Three years ago, Billy Schroeder was 350 pounds and struggling to find a way to shed some weight, it being difficult to stick to a diet as the owner of Giulianova Groceria, an Italian grocery and deli in Westminster.
"I needed to lose weight and couldn't do it on my own while owning a deli," Schroeder said. "I did a lot of research on diets but eventually heard about a protocol called the Ideal Protein diet from the barber next door to my store. It was working for him so I got motivated to try it."
The diet was a clinician monitored program, Schroeder said, with supplemental protein products and a drastic reduction in carbohydrate and sugar consumption, aspects it shared with several other diets he had explored.
"Whatever weight loss diet you choose, they are basically formulated on the same theories, these low-carb, low sugar diets," Schroeder said. "It basically focuses on teaching you how your body works, what are good carbs, what are bad carbs and what your body does with the excess you put into it."
Schroeder said that he started the diet in December of 2011 and lost almost 20 pounds in the first week and another 100 pounds followed in the eight months to come, a result he credits to his monitoring his carbohydrate intake.
Beau Bryant is the head coach and owner of CrossFit Retribution, a strength training gym in Westminster, who recommends a Paleo diet - another low-carb diet that seeks to mimic the foods available to our ancient ancestors by avoiding grains and dairy - as a healthier lifestyle.
"If you come in here clinically or borderline obese, the priority is to save your life by shedding some weight. However you personally can do that best, then just do it," Bryant said. "Once you get away from the risk of dying ... then it's time to start figuring out a lifestyle that you can live with and I think that's Paleo."
Paleo as Bryant practices it eschews dairy, processed foods of all kinds, gluten and grains, powering strength training with carbohydrates from starchy tubers.
Bryant said that for him, it's less about reducing carbohydrates than simply eating unprocessed foods, which tends to reduce dietary carbohydrate anyway, a message he said that as a strength trainer, he has seen gain great traction in recent years.
"I'd say that everybody that walks in here now knows about the Paleo diet and it wasn't like that when we started [in 2010]," Bryant said. "It's to the point now where you could power a restaurant here based off a gluten free, dairy free and sugar free menu."
According to Kerry Stewart, professor of medicine and the director of clinical and research exercise physiology at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, low-carb diets have recently become a focus of scientific research as well, especially in contrast to low-fat dietary recommendations.
"For the last 40 to 50 years groups like the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association and others have been pushing this low fat approach to eating," Stewart said. "As a result, people are advised to eat more carbohydrates and I think that, to some extent, has contributed to the obesity problem."
According to Stewart, carbohydrates such as bread and pasta are less filling and can lead to over-eating as well as blood sugar issues and fat accumulation.
"The main problem with high-carb diets, and the typical American diet is high-carb, is that they drive insulin levels up and high insulin levels can have adverse effects," Stewart said. "You need insulin to process sugars. The pancreas puts out insulin in order to try and keep blood sugar levels at a steady state, but insulin also [causes] the existing fat stores, especially in the belly, to hold onto to fat."
Stewart said that even as research has shown that low-carb diets are effective for losing weight, there have been questions about safety.
"When you eat less carbs, by definition you are eating more protein and fat, and the concern has been that more fat in the diet could lead to poor cardiovascular health," Stewart said.
When Stewart's research group compared low-carb dieters to those on American Heart Association approved low fat diets, however, they found the low-carb dieters were just as heart-healthy after a six-month period and had, on average, lost more weight.
"We didn't find any evidence that the low-carb diet had any adverse affect at all on things like cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure," Stewart said. "The message is, losing weight is good and the diet that you choose should be the one that works for you, but the low-carb diet should be considered because it results in more weight loss and no adverse effects on vascular health."
Schroeder said that the inspiration he has found by losing weight, and understanding how hard it can be to find diet friendly food products, has lead him to make some changes at his deli.
"We are getting pretty well known as far as having low-carb and low sugar food options," Schroeder said. "We go out of our way to have five or six different items that are acceptable for the different [low-carb] protocols, and my grocery items reflect that too."
Dissatisfied with the meals and cookbooks available for the Ideal Protein and other diets, Schroeder has also written his own low-carb cookbook and plans to hold a cooking demonstration at his store on Oct. 12 to teach others how they can cheaply and easily gain control over their own diet.
"When you commit yourself to losing weight, it is a lifetime commitment," Schroeder said. "Fine, you obtained the goal that you wanted, but it's just as hard to maintain that new weight as it is to lose it. Success is keeping it off."
