400 Pounds for life is the journey of a 596 pound man coming back to life by losing weight naturally through diet and determination.  That man's name is Denis. I began my journey on January 1st, 2013 by going to a doctor located in East Stroudsburg, PA, and was seeing some success until the doctor closed her practice and moved to Allentown.  At the point that she moved I had lost 34 pounds in a 6 week period through diet alone.  Recognizing that I didn't have to remain heavy, my family and I discussed a strategy that would allow us to continue this weight loss by trying the Atkins diet, for the next two months the family attempted to use the diet in combination with the Atkins frozen meals available at Wal-Mart with little success.  After some research into the diet we found that you could not simply use the frozen meals as the packages originally suggested, because their true sugar content did not match up with the expected Net Carb counts.  At this point the rest of the family was very discouraged, and there was a breakdown in commitment to sticking to the diet as it is very regimented.  As any good nutritionist or Physical Therapist will tell you, the first step to a diet is to remove everything in the house that will tempt you, the problem is if the entire family dose not support the diet it will not succeed.  Within my household there are two individuals who do not need to diet therefore they will completely ignore the necessity of removing the bad foods from the house, ultimately leaving the temptations for the rest of the family.

     After a discussion with my wife, I came to the conclusion that some kind of institutional help may be needed in order to make the weight loss happen, so I began my research into adult fat camps, amazingly It was nearly impossible to find any...and then I found 2 different options...1st was the resorts associated with the biggest loser tv show, and the other was live in fitness in Hilton Head, South Carolina.   After doing some research, the Hilton head program includes a tailored program specific to your individual needs with doctors and coach's overseeing your development step by step.  They also have underwater treadmills specifically made for individuals who are morbidly obese allowing for low impact, high result training, the issue associated with this plan is the prohibitive costs of the endeavor.  I take responsibility for my gaining weight, it was and is my own fault,  I was busy with life, and didn't pay attention to my health as it progressively  got worse until it culminated in right side heart failure in 2006. it would be impossible for me to be able to come back from this without help.  The cost of this program is a little over $200,000 for a year at the program assuming I lost 7 pounds a week it would take me 57 weeks to reach the target goal of 400 pounds lost leaving me at roughly 162 Pounds if you include the 36 that I have already lost due to the original diet.  At that point I will likely need to have skin reduction surgery which is a cost I have not yet researched because I figured I should concentrate on 1 step at a time.