I had a house guest recently. He is overweight and the extra 18-20 pounds he is carrying around on his gut really bugs him. He threatens to do something about losing weight, but so far no action. That is, cleaning up his bad eating and drinking habits and getting daily exercise. Know anyone like that? Perhaps someone very close to you?

In a bit of a strange circumstance, I had to transfer his household trash, by hand, from one container to another. And it was a revelation.

The contents of his trash receptacle showed why he is fat and will stay fat until he makes some real changes in his eating habits, along with getting exercise. The contents:

A half dozen coffee cups, the standard size today, at least 16 ounces; I know he takes he takes cream and sugar. One such concoction daily has much more fattening results than most people realize. Like an extra 10 to 12 pounds over the course of a year.

Lots of wrappers from pseudo healthy snack bars, and so-called meal replacement bars. My house guest likes to believe such food products are healthy, but they are not. These things are no better than plain old fashioned candy bars, loaded with sugar, salt, fat, no matter what the labels claim, like All Natural, Healthy, and the rest. They are high sugar, refined junk carbohydrate food, and have no place in a healthy diet of whole, fresh, natural foods that The Maui Diet recommends.

A number of meal bags from famous fast food places, including the most famous one on Earth. Once a month a meal from these places is too much; he had two breakfasts and two other meals in a week. Along with of course the huge sodas that spell disaster for any weight loss or weight management program (and that includes diet sodas, which are worthless as far as weight loss goes, they do not work).

Add all these things up and it is not a pretty picture. And he is not getting any exercise. Result? He is like two-thirds of Americans, overweight. Worse, he is malnourished, not getting the beneficial phytochemicals, antioxidents and nutrients found in a healthy, natural diet.

He is definitely not following the kind of health habits that ensure long-term excellent health. Being overweight increases the risk of heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and many cancers. The scariest of these is of course cancer. If you are asking, is this meant to be scary? Yes, it is. Cancer is as scary as it gets and overweight is being linked up with more and more forms of cancer.

So to paraphrase a well-known tv commercial, I urge you to ask yourself, what is in your trash? If it is like my recent house guest, I encourage you to make some healthy changes.