Marisa Meltzer - This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World — and Me

Its choice, not chance, that determines your destiny.

Jean Nidetch

Jean Nidetch woke up one morning in September 1961 feeling sylphlike. Did you know you could weigh two hundred and fourteen pounds and have a thin day? she would later ask crowds who came to see her speak.

She put on a muumuu, a dress she considered a fat womans boon because it hung nicely over everything and in the pockets she could squirrel away pistachios. The tag on the dress read size 10. In reality, Jean wore a size 44roughly equivalent to a 20 in modern vanity sizingbut shed had a seamstress remove the tags from her clothing and replace them with smaller, more cheering sizes. Her drivers license weight was 145 pounds, which she hadnt been since before high school. But nobody weighed you at the DMV.

Jean tied a ribbon in her hair. She walked through Little Neck to the supermarket, where she passed rows of Quisp cereal and stocked up on graham crackers for her young sons. She lingered in the sweets aisle, filling her cart with bright yellow boxes of the delicious, pillowy chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies called Mallomars. These were what she called her Frankenstein, a favorite treat and nemesis and the real reason shed come to the store. Shed taken to hiding them in the hamper in her bathroom; she would sneak in, lock the door, and consume three satisfying boxes at a time. She tried to make a joke out of it: One cookie plus one cookie equals eleven. Afterward, she always promised herself shed quit Mallomars, but her resolve never lasted more than a few days.

That September morning Jean found herself back at the supermarket, stocking up once again. She would simply tell the checker the boxes of cookies were for her children. It was a cycle that she thought shed never break. Being fat was just unlucky, and despite that, Jean felt like she had done well. She was thirty-eight years old, happily married to a nice husband who drove a bus and who was fatter than she was, which meant she could still feel small and ladylike. She had two healthy sons, ages five and ten. What more could Jean Nidetch of Queens, New York, in 1961 reasonably ask for?

Then Jean spotted a woman shed met on occasion in the neighborhood, standing over by the cantaloupes. She hadnt especially liked her when theyd been introduced, but Jean was a good housewife and a purposely outgoing person. She figured that if she was going to be fat, at least she had to be friendly to make up for it.

Jean, you look so wonderful, the woman told her. Did you have a good summer? Jean, flattered, answered that she had. She thought not of sun and sand but of the concession trucks that made their way along the streets of Little Neck selling ice cream, doughnuts, pizza, and sandwiches, trucks that shed run to catch up to, something only kids were supposed to do.

You look so marvelous, the woman said again, looking her up and down. When are you due?

To say that it was a moment that she would never forget is an understatement; it would define and transform the rest of her life. But at the time, Jean, the ultimate chatterbox, was dumbstruck. That woman thought she was pregnant. Eventually, Jean stammered something about how she had to go and made her way home in a hasty retreat.

What do I do now? she kept asking herself as she walked the four blocks home. Once she made it back, she stood in front of the full-length mirror behind her bedroom door. It was something she normally tried to avoid. Jean was fine with her reflection in the bathroom mirrorthe face, the lipstick, and the hair she could get just right. Shed walk away thinking her eyes were gorgeous. This time, though, she looked hard at her hips and stomach. Bulges. Who was she to be having a thin day?

Later Jean would write, Most fat people need to be hurt in some way in order to be jolted into taking action and doing something for themselves. Something has got to happen to demoralize you suddenly and completely before you see the light.

She decided right there in front of the full-length mirror to be grateful to the woman at the supermarket, not because she liked her or would forgive her, but because shed given Jean what she needed.