I began a law enforcement career in 1977, one year out of high school. As a 6'3" 185 pound young man, I though I had the world by the tail and was looking forward to rising through the ranks of the department. I began working with my current police agency in 1981 and was on the S.W.A.T. team, in good shape and thought I would never have to worry about weight issues because I was active at the time. As things go in that line of work, I was injured on the job and due to my injury and two subsequent operations, I was placed on "light duty" for a year. During that year, my weight slowly "crept" up on me due to my inactivity until my health was jeopardized more by my excess weight than my injury! You know the reputation we cops have for loving our donuts!

In early 1995, I was introduced to the Atkins "Diet" by a fellow police officer who like me, had been trying every new "gimmick" to hit the market that would assist in losing weight. I "played" with the diet when I wanted to lose 15 or 20 pounds, only to go back to my former way of eating. LowCarbDieters.com began in 1997 as a result of my need for a good tasting sugar substitute. I was driving over 150 miles to visit a small store in South Florida just to buy the few things that were available for low carbers back then, but nothing tasted remotely like sugar to me.

I began searching the Internet and the message boards for anything that would replace the sugar I was so addicted to, and came across the sugar substitute Splenda. At that time, Splenda was not available in the United States and I began ordering it in case quantities from Canada. Many of my low carb friends asked that I also order for them and I was glad to do so. Their friends had friends who also wanted Splenda and I decided that the best way to provide this product to everyone was to place it on the Internet, and allow orders online.

I had also compiled a collection of low carb recipes for my personal use because in those days there were few if any low carb products available for purchase. If you didn't cook it yourself, you didn't eat low carb! I ended up loaning my recipe collection out to more and more low carbers and those who borrowed the recipes encouraged me to put it into book form. Four hundred and thirty four recipes later, "The Skinny on Low Carb Cooking" was the end result.

After much skepticism about this new "diet", my wife Wanda was won over to the low carb way of eating and her support was instrumental in my losing 50 pounds in 4 months and for our business expanding and prospering. As new products were developed, we added the more popular ones to our web site and currently offer over 550 products for the low carb and sugar free dieter.

Today, we are still a family business with Wanda "running the show" while I continue in the 23rd year of my career as a Lieutenant commanding the detective and vice divisions of my local police department. We have expanded our business to include 4 low carbohydrate diet businesses and have employees assisting us with the operation. After 4 moves in 5 years due to growth, we have expanded from shipping Splenda out of my office at the house to our current warehouse facility in Orlando. While we are primarily an online business, customers knocking on our warehouse door have necessitated our opening a retail outlet at the warehouse. In May of this year, we are looking forward to expanding our current operation into a 2,400 square foot Orlando, Florida retail location while continuing our online presence.