No Diet Day: Step Off the Scale

May 6 -- If you started off this morning counting calories, winning points or fat grams, you obviously do not know what day it is.

Today marks International No Diet Day.

A British diet book author and recovered anorexic started the little known holiday 10 years ago, and it is commemorated by people who want to advocate size acceptance and healthier approaches to dieting, body image, and eating disorders.

Among the messages of the day: Drop the strict eating regimen. Beauty and health are attainable at all weights, and "sizism" and fatphobia must end.

Discriminating against fat people is among the last acceptable forms of bias, say size acceptance activists, and even the medical community is not immune. Even though the U.S. surgeon general warns that fat is creeping up on smoking as the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States, size acceptance groups say doctors to readily blame obesity for myriad health problems.

"There are some biases that are ingrained," Allen Steadham, director of the International Size Acceptance Association, said. "They learn from medical school, if you have a patient who is physically overweight to tell them they have to drop weight."

Unfortunately, Steadham says, many doctors neither acknowledge that it is possible to be "fit and fat," nor that for most overweight people, keeping weight off long-term is often a losing battle.

"We've felt that there needs to be some diversity awareness training in the medical community," Steadham said. And some medical researchers agree with him.

'A Massive Epidemic'

For sure, the health risks of obesity are well-established, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a doctor who doesn't recognize the dangers of fat.

Medical literature shows that being overweight increases risks for Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, sleep apnea, stroke, gallbladder disease, liver disease, arthritis and cancer.

"This is a massive epidemic," Harvard University nutrition and epidemiology professor Walter Willett said. "If it were an infectious disease we would be having a panic and taking emergency actions. It doesn't mean everyone is going to die of it … But you're putting yourself at high risk of having adverse consequences."