My best friend re-vealed the exciting news to me a few weeks ago that she was now engaged. After our girlish cries came to an end she, against my advice, told me she was going to start a diet in order to "slim into her wedding dress" for her October wedding.

The day after she came back from her diet shopping she told me all the types of foods she was planning on limiting herself to and what her specific diet plan was.

As she went through the food she had bought I noticed that these pound-shedding eats cost a lot more for a lesser quantity of food.

It made me wonder why she was even trying to go on a diet.

Shouldn't she be saving this money for her wedding?

Needless to say, I think these strictly planned, fast-result diets are unrealistic.

If you follow these set restrictions, eating healthy is expensive, and also quite confusing to me.

What I don't understand is why so many people feel they need these quick-fix diets in order to be in the shape they want?

Not only do the ever-popular diets, like South Beach and Atkins, stress more expensive ways to attain protein but they have also been proven to have a much less long-term success rate.

I will never get why someone would spend that much money to lose 15 pounds just to gain 30 pounds back the minute you stop complying with the diet.

The best diet I still know to this day is to just watch the quantity of food you take in on a daily basis and stick to a weekly exercise routine.

In the end, it is less expensive and the most effective weight loss program.

It may take more time to accomplish an ideal body weight but it lasts much longer, which is the ultimate goal.

So I did my own research.

I made my way to the grocery store. I wanted to see the exact difference between what I normally buy to what is considered healthy in others' standards.

I started with the protein craze. A tiny tuna steak costs an extreme amount more than a pound of pasta and a jar of sauce that would make two spaghetti dinners for three.

More of the products that diets restrict you to, like skim milk, specific brands of yogurt and other higher quality produce, are also noticeably more pricey than the ones that are apparently bad for you.

So after this realization, I moved into the organic section.

This is where my mouth dropped. I am a college student. I tend to try and watch what I eat but paying this much for one person's so-called "healthier" food is just out of the question for my financial state.

Do you think I would go for the 99-cent lettuce or the $3 mixed bag? Do I go for the $2 a pound hamburger or the $4 a pound lean beef?

Then there were the actual recipe names some diets give themselves that confused me.

I'm a simple type of person.

I don't mind trying new things. But I need to know what goes in them.

More than half of these "gourmet" dishes have names and ingredients I don't even know how to pronounce.

And I definitely don't know how to find them in the store.

But I hunted for them anyway and found, not to my surprise, that they were not cheap.

Not even close.

I also became astonished by the shelf life of some beneficial foods.

I mean, living the college lifestyle helps me to be able to keep a pack of ramen on my shelf for at least a month.

This way I save some money by buying in bulk when I am able to go shopping for food.

The case with nourishing food, such as fruits, vegetables and other produce items, is they go bad much more quickly.

They need to be replenished all the time in order to have the freshest appeal, which will cost even more money then.

No wonder obesity is an issue in this country.

According to the American Obesity Association, of "adults 20 years and older, 65.4 percent are overweight and 30.5 percent are obese."

Now I'm not saying the main reason is not from the differing prices on foods.

Instances like genetic make-up, environmental factors, psychological factors, etc., are the major reasons why so many Americans are obese today.

But this can definitely add to the cause in some situations. But being in college doesn't mean you can't try to eat healthy on a budget either.

As I walked in and out of the aisles, I realized I could never eat truly healthy according to the diet plans of today. While I'm here at school I'll stick to my cheap carbs and calories any day if it saves me money. I'll just workout harder.