A huge problem that many people have addressed is the influence of the media. I mean influence as in telling you what you should look like. Now, I don’t see it as obvious as before when characters would literally say “you should be a size 0,” but it’s still there. Some things about the popular body type has changed, like now it’s cool to have a big butt whereas before that meant you were fat, but your waist should still be “nonexistent”.

It’s still a problem, for both celebrities in the limelight and for regular people who watch them on their tv. It’s suffocating to feel like you have to have the exact same body as people in the media who can afford magical trainers or plastic surgery. Teenage girls are still looking into quick diets so they can lose weight.

No one wants to workout anymore, but everybody wants to have that certain body. Famous people are even making money off of it buy promoting these “get skinny quick” teas on Instagram. They even do it knowing they don’t use the product. Aside from these teas, women are still using these old diets.

Some of these diets aren’t the healthiest but people still take that risk. First, there is the Atkin’s Diet which consists of these rules:

• -No more than 20 grams of carbs per day, mostly from certain vegetables
• -Protein and fat from chicken, fish, eggs, red meat, butter, and vegetable oils
• -No pasta, bread, grains, fruit, starch filled vegetables, or dairy other than butter, cheese, and cream
• -No nuts, seeds, beans
• -No caffeine
• -No alcohol

There is even a such thing as a “Cookie Diet”. This is where you eat cookies instead of meals. It does work in a short term and you will lose weight but if you go off the diet you will regain the weight.

Another non-traditional diet is the African Mango diet. This is where you eat the Irvingia gabonensis which is an African fruit that is said to literally melt away your waistline and belly fat. Who knows if it’s even true or not, I haven’t tried it and webmd couldn’t give me much more information about it.

Some of the worst fad diets out are the cabbage soup diet, the “sleeping beauty” diet (where you are told to sleep off the fat), the five-bite diet (where you drink water all day and only take 5 bites of a meal for lunch & dinner, no breakfast), and the cotton ball diet (where you eat cotton balls before each meal to fill yourself up).

What if more celebrities celebrated every body type and told young men and women that they all look good, no matter if they have a small waist or not. The main thing should be health - as long as you’re healthy, you’re good.