Another of the features I have added to the site which is ready to go is a forum where you can weigh in with your thoughts and opinions on topics such as losing weight, maintaining your weight, nutrition, exercise, Healthy Eating, Product Reviews and more. I hope to build up this part of the site to include many additional features such as articles, photo posts, contests and a point system that pays you to post. If you haven’t already registered for your free account that lets you create and reply to posts as well as participate in polls and all other aspects of the forum, you can register now by clicking here.

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I have spent some time pulling things together to turn this site into what I had originally planned with a little bit of a twist. My initial goal for this site was to build a resource where people of size could easily find products and services that make every day life a little easier. It wasn’t necessarily geared towards losing weight. Instead it was going to be more about living large. Not long after initially registering the domain and putting some ideas on paper I realized how I was shorting my son on a good life by being a father who could not do things with him and set off on my journey to lose weight and get healthy. I still believe the world needs to realize that there are people of all different sizes and it needs to be easier to find products for big people. But, now I have a goal of being a bit smaller as well

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The biggest problem I have been dealing with the past few months is staying motivated. When I started this journey. My motivation was simple. I wanted to feel better and be able to move around more so that I could spend more time with my family and do more with my son. I felt like I was cheating him out of his childhood by not doing anything with him. Not because I didn’t want to. But, because I could barely move. I always felt sick and run down. So, I set out to lose weight. I figured if I could lose just two pounds each week, I would be losing weight at a rate of 100 pounds per year and in just a few short years I would be at a healthy weight. It was pretty easy at first. My motivating factor was a good one and I was reminded of it every day when I would think about all the things I wanted to do with my son and my family. When I started eating better and counting my calories, I started dropping a good deal of weight over a short time. I started feeling better and doing more throughout the day. It was nice to be able to get around more and not feel like I needed a nap halfway through the day. I started going for walks in the woods, doing more outside and just enjoying life more.

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At my last appointment with the nutritionist we were talking about my ups and downs and the things that I am having the most problems with. To date my biggest hurdle has been feeling hungry. Some days I just want to eat. I can eat something and 10 minutes later I fee hungry again. When I can keep that in check and eat good, healthy food, I do ok. But when I start to lose focus, I tend to eat not so healthy food. A tidbit of information she shared with me that I found very interesting is the fact that fat cells don’t go away. Read the rest of this entry »

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Another great form of above ground swimming pool exercise I have found is to use foam noodles along with the water for resistance. Holding the noodles with both hands then trying to push them down under the water is a great way to get a quick workout and stay cool at the same time. I place both hands on the noodle about 2 feet apart then slowly push the noodle underwater. The noodles natural tendency to float creates a good resistance and seems to be a pretty good way to keep moving. Read the rest of this entry »

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A great form of exercise I have found is to make my son chase me around the pool. The pool is 21 feet around and we have 5 or 6 foam noodles. I gather them all up then run around as he tries to catch me. When he gets close, I let go of a noodle and he goes with it, then I keep running and he chases me some more until he has all of the noodles or I can’t run anymore so I let him catch me. For some reason I am able to move better and with less pain while I am in the pool, so this can go on for 10 or 15 minutes straight. He is just learning to swim.. so he is in a life jacket and just swims around the pool after me. He has a blast and I get a good workout.

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I took my son on his very first camping trip this past summer. It was a great opportunity for the two of us to spend some quality time together and we both had a great time. I wasn’t sure how things would go seeing it was my first time camping in well over 15 years and my first time tent camping since I was a kid. I bought a bunch of gear over the past two years. I had planned on going last year but, I just didn’t feel up to it at the time. So, I put it off until this year. We bought the Wenger Lugano 16- by 10-Foot Two-Room Eight-Person Family Tent with Canopy. We also picked up some good quality air mattresses and tons of other essential and non essential gear. I decided to make it a short mid week trip since this was our first outing. I wanted to see how things went before taking any extended trips. We made a reservation at Ricketts Glen State Park for 4 days during late August. Ricketts Glen is about an hour or so north of us. I wanted to go to a place close enough to home that if something went wrong we didn’t have to drive far to get back home; yet far enough away that it felt like we actually went somewhere. I also wanted to go somewhere that would give us plenty of options for activity during our stay.

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We went into summer with the intent of doing a little bit of landscaping. That little bit turned into a lot! Our initial plans were to put down some edging, some stone and some outdoor lighting along the walk that goes through our yard. After getting the ground ready and starting the edging, we decided to get an above ground pool installed. Probably would have been much easier if we had decided on the pool first. But, life isn’t easy. After the pool was finally installed, we continued with our plan for lining the outside of the walk with stone and lights and expanded on it to include 4 – 2 foot square stones to go under the ladder for our new pool and surrounding the pool with stone as well. We ended up with 4 – 80 pound 2×2 foot stone blocks and around 8000 pounds of river rock. We still have around 1200 pounds left in the driveway with additional plans that we put off until fall.

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I have wanted to get a pool for awhile. But, it was never the right time. Between money and work and other factors, we just never did it. This year changed that. We decided to get an above ground swimming pool installed in May. Back in April we decided to do some landscaping with the yard. Some edging, a little stone and some walkway lights. In late May I was out getting some of the work done and it was a super hot day. I decided that this was the year. If it was so hot already in May, then we were going to get a pool and enjoy the summer. After talking with the guy at the pool place and an excavator he recommended we decided to push forward after they assured us we could be swimming in our new pool by the end of June. Things didn’t quite go as planned. Mainly because the excavator couldn’t be bothered to return my phone calls or come and level the land for us. Anyway, we finally got to take our first swim around mid July and we have been enjoying the pool since.

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Summer vacation has come and gone…The kids are back at school and things are getting back to normal. I noticed during the summer break that I strayed from a lot of my rules and lost sight of my goals. I fond myself eating later at night, eating junkier foods and eating more. I stopped tracking my calorie intake and just pretty much gave up. It sounds pretty bad huh? Well, not really. I noticed that even though I didn’t eat the best food or always make the best choices, that I did make better choices and eat better than I used to. I also maintained my weight and dropped a few pounds as well. The biggest thing that made it hard for me was having the kids home from school.

The days just go so quick and before you know it, dinner time has come and gone and you are trying to figure out what to make that is quick and easy and can feed everyone. It seemed more often than not we ended up ordering out. That was the first of my issues. I think we ordered out more times int he past three months than we did in the previous 8 months. It was just all around easier. No prep time, no pots and pans to clean up and it was easy enough to find something everyone liked.

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