International No Dieting Day: against the obsession with ideal weight

Today we celebrate the diversity of bodies and the possibility of accepting one's own body image.

Today, May 6th, and since 1992, is the International is celebrated the International No Diet DayThis initiative was born in the United Kingdom by the hand of Mary Evans Young. Several were the triggers that led her to be the creator of this day: the viewing of a television program on surgical operations on overweight people, the news of a teenager who decided to commit suicide having been teased by her weight in her peer group, and having suffered from anorexia nervosa herself.

Mary Evans then decided to work on a campaign called "Fat Woman Bites Back".

Over time, more countries have joined this initiative, which focuses attention on key issues related to the pressure that we women receive on our body image, thus denouncing the creation of beauty canons that are far from reality.The article denounces the creation of beauty canons that are far from reality.

Why does the International Day Without Diets appear?

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

• Celebrate the natural diversity of the body.
• Promote good self-esteem in all people regardless of what their body looks like.
• To revalue a positive body image in all bodies.
• Develop healthy eating patterns that are not based on restrictive diets that favor the appearance of eating disorders.
• Reject, as a society, cultural values that favor hatred towards one's own body.

These central objectives of this day are interrelated with other factors that directly or indirectly attack the creation of a positive image of one's own body, as well as that of other people. Some examples are the invitations to follow the wrongly called "miracle diets".Some of these diets recommend food restriction.

The acceptance of one's own body

The use of food supplements that replace food intakes, the abuse of laxatives and Diuretics to achieve a feeling of "emptying".... The obsession to reach an "ideal weight" without taking into account natural fluctuations without taking into account the natural fluctuations of the same and the own corporal constitution. The custom of performing the "bikini operation" that anticipates on the one hand that in order to show the body it has to be a certain way, as well as that it is necessary to make changes 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 in many occasions, are not finally satisfied with the modification of the body or a part of it.

It is therefore necessary to highlight the importance of preventive measures aimed at stopping the factors that promote weight loss. stop the factors that promote body dissatisfaction..

A positive attitude towards one's own body

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

From the rest of the socializing and community agents: Show rejection towards fat-phobic attitudes, do not allow from school and work environment discriminations around the physique, promote a critical attitude towards cultural mandates that threaten body diversity and gender mandates related to corporeality, eliminate the use of images far from reality that exalt extreme thinness, and in the manufacture of clothing support body diversity with its different shapes, sizes and heights.

These are some of the many measures that can promote the creation, development and maintenance of good body self-esteem.