International No Diet Day

Today is International No Diet Day. The first INDD was in 1992 after Mary Evans Young saw a television show on which women were having their stomachs stapled. One woman had split the staples and was in for her third operation. And then there was a young girl of 15 who committed suicide because 'she couldn't cope with being fat.' She was size 12. Ms. Young got angry. She came up with the idea for INDD.
The stories that Ms Young heard are like bookends. There are the fat people trying to get thin at any cost and the not really fat people dieing because they are so afraid. On my blog today I write about fat lives and the negative impact of dieting. I don’t know as much about eating disorders. I do know young women (and increasingly young men) die from them.
I was at a hearing to create a task force on childhood obesity in San Francisco recently. I heard a therapist say that she had one client who was close to 500 pounds when she hospitalized but the client had all the signs of malnutrition because she’d been starving herself in an attempt to lose weight. And the therapist had another client who was hospitalized at under 100 pounds but she had been eating over 5000 calories a day. And then throwing it all it up.
INDD is not about going out and having pizza and a banana split. It’s about understanding the cost of fat-phobia. It’s about understanding that there’s a difference between having a healthy relationship with food and monitoring your appetite in a hyper-vigilant manner.
So I am wishing you all a healthy AND pleasurable day with your body and your appetite.