This week, the Eat­ing Dis­or­der Peer Ad­vi­sors (EDPA) has is­sued a chal­lenge to cam­pus that will only leave you feel­ing like you’ve won: the Seven Day Body Chal­lenge.

The Seven Day Body Chal­lenge started this past Sun­day and lasts until Sat­ur­day. Once a day, EDPA sends out a blitz with a goal. For ex­am­ple, Mon­day’s chal­lenge was to go a full 24 hours with­out talk­ing about your or any­one else’s ap­pear­ance (hair, cloth­ing, etc.), ex­er­cise habits or di­etary pat­terns.

The chal­lenge was de­signed to en­cour­age peo­ple to ac­cept and love them­selves for who they are and ad­di­tion­ally, to pro­mote pos­i­tive body image and healthy eat­ing and ex­er­cise habits. Its slo­gan is “Re-cap­ture Your­self. Be You. That’s enough.”

This is the first time EDPA is run­ning the week-long event. The con­cept of the Body Chal­lenge came from Brigham Young Uni­ver­sity’s Ten Day Body Image Chal­lenge (http://​byuwsr.​blogspot.​com/​2010/​10/​10-day-body-image-challenge.​html). EDPA mod­i­fied the goals to bet­ter suit the Dart­mouth cul­ture and lifestyle.

Ap­prox­i­mately 400 stu­dents and fac­ulty are par­tic­i­pat­ing. Peo­ple have been very re­cep­tive, and par­tic­i­pa­tion is higher than ex­pected.

At the end of the week, par­tic­i­pants will re­ceive a sur­vey with fol­low-up ques­tions. Every­one who fills out the sur­vey gets a prize that they se­lected when they signed up for the chal­lenge.

The Body Chal­lenge runs in con­junc­tion with many other events in honor of Eat­ing Dis­or­der Aware­ness Week on cam­pus. On Mon­day, the men­tal health aware­ness group Ac­tive Minds hosted a din­ner dis­cus­sion about eat­ing dis­or­ders fea­tur­ing a coun­selor from Dick’s House.

On Wednes­day, there will be a screen­ing of the movie Amer­ica the Beau­ti­ful 2: The Thin Com­mand­ments at 7 pm in Loew The­ater.

There will be a stu­dent panel about eat­ing dis­or­ders called “Heart Our Voices” held on Thurs­day at 7 pm in Col­lis Com­mon Ground. Light re­fresh­ments will be served.

Be sure to keep an eye out for the dis­plays in Col­lis, Baker-Berry and the Alumni Gym, and re­mem­ber to love your body this week — and every week!