Family weighed over 1400 Pounds Combined; Have Lost a Combined 327 pounds So Far

Imagine this: a family eating just to eat, never exercising, and then going to the doctors and being called super obese. That’s what happened to the Coles. As a family of four (Norris and Tameka, daughter Amber and son Shayne) they never counted calories, payed attention to what they were eating or even knew what to eat. They didn’t understand nutritional concepts at all. Food was their drug.

The mother, Tameka, knew something was wrong when she couldn’t walk from her front door to her car without having trouble breathing.

Their wake up call? It was when Norris and his family went to the doctors and were labeled super obese. Almost immediately, Shane began throwing away all the bad food in the house. “We need help, we need to make a change.” Shane remembers saying at that time, in an interview with HLN's Joy Behar.

They knew it was time for a change, so they began exercising and changing the way they ate. As a family, they began to walk every day. They would go play basketball together. They would sit down and have a healthy, balanced meal as a group, instead of raiding the kitchen for food when they felt like it. As for the change in food choices, the family did research.

They had a huge realization when they found out about high fructose corn syrup, which was what was in most of the foods they used to eat.

Not only does high fructose corn syrup promote weight gain, according to a Princeton University research team, and has been linked to obesity and diabetes, but multiple case studies show that the overly processed, cheap sweetener significantly harms your health. With knowledge and will power under their belt, they got to work losing the pounds by exercising and eating for nutrition and fuel, instead of eating just to eat. How far have they come?

So far, Norris has lost 80 pounds, Tameka has lost 126 pounds, Amber has lost 75 pounds and Shane has lost 46 pounds, totaling a combined 327 pound weight loss. Each of them had originally weighed in at over 300 pounds. Join viewers in watching One Big Happy family, a TLC reality television show, starring the Coles family, proving that drastic weight loss is possible and something can always be done about it.