Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

In Kimmer’s Own Words

An amusing assortment of Kimmerisms from Kimkins Dangers.
 

Kimkins, Real Harm to Real People

Kimkins Dangers has a round-up of some of the Kimkins craziness that can be found on the web:

Kimmer,
When water fasting I start to feel bad/weak. I eat 2 sticks of celery or a Lc yogurt and feel better. Do you thinkby doing that I am defeating the purpose of the fast? Will I not lose as fast as I could eating 1 cup Lc yogurt and 2 sticks of celery

Kimkins Petition Update

The Kimkins petition is continuing to gather steam. Addressed to the Federal Trade Commission, Better Business Bureau, California Attorney General, it requests a full investigation of Kimkins and “Kimmer” (Heidi Diaz). Over 150 people have signed the petition, and many of them have left comments:

• Kimkins AKA Heidi Diaz is a charlatan (n. A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud. ) needs to be stopped.
• Encourages laxative use and basic starvation. This website has a cult-like mentality.
• Please Please act on this dreadfull plan
• telling a 14 year old that 500 calories is ok is shocking!!!
• I tried this crazy plan after being seduced by incredibly quick weight loss and after 3 weeks, my hair started falling out, dramatically; AND I started to get aches in my hip joints. Never having experienced these symptoms before, I didn’t know what it was or that it could even be related to a WOE!
• Dangerous Diet.
• She fooled me. Glad I smartened up. After almost three weeks trying it “Kimmers” way, I was fatigued, weak, dizzy. Took me at least four weeks to start feeling better. The marketing scam is attractive to people desperate to lose weight. People, including me, get lulled into the attraction of fast loss and buy into “Kimmers” explanations out of that same desperation. This is an unhealthy way of eating. I know this first hand and feel foolish that I was taken in by the marketing. Shame on Woman’s World for writing a story - that’s how I was realed in. Never again will I read magazines like that again. Good luck in pursuing this petition. We need smart weight loss, not hype about doing it super fast.
• It has been reported that the Kimkins website is encouraging a 14 year old girl as she eats an average of 400 calories a day. Another report states that a young woman is in the hospital with the Kimkins diet as a major contributor to her heart disease. Please investigate this diet!
• Any chance we can get our money back???
• This “diet” is going to kill someone! It is nothing more than an eating disorder in the making. And the mind games and cult mentality? Scary!
• The truth needs to get out. This diet is dangerous.
• Kimmer is just another internet marketer out to get desperate people’s money. The difference here is that the advice Kimmer is selling is going to hurt someone. She’ll tell you there is no calorie restriction, but that’s wrong. Very low calories are encouraged. Laxative use is suggested. People complaining of dangerous side effects are told to just tough it out and it will pass. Someone should definitely shut this operation down.
• This is just a pro-ana plan. It’s just a matter of time before people die. Besides that, it’s a fraud taking advantage of desperate people.
• This so called “diet” is extremely dangerous. Thank God, I was a lucky one who realized it’s dangers. But there are desperate people out there who will stick with it, and I’m afraid they are going to pay dearly with their health or worse.
• My doctor advised diet is dangerous. I requested refund and was denied.
• There’s no room for this type of scam when people are desperate to lose weight.
• This con artist needs to be stop before someone dies
• Numerous FTC violations; unsound diet; dangerous health claims; breach of contract to members
• Im more worried that she says laxitives are ok every week to “flush out” your system and is promoting this as a healthy way of life.
• Let’s get to work on this pronto. Quit dragging your heels. Do your job - okay?
• The insanity needs to be investigated and stopped before she causes such severe health problems for people, that they are not reversible, including death. She allows MINORS on her site, and gives them the same advise as she gives the adults, to CUT calories, not to mention the carbs and fat right a long with that. All inclusive. This is the same thing that those who belong to Pro ANA sites do and are so proud of. Kimmer is not alone in dispensing medical advice on this site. And none of them have any background in the medical field! She refuses to come forward and prove what she says. She uses ‘faked’ before an after pictures, [most noteably trying to pass a model off as one of the afters] and her own are easliy discerned as faked [not even the same person] and/or very old ones, used as current.. She is a fraud!
  The site contains numerous FTC violations, substantial unqualified health claims and Kimmer/Heidi Diaz uses a plethora of unethical business practices to sell her site
• Its an absolutely alarming plan and should be thoroughly investigated
• This is a fraudulent site praying on unsuspecting people looking for a quick fix. The advice is in keeping with eating disorder behaviors, which the founder herself exhibits. Quick action needs to be taken to investigate. Fraud runs rampant.
• This diet is dangerous. It MUST be stopped!
• never received the promised ebook with your paid subscription for life
• I want a $60 refund from this scammer!
• Please investigate this potentialy deadly “diet”
• unsafe is what this is. Please investigate.
• Potentially deadly - please intervene!!
• Please help
• This woman is a fraud the before and after pictures on her site are fake.
• Please investigate this woman’s business!
• Dangerous diet advice-please investigate
• Please let consumers know that Kimkins success stories are NOT typical (in fact, MOST people are unable to lose weight so quickly without serious negative physical consequences), and that Kimkins is an extremely Low calorie starvation diet that is only suitable if advised by their doctor!!! Please investigate the advice that she has given that has led people towards eating disorder-like behavior.
• Very unsafe and potentially dangerous diet recommended by uncertified “unknown person”. This “unknown person” is also charging membership of $60.00 for this diet and refuses to meet anyone in person.
• “Kimmer” is a fraud and needs to be outed as such. Haven’t people been lied to long enough?
• FRAUD and a scam artist
• In my opinion, kimkins diet is potentially dangerous for anyone but what is more worrying is the fact that she has members who are MINORS….
• Please investigate this woman - she is not a medical profession and is encouraging disorded eating behaviour (not to mention the fraud side of things).
• I think Kimkins needs to be investigated, and required to refund money to those who were banned for no good reason!
• Please stop this craziness.
• Never delivered E-Book, unethical business practices–needs investigating NOW!
• SHES A FRAUD
• Dangerous Starvation Diet
• She promised people personal coaching, but how would that have been possible without limiting the membership? Her whole business is a scam.
• Thiis looks like a potentially dangerous weight-loss plan, pomoted by a person with no discernable credentials, to assess the poteintail health risks. It also seems that a lack of real evidence of it’s efficacy by “Kimmer” could make it a less than ethical buisness venture
• She promotes unhealthy eating and has never been forthright about her before and after pics as well as the ones on her website. Plus, she charges a fortune for info that can be found for free elsewhere. She needs to go.
• Investigation should be made into the practices of: dispensing questionable medical and nutritional advice without training or licensing; claims that the diet is suitable for ALL diabetics including Type I; fraudulent use of faked before/after photos to promote memberships (including stock photographic images, images of models, and poor photoshops); conducting business in the state of California and interstate via the Internet where terms of contract were not fulfilled and/or were changed unilaterally without consent of consumer.
• Since she uses her own experience as a basis to sell memeberships, I think it is important to find out if she is, indeed, a real person.
• This diet is dangerous, and Kimmer has no medical backgroung!
• Kimmer is a fraud and must be stopped!!!
• Fraudulent practices
• Please investigate this potentially fatal diet being aggressively hawked by a mysterious & elusive woman who has no medical background.
• I paid $14.95 for an ebook that was not delivered
• this diet is dangerous, please investigate.
• There are significan health risks, mental risks, and dangers with this plan that should be investigated. Anyone with a pre-existing type of any Eating Disorder should be WARNED! This diet is promotes extreme calorie reduction and laxative abuse.
• Considering the increasing popularity of this diet and the fact the creator has no medical expertise, I believe it should be investigated for the sake of the public’s health.
• This is a very dangerous low calorie diet that is being targeted to everyone..including children. The “author” of the diet, Heidi Diaz, refuses to meet with anyone face to face and is responsible for giving advice that people should take daily laxatives to lose weight. Many ladies have gotten sick from doing her recommended very low calorie diet. She is NOT a trained nutritionist or doctor..she just made this up without any medical knowledge at all.

