1. Eat only foods that nature created. This means choosing foods as close to the natural source as possible, which will nourish your body, support a strong heart, and give you the healthiest life possible. I’m talking about fresh fruits and vegetables harvested from the field, dairy products, organic beef and chicken, unprocessed grains, nuts like almonds, and seeds like pumpkin seeds.

2. Drink a minimum of eight glasses of water a day. Water happens to be the perfect fluid replacement, making up 92 percent of your blood plasma and 50 percent of everything else in the body. Drinking plenty of water allows the kidneys and liver to operate at full capacity and flush waste and toxins out of the body’s digestive and urinary tracts.

3. Practice regular fasting. I’m a firm believer in the value of giving the body’s digestive system time off from the round-the-clock digestive cycle that so many people put their bodies under these days. Your liver—the hardest-working organ you have—will thank you. I recommend a weekly partial one-day fast where you fast from breakfast and lunch before eating again that evening.

4. Take Vitamin Code multivitamins daily. Multivitamins, by simple definition, are a combination of vitamins and minerals formulated into a single supplement. The idea that we should supplement our diets dates back to the Great Depression era, which, incidentally, coincides with the rapid changes in the manufacture and production of food in this country. I recommend that you take our excellent Vitamin Code multivitamins, which are made from raw food-created nutrients.

5. Exercise 30 minutes per day. My preferred way to maintain a healthy body, increase strength, and improve flexibility is to work with Russian kettlebells and jump on a mini-rebounder. Your goal should be exercising for a half-hour four or five times a week.

7. Sleep for a minimum of eight hours each night. Anyone need a wake-up call about the importance of sleep? Here’s a body therapy that is the most important nonnutrient in a healthy lifestyle. A good night’s rest revitalizes tired bodies, gives you more energy, and helps you think more clearly throughout the day. Sleep experts say you should shoot for the magic number of eight hours. Why eight? Because when people can control the amount of time they sleep, such as in a sleep laboratory, they naturally sleep eight hours in a twenty-four hour period.

8. Soak in one hour of sunlight a week. My feelings on sunlight run counter to the conventional wisdom, which says the sun is bad for you. While it’s true that a small segment of the population experiences higher rates of melanoma and other forms of skin cancer, I believe that’s more because they lack adequate nutrients in their diets, especially antioxidant-rich fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats. Getting sunlight is important for our bodies because of the way the skin synthesizes vitamin D from the ultraviolet rays of sunlight.

9. Forgive those who’ve hurt you. Anger, acrimony, apprehension, agitation, anxiety, and alarm are deadly emotions, and whenever you experience any of these feelings—whether justified or not—the efficiency of your immune system decreases noticeably for six hours. Forgiving others reduces stress and gives you the emotional confidence to get through any difficulty.

10. Try to live a life of purpose. I believe that people who live a life of purpose live longer and live better because they are more likely to take good care of their bodies.

So there you have it . . . some ideas for the New Year. Hope they help!