "
11 " In online dating, I wonder if I have a nice enough face to get my foot in the door, but when they see my stomach and my thighs they’ll be disappointed. Including a full-body shot feels like selling an old couch online and having to include all the scrapes and tiny stains. "