My best friend Leah is obsessed with her weight, which is strange, because she weighs about 6 pounds. I mean seriously, she's a tiny girl. And it's not that she doesn't eat, or that she throws up, it's just that she's o.b.s.e.s.s.e.d. with her food intake. Her mom is exactly the same way, and Leah's house is crowded with exercise bikes, exercise balls, those step-y things, and only healthy food. Leah's mom even has this program on her computer where you can put in the food you've eaten for the day, and it tells you if you've overeaten or under eaten and exactly how many available calories you have left to consume. Everyday I go to Leah's after school and the first thing she does is sit down at the computer to check. And while I'm busy munching on whatever I can find in the kitchen (which is usually granola or something crappy), she's busy calculating the exact grams of fat, calories, carbs, sugars, etc., she's eaten that day. And of course, Leah's always within the 'normal' amount?sually because she skips breakfast and only has an apple and carrots for lunch.

When Leah's done calculating her own diet, she puts in what I've eaten. This is always sort of depressing because I can't remember one time where I've eaten the 'right' amount of food. The program always says I've overeaten, even when I 'forget' to mention the cookies I ate at lunch. And this is even before I've eaten dinner! I can never figure out how it's possible to stay below the 'right' amount of food if you eat three meals a day. All I usually eat is a bagel for breakfast, a turkey sandwich or something for lunch, and some kind of snack after school. So why the heck am I always overeating according to this program?! It just makes me feel bad about how I eat, and lately I've been trying to eat less because of it - which also makes me feel bad because now I'm hungry all the time. I just can't see how this kind of diet is healthy. If you're starving all day, you can't be eating good, right?

This kind of pressure about food and weight sometimes makes it hard for me to hang out with Leah - which sucks because we've been BFF since 5th grade. We know everything about each other, and she's insanely fun…except when she's talking about her weight. The thing is, Leah and I are the exact same height, but I probably weigh about 20 or 30 pounds more than her. This makes it sort of awkward for me when she goes on and on about how fat she is. If she thinks she's fat, she must think I'm a whale.

I think another reason Leah is so obsessed with food is the amount of fashion magazines she reads. She has subscriptions to everything, YM, Seventeen, Teen People, Cosmo Girl, even Vogue. And every time she looks through them, she's always pointing to the models and describing their flaws. "Ohh my god," she says, "her thighs are huge," or, "you can totally see cellulite here," or "her stomach is soo flabby." If she's critical with these rail-thin, airbrushed-to- perfection models, she must be ten times as critical on herself. It makes me so mad at the magazines too. They preach loving your body, but every model is a size 0, and every other page has to do with losing weight. I don't really read them so much anymore (it's funny - now that I'm almost 17, I don't actually read Seventeen‡I read it when I was 13 or 14), but I remember how there were articles like, "Beat the Winter Blues with these New Crunch Techniques!" I'm sorry but for me, fighting the winter blues involves The OC and an entire pint of Ben & Jerries. It does not include exercise equipment.

Most of the time, I like my body ok. I take ballet lessons three times a week, and I eat pretty healthy. I mean sure, I have fat days, who doesn't? Sometimes I look in the mirror in the morning and I can't help wishing my stomach was smaller, or that my thighs didn't look like torpedoes when I sat down. But for the most part, I'm pretty content with the way I look. I think you have to be, in order to be a happy person. And that's what bothers me the most about Leah's obsession; I can tell she's never comfortable in her own skin. I want her to be happy, not obsessed with calories and carbs. Sometimes she is able to let it go and we can just pig out and have fun - which usually means watching "When Harry Met Sally" while eating an entire a bag of Doritos and a package of Double Stuffed Oreos. But too often it's the other side of Leah I see: her bent over a keyboard, calculating her food intake over and over again.

Don't forget to read Ouija Boards and Sugar Highs too!