It's time to Choose You.

Looking to reduce your cancer risk?

About half of all cancer deaths could be prevented if people took steps to eat right, be active, quit smoking, protect their skin and get regular health checks.

Everyone laughs when they remember how I grew up eating (Mike and I were famous for a Pepsi + Reeses on the couch after school, watching the A-Team).  Beyond french fries, ketchup, corn and potato boats, I didn't eat vegetables until I reached college.  Even then, it was only because they were already in my dish.

When I was looking through my cabinets the other day, I realized just how much things had changed since then.

It took the diagnosis of sudden high blood pressure during my pregnancy to really start to get things in check.  After meeting with my doc following his birth, we started a plan to get on Weight Watchers and get things in line so I could go off the blood pressure meds.  Over the past few months, I've been able to cut my blood pressure nearly to the point of being able to do -- through eating better, getting healthier and becoming more active.

It's why I love the new initiative from the American Cancer Society -- launching today -- Choose You.  It's to help women, who always take care of others, to take care of themselves as well.

It's an awesome structure -- you choose one way (just one, no overload!) to get healthier.  You commit to a period of time to do just one thing to eat right, get active, quit smoking, get regular health checks, or protect your skin.   They toss in a financial incentive as well...here's how it works for an ongoing commitment (and how I did it):

1. I chose to avoid fast food and committed $5 a week to that goal.
2. Each Monday, I check in and affirm that I succeeded.  If I didn't succeed, then I lose $5.  
3. Each week is new -- I start fresh.  If I succeed, I don't owe them anything.  If I don't succeed, it costs me $5. 
4. If I go the whole 12 weeks, it won't cost me anything financially, but the benefits will be awesome!

I love that they launched an initiative that -- if it works, and people truly do change -- won't cost people anything financially.  But it will help people improve and reduce their cancer risk and incidence of cancer -- one of the main goals of the Society to help people stay well.  (The others are get well, find cures, and fight back.)

I realize that I need the 'check ins' to hold me accountable.   It helps keep me on track and focused on making lifelong changes...one step at a time.

I hope you'll join me and thousands of other women today to take the first step and make a Choose You Commitment today. Learn more here. It's time to choose you.