International No Diet Day

It's International No-Diet day every year on My 6th. It was started in 1992 by Mary Evans, director of Diet Breakers.

Why do we have 'no-smoke days' and the like? Because smoking is bad for your health. And that's why we have a no-diet day too - yo-yo dieting and fad diets of restriction and deprivation are bad for your health.

Here's how to be a part of No-Diet Day: wear a light blue ribbon on the 6th May.

It’s a way of saying "YES" to:

• fashion designers who send too thin and gaunt models away from fashion shows.

• the French government who in 2008 brought legislation to parliament to ban too thin bodies in the media.

It's a way of saying "NO" to:

• the constant craziness and obsession with the appearance of our bodies

• the notion that you’re abnormal if you feel comfortable in your body (regardless of your size).

It's a way of standing against:

• diet myths that have millions of people around the globe starting yet another Monday futile dieting attempt (regardless of whether they are overweight or not).

• those quick-weight-loss schemes that are among the most common consumer frauds,

• diet programs that have some of the highest customer dissatisfaction of any ‘service’ industry.

It’s a reminder to look at the facts...that:

• diets fail for about 95-98% of all people in the long term.

• since 1970, as diets have proliferated, so too has obesity.

• there’s something seriously wrong with stomach stapling and young girls of a normal weight having their jaws wired or committing suicide because they can’t “cope being fat”.

• that eating disorders are entrapping younger and older victims - and more men too, and places where eating disorders were once never known. They are like the canary in a mine, an indication of how toxic our society has become around food, eating and body issues.

• despite an ever-increasing array of ‘no sugar’, ‘low-and-no-fat products’ and and ever mutating arragy of diet plans’, globesity is a rising problem everywhere in the Western world.

• statistics show that young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or of losing their parents - that's how ridiculous this whole thing is!

• 50% of 9-year-old girls and 80% of 10-year-old girls have dieted! But despite more (and younger) dieting for our children, we also have more childhood obesity now than ever before and for the first time scientists are predicting that parents may outlive their children.

• it’s madness to buy into this thin-obsessed and diet-crazed world!

Other than wearing a blue ribbon, what else do you do?

Declare a personal one-day moratorium on diet/weight obsession. This doesn't mean a day of stuffing (to make up for the diet you've just been on). It means you:

• don’t count calories or points
• make all foods psychoogically legal
• forget about losing weight

Listen, and respond, to your body instead:

• eat when it tells you it’s hungry
• savour each mouthful and really enjoy your food
• and stop before you've over-eaten.

You go through the day:

• celebrating the beauty and diversity of ALL natural sizes & shapes

• affirm every-BODY's right to health, fitness, and emotional well-being.

• commit to help end cruel fattism and fat phobia and

• show compassion for victims of eating disorders, weight-loss surgery and other diet-related illnesses.

Since its humble beginnings in Mary Evans' dining-room it has been celebrated in Australia, South Africa, Canada, England, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Russia and across the United States.

To join the millions of people starting to reclaim their power and live free of diets join our anti-diet Mind over Fatter support group.

Click to join Mindoverfatter

If you find this website useful, feel free to recommend it to a friend.