Good morning! 
It is Thursday, 6 May 2021
(W18 | D126 | 239 rem)
Today is: 
International No Diet Day
International No Diet Day (INDD) is an annual celebration of body acceptance, including fat acceptance and body shape diversity. The first International No Diet Day was celebrated in the UK in 1992.
This day is also dedicated to promoting a healthy life style with a focus on health at any size and in raising awareness of the potential dangers of, and the unlikelihood of success of, dieting; the Institute of Medicine summarises: “those who complete weight loss programs lose approximately 10 percent of their body weight only to regain two-thirds within a year and almost all of it within five years.”
No Diet Day was created by Mary Evans Young in 1992. Young is the director of the British group “Diet Breakers”.
After personally experiencing anorexia nervosa, she worked to help people appreciate themselves for what they are, and to appreciate the body they have. Young developed her understanding both through her own experiences of being bullied at school for being fat and by speaking with women who attended the management courses she ran. She relates in her book, Diet Breaking: Having It All Without Having to Diet, how during one of these courses in 1991 she became irritated with the coffee break conversation about whether or not the women were going to eat a biscuit - “Oh, I’ll just have one”, “I shouldn’t really”, “Oh, all right then”. Young asked the group “What do you think would happen if you spent as much time and energy on your careers as you do on diets?”
In May 1992, Young introduced the first No Diet Day.
It was a small affair to be celebrated by a dozen women with a picnic in Hyde Park, London. Ages ranged from twenty-one to seventy-six and they all wore stickers saying: Ditch That Diet. It rained, and so Mary Evans Young held the picnic in her home. Since then, groups in other countries around the globe have started to celebrate No Diet Day, especially in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Israel, Denmark, Sweden and Brazil.
In celebrating No Diet Day, participants aim to:
- Question the idea of one “right” body shape.
- Raise awareness of weight discrimination, size bias, and fat phobia.
- Declare a single day free from diets and obsessions about body weight.
- Present the facts about the diet industry, emphasizing the inefficacy of commercial diets.
- Honour the victims of eating disorders and weight-loss surgery.
- Help end weight discrimination, sizism and fat phobia.
Eat healthy, be happy, love the body you have, and have a great Thursday! 