…Sorry it’s belated.

Once again, despite vowing to do something for it last year I completely missed International No Diet Day. Never heard of it? International No Diet Day takes place at the beginning of the ‘bikini diet’ season on May 6th each year and, despite what it sounds like, it is not a license to eat your body weight in cake before swearing to abstinence the next morning. INDD is about rejecting dieting, and rejecting the negative feedback spiral of self-deprecation, disappointment and failure that completely distorts our relationships with food and our bodies and keeps the diet industry making more and more billions each and every year.

This year I wanted to stand in Trafalgar Square dressed as an enormous puffy cupcake, waving IDD placards and barking I AM NOT WHAT I EAT at passing traffic. Emigrating put the kybosh on that, unfortunately. [I promise I wasn’t asked to leave the country…]

There’s been a brilliant swell of curve love recently, not just with high profile campaigns like Star in a Bra, but more generally in the online boobosphere too. Yet still last week three completely unconnected and totally healthy friends (including one of my favourite bloggers and Twitter playmates, the beautiful @greatgospel) announced ‘no carbs til marbs’ on their profiles.

In the spirit of International No Diet Day, can we come out against our Happy and Healthy friends (and selves) denying a key food group for no good reason? Because as important as it is for more companies to embrace broader definitions of ‘beauty’, it won’t change anything if we continue to be our own harshest critics. For things to change, we need to broaden our acceptance not only of what we see in the media, but what we see in the mirror too.

I for one am going to try. Will you join me?