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I've had to change my diet for severe acid reflux, but the motivation for the change everyday was very straightforward - if I don't follow my diet, I am in excruciating pain. Not fun, but it made it very easy to change my diet with that sort of motivation!

Recently, we've been trying to follow a more heart-healthy path as DH had high cholesterol at 33 years old. Our motivation there lies in the fact that I was a cardiac surgery nurse for a few years and I've seen the results of people who made the poor diet and exercise choices that we were making. The youngest heart surgery (quadruple bypass) patient I ever cared for was 32. What a wake up call!

Nothing major but we cut salt out of our cooking for my husband's bp . I'm LOVE salt, I just add it to my food now after I cook. But I started playing with other spices to add flavor a lot more after we cut out the salt. It helped make us better cooks for sure.

Sort of, in a roundabout way. Diabetes runs really really heavily in my family (from both sides), so although it's not specifically for them, DH and I do eat really healthy and stay active because of them. Most of them didn't develop it until they had been eating a poor diet, not exercising, and were overweight (and sadly, this goes for pretty much all of them), so I figure my best chance of avoiding it is to take care of me, and my family as a result.

There are other things we do that aren't really big lifestyle changes, but are preventative measures because of family histories--I had a baseline mammogram two years ago and go in for a breast exam twice a year because nearly all of the women in my mother's family have had breast cancer. DH and I both slather on a high SPF sunscreen and try to limit our time in the sun because his mother had melanoma, and his chances of developing it are escalated. (I also take a picture of all his moles about once a month, just so we can see if there's any change).

My dad recently started having his heart go into afib sometimes. Dad noticed a correlation between drinking alcohol and having an episode. So he voluntarily stopped drinking altogether. Because of this I choose not to drink around him. I'm pregnant now so it's easy but I did it before that as well. He wouldn't ask it or expect it but I like to show that I support his smart decision.

@Mrs. Blue: I've tried pretty much all the low carb diets out there over the years: Zone, Atkins, etc. In the end, I settled on the Slow Carb diet which just feels right to me. It's basically low carb (i.e. protein) + legumes (beans) and veggies. No sugar, bread or processed foods.

Here's some info on it:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2012/06/24/how-to-lose-100-pounds/

My brother (I have an identical twin) just lost 22 pounds on it. The big difference between this and other programs is that it 1) encourages you to eat the same few meals over and over and 2) it encourages you to have one cheat day a week.

My son is Milk Soy Protein intollerant. I haven't had dairy or soy in over a year at this point. It is easy to do just by watching a video of my little man screaming in pain. I never thought that the scariest thing I would do as a parent was eat a piece of cheese.