The day began in 1992 when Mary Evans Young, a British feminist, decided something needed to be done about eating disorders and the huge diet industry.
The point is to raise awareness of fat-phobia and size discrimination; fight the idea of the ”right” or ”ideal” body shape; fight the diet industry; and honor the victims of eating disorders and weight loss surgery.
The blog Body Love Wellness has a post listing 16 reasons not to diet (ever). Some include:
-Diets have a 90-99% long-term failure rate.
-The diet industry has a deep interest in the failure of dieters – if everyone got skinny, they’d go out of business.
-Dieting gives dieters the message that they cannot trust their internal sense of what nourishes them.
-Food often becomes about reward and punishment for dieters.
-The diet system reinforces low self-esteem in dieters.
-Diets cause a lot of body hatred.
-Diets often categorize foods as good/okay vs. bad/forbidden
-The weight loss/gain (yo-yo) cycle created by dieting is more stressful on the body than just being plain old fat.
-Diets assume that all fat people eat too much. They don’t account for the fact that people come in all shapes and sizes, and that a person’s weight is not an indicator of overall health.
This comes at a good time, since we just learned that HydroxyCut causes liver damage and death. So stop the insanity, stop the madness and stop the dieting! Start loving yourself and everyone else for the unique and beautiful body they have, whether or not it fits a pre-described norm.-Liza
(photo from Chotda via Flickr.com)
