Hello fellow golfers! My name is Dick Schaefer and I am 58 years old, I can sometimes play as well as a 12 hdcp, live in the golf capital of the Southwest, Scottsdale, Arizona and am self-employed as a golf package operator in the Golf & Travel Industry. I put golf packages together for people wanting to come to the Scottsdale/Phoenix area to play golf and have been doing this in one form or another in the Hospitality Industry for over 23 years. I have also worked as a Director of Sales for Hilton and Wyndham hotels (in Scottsdale), a Sales Manager for a well known Scottsdale golf resort, and directed the International Tour Dept for John Jacobs Golf Schools. I have led golf groups to exotic places to play golf and have enjoyed a distinguished career as a Tour Conductor to places like: Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, New Zealand, Spain, Hawaii, Mexico, Canada and great golf destinations in the US. Now, in my semi-retirement I am content to bring folks to Scottsdale and that alone keeps me very busy.

I know just about all the movers and shakers in the Golf Industry here including all of the Golf Package Operators and have served on various Golf Committees for the Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau. At one time I was a vice-president of Sales and Marketing for Troon Golf Vacations and Travel Golf Media. If it sounds like I moved around a lot you would have to know this industry to know how crazy it was in the early years. Just about anyone who loved the game thought they could be a golf tour operator, problem is they didn't have the cash to sustain their business until they had a base, robbed Peter to pay Paul, and made a bunch of people very upset when they left town in the middle of the night.

Things are a lot better now, especially since the internet came along and people who contemplate a golf vacation to Scottsdale or anywhere else now have a lot of choices. There is almost too much information out there and now that I am not working for any one company I can tell people things that they won't hear from anyone selling a particular package with golf and accommodations included from hotel and golf vendors that they represent. And, as a matter of fact, I do this on my review site; Scottsdale Greens where I talk about golf courses, hotels, golf brokers and offer inside information you won't find on any other website. It's pretty new and doesn't have as much info on it yet as I want but six months or a year from now - Katy bar the door!

I love to talk about Scottsdale Golf but Low Carb Golfer is a site that is more about golf in general and a forum about golf topics of interest to all golfers. It offers me the opportunity to talk about golf outside of the Scottsdale/Phoenix area, feature golf resources of all kinds and also to talk about the Low Carb approach to nutritional health and weight loss. Without going into too much detail I discovered over the years, especially when I entered my fifties that I had a hard time keeping the weight off. I used to be a jogger, then I hurt my back and used it as an excuse to get really fat. I was a drawer of the ball (sometimes wild snap hooks too) fairly consistently but my belly got so big that I couldn't get out of my own way and started slicing the ball - and you know how irritating that is. So I decided to do something about it, did some research, talked to my doctor and decided after reading Dr. Atkins book and the South Beach Diet book that Low Carb was the way I wanted to go. It has worked well for me, allowing me to eat great food, without starving myself and having to give up the things I love. Yes, I had to give up regular bread (but there are some great low carb breads out there), yes, I had to drastically reduce my alcohol intake, yes, I had to pass up my beloved pasta and yes, I had to forgo refined sugar. But the diet worked and I enjoyed losing the pounds more than I missed the pasta and sugar.

If  you think you can accomplish anything worthwhile without sacrifice of some sort then I guess this plan, or any other for that matter, is not for you. You can resign yourself to the same old excuses or you can come to the conclusion I did, what had eating all that bad food loaded with sugar or refined flour actually done for ME? Ok, it gave me instant gratification, big deal. Is that worth having a butt the size of New York, do I actually look better with four chins? You can only fool yourself for so long before you start getting depressed. And when you get depressed, guess what? You eat to feel better and then get more depressed!

After eating that piece of pie, cake, chocolate, plate of pasta, or loaf of french bread, did I feel better about myself? Not quite. When I pass up a piece of pie for a piece of fruit, do I feel better about myself? You better believe it! That is a feeling that is worth capturing and I have decided to write down each time I decide NOT to eat something bad for me. At the end of the week I am saving an average of 20,000 carbs!

You won't hear a lot of preaching from me about how this diet is the greatest thing since (fill in the blank) because I am not some fanatic like some ex-smokers or dieters I know who were fat as pigs or smoked for 40 years and now they act holier than thou about it. What I will do is talk mostly about golf and my experiences in traveling the world in pursuit of it and then sneak in some stuff about Low Carb, just recipes that I like, beverages, great tasting low carb snacks I have discovered and other stuff. If you want to lose weight and keep if off, try my version of low carb eating and see for yourself.

I am not a doctor and I work in the Golf Industry, NOT in any way connected with the Health Industry, I am just a golfer who got fat, started playing very badly, got tired of feeling and playing poorly and decided to do something about it. Am I where I want to be yet? No, hence no pictures, I've got plenty of befores but not many afters. Have I been able to maintain the program and not fall off the wagon, especially during the holidays? Again, no. But I haven't completely gone back to my old ways and I have lost 115 lbs using the low carb approach and that's no lie!