This article was published in the Southerner’s spring news magazine.

Eating what the body needs is one of many ways to stay healthy. There are lots of diets in the world, for example the best life diet or the cookie diet. The best life diet includes a change of a lifestyle. Instead of counting calories, it basically includes eating smaller and healthier portions. There are cookies on the cookie diet which makes you feel full, so you do not want as much food. Most diets promise to be healthy, but actually how healthy is it to be on a diet?

Junior Rachel Hutt designs clothes on her own and is also involved with a fashion-oriented youth program at Old Arizona. She worked with models for a fashion show she helped out in. She helped dress the models and was “disgusted” by the models’ eating habits and how thin they were. “They weren’t eating healthily,” said Hutt. “When some people are naturally thin, they have high metabolisms. But most [models] often eat little and never exercise to be thin,” said Hutt.

Sophomore Betsy Michels tries to control her food intake. It is not because of a problem with her weight, but because it makes her feel better. “I feel better when I eat healthy, so I guess it affects my mood along with helping me when I am playing sports,” said Michels. Now Michels just started softball and eating healthy makes her feel more capable when she plays softball so that she just wants to run.

“[Diets are] not about limiting what you eat but changing to healthy things,” Hutt commented, “thin models are not beautiful models.” Hutt said that she believes diets are acceptable if one’s weight is unhealthy, but “everybody is different. It’s okay to have big hips or something.”

Junior Elias Mintz, who was a vegetarian last year said that “healthy diets are diets that are 55% mental and 45% physical.” What Mintz means is that “45% is exercising and 55% is having the will power and determination to continue your diet,” stated Mintz.

Mary Huber the South Dietitian added on healthy diets: “a healthy diet includes the foods from all the food groups from the food guide pyramid.” For her an unhealthy diet is what she said most models are doing, including “skipping meals, they just don’t eat or eat little. Some make it to eating disorders which would be anorexia, bulimia”, said Huber.

According to anadeath.webs.com, “dieting and the resulting hunger are two of the most powerful eating disorders triggers known.” The website also says that one woman out of every hundred suffers from anorexia in the United States, four percent of college-aged women suffer from bulimia, and more than half of teenage girls believe they should be on a diet to lose weight.

Huber said that in addition to eating enough, eating the right food is also important. “Making sure to get in nutritious food and not filling up with junk food or what we call low nutrient dense,” added Huber.

For Mintz, an healthy diet is one where “you feel better about yourself.”