Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

Unbiased, a Definition

Most people with a reasonable amount of education and experienced already know what unbiased means. I am not claiming to be unbiased. If you were to Google the word ‘Kimkins’ you would see the word unbiased, which means free from favoritism or self-interest, describing Kimkins Review, the affiliate that to this date still publishes the fraudulent 198lb weight loss claim made by Heidi Diaz.

I think that affiliates have an undeniable self-interest. I have no problem with the concept of affiliate marketing, but those who do it well don’t lie. The best way to sell something is to actually believe that it is a good product and that your readers will benefit from buying it. I think many of us could name a small handful of people who put their names behind Kimkins when they believed that she was an actual weight loss success and then quickly put Kimkins behind them when they found out (or in some cases strongly suspected) the truth.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Jimmy

I’m guessing that about 0.2% of the people that end up reading my title will react by thinking to themselves Jimmy who?

Jimmy is a low carb weight loss success story who went on to become a pro blogger and the host of a vibrant free low carb community. He has a lot of personality.

Jimmy spent months as a Kimkins affiliate and drew harsh criticism for a part of that time. His audio interview with Kimmer (who at that time was not admitting to her identity as Heidi Diaz) was a defining moment of this saga. I think you can pinpoint the moment when he stopped giving Kimmer the benefit of the doubt. He asked her if the picture of the woman in the red dress was, in fact, her. She said it was, in a tone of voice very much like the one that Heidi Diaz would later use to say No Comment to Chip Yost. The popularity of the audio interview with Jimmy Moore meant that thousands of people had absolutely no doubt that Heidi Diaz was Kimmer as soon as she spoke on camera. Surprisingly, Kimmer continued to deny being Heidi Diaz for some time after that.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimkins Scam

The blogger over at Kimkins Scam is quite a task master. Heidi Diaz and various affiliates have promoted the Kimkins website in a lot of different corners of the internet. Much of this effort can be swept away with a few well written complaints. There are various links and instructions related to this effort on Kimkins Scam. It is part of a broader effort to have the Kimkins site cease to exist.

The blog also has most of the Russian Bride Pics in one convenient location.

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimorexia

Let me put this in the simplest of terms. Heidi Diaz did some smart branding with the Kimkins Experiment. Now that we know she was not actually subjecting herself to this experiment, you have to question the methodology and the conclusions as well as the validity of the results. You have to wonder about the people who swallowed the kool-aid and said Kimmer lied, but the diet is not a lie.

Kimorexia delivers the ‘information, revelation, references, quotes, debates and more concerning the “Kimkins” crash-diet and/or its advice’ that it promises. Using information to combat the disinformation about diet and health over at Kimkins is a recurring theme. There are also a lot of outgoing links to interesting corners of the Anti-Kimkins community/cause.

Easy-Poll.com has a New Product

FREE is a powerful word on the internet. Web counters have been available ever since before I had internet access. They were always pretty basic. Easy-Poll.com has a selection of design options so you can have a free counter that matches the look of your blog or website. The image at the left are examples from the site. My experience with this site is that they have relatively basic products that work the way you expect them to. There seems to be some minor glitch where text links to casinos show up on your polls even though they expressly state that this won’t happen. Here is the code that I was given to copy and paste:

The page that had the code on it clearly states that the counter has “No banners and visible advertising !”

Anti-Kimkins Blogs of Note: Kimkins Dangers

This particular blog is worth mentioning because it’s most recent post contains a call to action with regard to getting Kimkins shut down. The material was originally on the LCF board.

My favorite post on Kimkins Dangers has got to be Heidi Diaz Comes Clean (Well, Sorta). The author quotes the coming clean item from Kimkins.com but adds personal commentary (in parenthesis and in red). Some of these are pretty much exactly what many of us were thinking as we read Heidi’s words back when she first wrote them.

Heidi is Blogging up a Storm

The Blogspot blog authored by ‘Kimmer’ is probably the most active and relevant ‘affiliate’ blog left. There is a lot of well constructed new content there. I am not being sarcastic, I really think it is a well designed and well written blog. There is even a comment or two on the blog. They are both from people who mysteriously address their comment to somebody other than Kimmer, as if they mistakenly think it was posted by someone else. Both commentators also created a Blogger account near the time that they made their comment on Heidi’s Blog. Not surprisingly, they are both very positive comments.

There is no way know if Heidi wrote the comments herself, but it seems plausible.

Something Completely Different

I just checked out a blog that was recommended by Jimmy Moore. It belongs to a blogging scientist and the post that I read was 2765 words long. Some of those words were quotes, but that blog post is longer than the eBook that Heidi Diaz presented to her members.

Much of the post was related to statistics on deaths caused by properly prescribed drugs. It was shocking, and the bloggers pragmatic reasoning was unsettling and thought provoking. Why did Jimmy link to this guy? Well, because he is a South Beach Diet success story.

Does Media Coverage Hurt Kimkins Sales?

The adage that there is no such thing as bad press, has got to be one of the most enduring ‘not quite true’ adages ever. In the moment, the Woman’s World coverage was tremendously beneficial to Heidi Diaz, but it probably hastened the exposure of the fraud. In contrast, the eventual coverage of the fraud by mainstream media might have inadvertently caused a small up tick in sales.

Now that ABC News is working on a story about the Kimkins diet scam, the website will get a big spike in traffic. I sounds crazy to say that this will increase sales when it is a story about a fraud and about a diet that some doctors and dietitians have advised against trying. This reminds me, has anyone ever published an analogy between post exposure Kimkins membership and those women who mail proposals to men on death row?

Inventive Stumble Tagging

I recently installed Stumble on my PC. I didn’t know that Stumble would add elements to my Google searches. I have been Googling Kimkins regularly for the past few days and the tag that I underlined in green on this screencap struck me as kinda weird.

I don’t know if an anti-kimkins person added this tag in an effort to be subversive, or if a pro-kimkins person (there are still a handful of these) did it to generate traffic for Heidi’s blogspot blog. Kimkinsdiet.blogspot.com would actually get lots of traffic if it allowed unmoderated comments the way some anti-kimkins blogs do.