Healthy living and the way people eat seem to go hand in hand as they try to obtain that perfect beach body.

People even eat organic foods and preservative free foods, while they practice yoga or tai chi.

Either way, it seems the battle to stay thin is more than just buying a diet soda, it is knowing what works for your body as far as dieting is concerned.

“Less sugar, less salt and less saturated fat, those are the things killing us in America,” Sue Warren, health instructor, said.

Warren also said that more people should realize just how bad processed foods are and stick with whole foods instead.

For example, instead of drinking apple juice or eating potato chips students may eat an apple or eat regular potatoes which are easier for the body to digest.

Due to the over-processing of food and the implementation of preservatives into foods, many, if not all, vitamins and minerals are lost with processed foods.

Making sure to read the nutritional information and learning to read and understand the labels is a useful tool when shopping for healthier grocery options she said.

Along with that, Warren suggested utilizing the food pyramid guidelines, which are useful in deciding how to eat healthy.

If more people followed the food pyramid, it would make dieting so much easier she said.

“The pyramid you can memorize and it has been real good over the years,” Warren said.

Another concern for dieters is meat consumption.

It is generally believed that pork is bad for humans and that people should eat less red meat and more chicken or fish to stay healthy.

“It is more healthy to not eat pork, it’s just full of salt,” Willie Johnson, 21, undecided major, said.

Though pork is perceived as less healthy, it all depends on how you eat it, Warren said.

She said that pork is usually bad because most people leave the fat on the pork, but by removing the fat, pork is a fine source of protein.

“Pork has some of the stuff you need, and there is nothing wrong with eating it, unless it’s against your conscious,” Warren said. “If you cut off the fat, it’s not such a bad meat but it is up to you to decide.”

Eating three balanced meals a day while following each meal with a small snack like yogurt or a piece of fruit can help steady one’s metabolism.

“I eat six times a day and then snack on a little something,” Johnson said.

Moderation is a big part of having a successful diet by cutting down on food items that we don’t really need to consume, Warren said.

One such example is juice, whose overconsumption may cause damage to people’s teeth, because it is full of sugar.

Juice is something Warren suggests we may need to really cut back on.

“We drink double, triple more than what we need and our body only really needs water anyways,” Warren said.

Omar Elshiyab, 21, radiology major, said he went on his own diet which consisted of no soda or bread consumption and he lost 40 pounds.

Elshiyab added that people also need to stop loading up their plates and eat in smaller portions.

He also drank a lot of water before each meal to fill himself up.

“Always have fluids in your system to fill yourself up,” Elshiyab said.

Elshiyab also said that people should drink more tea since it burns fat.

Warren and Elshiyab both said that people in our generation need to workout and exercise more.

Warren added that a big problem in our generation is that society has become more intellectually based, with more people teaching and working office jobs, so we spend more time in an idle state than being active like our ancestors who relied on their bodies to survive.

“It is not like the old days where we ate less and moved more, we live in a society where all our work is intellectual and we don’t exercise enough,” Warren said.