I’ve spent a good chunk of my career writing fitness books, a genre released almost entirely around New Year’s Day with a “New Year, New You” marketing campaign.

The idea, of course, is to capture the New Year’s resolution crowd, a group that inevitably gives up their resolutions by Valentine’s Day. Perhaps it would be more effective to look at January 1 as “New Year, Nude You.”

This isn’t about being a nudist. It’s about taking a moment New Year’s Day or in early January to strip nude in front of the mirror and take stock not only of our bodies but everything in our lives. What is serving our goals and what is just clutter? What if we could start with a blank slate? It’s a new year, after all. Let’s take a look at five key areas of our lives where it’s possible to press the re-set button.

PHYSICAL: Body acceptance is a wonderful thing. If you’re concerned, however, that an unhealthy lifestyle is contributing to current or future health problems, get nude and take a long look in a long mirror. Everyone wants to look good in a swimsuit or birthday suit, but getting healthy for aesthetic reasons rarely is sufficient motivation. Instead, consider the consequences of your current lifestyle. Might you be contributing to an early death? At the very least, does your body provide you with enough energy to accomplish what you want? Are you able to provide for loved ones? What if you’re no longer around? That is stronger motivation.

MATERIAL: Are you dreading spending the better part of a day taking down holiday decorations? Consider purging half of them, keeping only what’s truly special. The stuff you didn’t put up this Christmas should be the first to go. Vow to spend 2016 experiencing life rather than acquiring and maintaining belongings. The more you purge, the more time, energy, and resources you’ll have. We always assume possessions make us happy when they actually rob us of our time, money, and energy. Strip down your belongings this year, clothes and everything else, and embrace the freedom.

DIGITAL: For the most part the digital revolution has helped us streamline. There’s no need for photo albums or physical collections of music, movies, or books. Even important documents can be kept in digital form. Indeed, make it a goal this year to put as much of your life in the cloud or on backup drives and free yourself from clutter.

At the same time, the digital world robs us of time and focus via email, texts, online browsing, and social media. The Internet can be a time saving tool, but it’s more often a time drain. Make it a point in 2016 to get “nude” digitally by stripping passive time online from your life. Limit television to an hour a day or less.

It’s also a good time to back up important digital files. If you’re like most people and have lots of photos, keep them on external drives rather than on laptops, tablets, and phones that can fall into the wrong hands.

CONSUMABLE: It’s not just that we eat too much food. We eat too many kinds of food. When we view food as fuel and not as a sensory experience, we’re more likely to eat healthy, fiber-rich, colorful food that fill us up and provides a big bang for the calories.

That’s easier to do by eating the same things on a daily basis. When we eat mostly the same things, shopping is faster and cheaper, and we’re less likely to overeat since we’re in touch with portion size. Swapping soda and sports drinks for water is a healthy way to save money. So too is minimizing alcohol, which fattens stomachs and cleans out wallets.

RELATIONSHIPS: Some people find it tough to cut back on alcohol. That’s because many of their relationships are built around drinking and parties. When activities are geared more toward the physical – hiking, biking, swimming, paddling, even golf, tennis and volleyball – you still might enjoy a drink afterward. But the focus is on the activity not drinking. When we surround ourselves with people who place a premium on experiences, we naturally cull unhealthy relationships and establish healthier ones.

There’s nothing wrong with the occasional celebration, of course. In fact, come December 31, 2016, you’ll no doubt raise a toast to 2016, when you discovered a Nude Year and a “Nude” You.

 It was June 12, 2013. The lawnmower slogged through our front yard, a once-proud self-propelled machine now a heavy burden. As I turned the first corner the handle broke off and I walked into our neighbor’s driveway with only the handle. I flung it down and made the long walk to the garage, cursing once again.

Our property is long and rectangular, nearly an acre, and as I walked I took stock of all the time and money I had spent on the place in the previous 14 years. Fourteen years, including my entire thirties, of year-round mowing, trimming, edging, weeding and dealing with our typical Florida landscape impossible to tame. Fourteen years of oak tree trimming, palm tree pruning, driveway resurfacing, painting, power washing, mulching, leaf blowing, swimming pool maintenance, pool cage re-screening, fence repairing, outdoor lighting installing, insect baiting, and lawn-chemical treating.

That was just the outside. Inside we had replaced every appliance at least once and one of the two – yes two – water heaters twice. We allowed ourselves to be bitten by the mid-2000s remodeling craze and managed to take what was a 3-year-old house when we bought it and remodeled the entire interior. We had replaced both – yes both – HVAC systems, though only after enduring extensive repairs on both. We had resurfaced the pool, remodeled the deck, and painted and re-floored every room in the house, some twice.

It sickened me to think how much money we had spent on this house. But it horrified me to think of how much time we had spent between the home, yard, and pool maintenance – which I also did myself – in order to….what, exactly? In order to have a showplace for parties we rarely hosted? To welcome friends and family from up north who seldom visited? To not swim in a pool? To be the house all the neighborhood kids hung out at – even though we live on a main road and not a neighborhood and our kids, like most, are so overscheduled they don’t hang out anyway?

My wife and I pride ourselves, or so we thought, on being sensible, frugal people who live below our means. But why had we willingly sacrificed so much precious time and money to maintain and cool a Florida home that, while (mostly) affordable, was far more than we needed?

It was time for massive change and this wasn’t just about hiring a lawn service, which I did for a price far below what I would have expected. No, this was about claiming the life we always aspired to, discarding all of the clutter of the past and living lean. It meant shedding extra pounds, at least half our belongings, dead-weight relationships, commitments that provided little value, and digital distraction that in the 14 years we lived in this house had gone from exciting new technology to a smothering, all-consuming, time-sucking matrix of email, social media, texts, tweets, videos, games, instant messages, Internet rabbit holes, and 24/7 nonsense that threatened to engulf all four of us, especially the kids.

It meant striving to downsize and find a smaller home. Yes, downsizing, In our forties. With kids still at home. We’re not there yet. But we’re looking.

We decided to go back to the future, to a place of real-world experiences, eschewing prepackaged theme park visits and entertainment and embracing the outdoors, traveling to places of historical significance and natural beauty, and using technology as a tool, not a freakin’ lifestyle. With rare exceptions, we’d keep the TV off. We’d put down the phone, though go old school and actually use it to call and speak to people. Entertainment would be biking, hiking, paddling, swimming, and running, preferably with friends who preferred such things above getting together to eat and drink.

No longer would we buy anything unless it served these goals. We would not collect. Anything important in paper form would be digitized. We would not buy in to America’s consumer calendar on steroids unless it served our goals.

We committed to shedding clutter in all aspects of our lives – physical, mental, digital, possessions, relationships, commitments – and by doing so framing a life of rich experiences.

This is our ongoing journey To Live Lean. Any input is welcome.