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SELF's 2008 Best Places for Women

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This morning I appeared on the Today show (watch the clip here!) to announce the winners of SELF's ninth annual Best Places for Women survey, and I tried to emphasize that wherever you are and however your hometown ranks, you can live a healthy life and influence those around you to do the same. And yet, all I have been doing the past four days is eating and hanging out. With all the formal meals and the more casual ones, I found this weekend the most challenging in a long while. The kids were around the house and my son, Julian, and his pals wanted burgers and football-watching food. My daughter, Josie, and her pals love to munch on candy and make cookies, so we baked and baked, and when I felt we'd baked enough, we went to the store to get the heck out of the kitchen. As always, I tried to keep them all in the healthy habits of eating fruits and veggies and keep myself on track, too, but it was tough. (Stay on track and eat healthy all week with this week's worth of tasty, low-calorie meals.)

SELF's 2008 Best Places for Women list starts with Bethesda, Maryland, which has 34,000 acres of parks, 100 miles of trails and a rail system that allows women to commute without a car. Plus it has some of the lowest rates of smoking, obesity, cancer, depression and heart disease. The least healthy city is Detroit, which has the highest rates of some of the same measures. But of course wherever you live, you can exercise and choose healthy food and try to quit smoking if you haven't already!

For me? Spinning and running help me burn off some of the holiday calories, but to be honest, I'll have to try to eat small portions and stay away from the sugar, too. I'm getting back to the healthy way of life starting now. We all have weekends where it's a little harder than others. My motto is to forgive myself and move on.

See all 100 cities on SELF's list. How did your hometown do?

But today I was feeling a little sheepish telling American women to live healthy no matter where they live. My kitchen physically exists in Suffolk County, New York, which is number 4 in the healthy column, but it was more like number 96 because of all the baking and making and eating and noshing and snacking. So the truth is that while you can live healthy anywhere, the corollary is that you can live in one of the healthiest places on the planet and still do the wrong thing. Hmmm.

Catch Lucy's appearance on the Today show!


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Related: women, wellness, living, healthy cities, healthy

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