Isolationcast #8: Marisa Meltzer on dieting, body image and New York lockdown

My guest this week is the brilliant Marisa Meltzer. A columnist for the New York Times' Style section, she has just released This Is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World - and Me. Part biography of Jean Nidetch, the housewife from Queens who set up the world’s most famous diet company, part memoir documenting Marisa’s attitude towards her own weight, it’s a riveting read which really puts our complicated and often messy relationship with food, weight and beauty standards under a microscope while offering a hugely entertaining social history too. I loved talking to Marisa about this, as well as life in quarantine in New York, and how lockdown has induced strange and complicated eating and exercise habits in many of us. Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Big-Founder-Watchers-Changed/dp/031641400X Twitter: @aliceazania / @MarisaMeltzer Instagram: @aliceazania / @MarisaMeltzer Edited by Chelsey Moore

Om Podcasten

The Sunday Salon is a podcast celebrating brilliant books and the women who write them, hosted by journalist Alice-Azania Jarvis. Each week she chats to an inspiring female author about her work, her career, how she writes, what she reads and everything in between. This is not some academic textual analysis – it’s about finding the stories behind the stories. Tune in each Sunday to hear from guests including Isabel Allende, Jessie Burton, Holly Bourne, Diana Evans, Elizabeth Day, Nimco Ali and Sophie Kinsella. Edited by Chelsey Moore.