Today, May 6, and since 1992 is celebrated the International Day Without Diets , initiative that was born in United Kingdom by the hand of Mary Evans Young. There were several triggers that led her to be the creator of this day: the viewing of a television programme about surgical operations on overweight people, the news of a teenager who decides to commit suicide having been teased for her weight in her peer group, and having suffered from anorexia nervosa herself.

Mary Evans then decides to work on a campaign called “Fat Woman Bites Back”, which translates into Spanish as “Las gordas regresven el mordisco”.

Over time, more countries have joined this initiative that focuses on key points related to the pressure that women receive on their body image , thus denouncing the creation of beauty canons that are far from reality.

Why does International No Diet Day appear?

Some of the objectives that this campaign intends to pursue are the following:

  • Celebrate the body’s natural diversity.
  • To promote good self-esteem in all people regardless of their body.
  • Revalue a positive body image in all bodies.
  • Develop healthy eating guidelines that are not based on restrictive diets that favour the appearance of eating disorders.
  • Reject, as a society, cultural values that encourage hatred of one’s own body.

These central objectives are meant to be remembered on this day and are interrelated with other factors that directly or indirectly attack the creation of a positive image towards one’s own body, as well as that of other people. Some examples are the invitations to follow the wrongly called “miracle diets” , in which some of them recommend food restriction.

The acceptance of one’s body

The use of dietary supplements to replace food intake, the abuse of laxatives and diuretics to achieve a feeling of “emptying”… The obsession with reaching an “ideal weight” without taking into account the natural fluctuations of the weight and the body’s own constitution. The habit of performing the “bikini operation” that anticipates on the one hand that to teach the body it has to be of a certain shape, as well as that changes have to be made on it so that it can be shown without complexes.

These are some of the different guidelines and attempts to market products that highlight the “need” to reach a weight in which different personal and social expectations are projected, which on many occasions, are not finally satisfied with the modification of the body or a part of it.

It is therefore necessary to emphasize the importance of preventive measures aimed at stopping the factors that promote corporal dissatisfaction .

A positive attitude towards one’s own body

From the family, it is advisable to encourage positive attitudes both towards one’s own body and that of others, and to promote a healthy lifestyle around food so that it, among others, does not become an extracting agent around which personal and interpersonal conflicts are managed.

From the rest of the socializing and community agents: To show rejection towards fat-phobic attitudes, not to allow from the school and the work environment discriminations around the physical one, to promote a critical attitude towards the cultural mandates that attempt against the corporal diversity and on the mandates of gender related to the corporality, to eliminate the use of images far from the reality that exalt the extreme thinness, and in the manufacture of articles of clothing to support the corporal diversity with their different forms, sizes and heights.
These are some of the many measures that can help to create, develop and maintain good bodily self-esteem.