A Kimkins Member Speaks Out About the Teen Starvation Diet Scandal

This Kimkins member discusses her disillusionment:

Then I began looking. As many of us have. Reading. Lurking. Taking it all in. And there is A LOT to take in. I have been on both sides of the fence at times, mostly because I don’t know who anyone on these boards and blogs are, really, and I have to remember that when I read their posts. Who knows who is telling the real truth? So I’ve seen both sides of the coin. Until yesterday. Until the post/info about the 14 year old girl surfaced. I had not known until recently that there was a young girl posting on the site. I went, I looked at her posts–her need for more calories. I saw a few answers given by moderators about getting in more calories, specifically more nutrients that she would never get from her current caloric intake. Then I saw Kimmer’s response…and……
she disagreed with the others about needing more calories. WHAT???!!!!???? I have girls, and in this situation, as that girl’s parent, I would be FURIOUS. FURIOUS. Did I say FURIOUS?? She is telling a child NOT TO EAT MORE!!! WHO IS SHE to tell a young girl not to eat more food? Is being thin worth THAT??? No it is certainly not. EVER. And now, as many have taken the child’s posted before and after picture and reposted it–As her parent, I would be angry at all who have discussed this child’s internet activities and posted her pictures. And then I would restrict her online access!!

Please Support These Kimkins Dieters

Every day we see Kimkins dieters (many of them newbies) and we try to at least alert them to the fact that there are many concerns and unanswered questions about the Kimkins diet.

Discussion about the controversy surrounding Kimkins and Heidi Diaz (Kimmer) is usually silenced on the Kimkins.com site, and members have been banned for questioning the veracity of Heidi’s claims.
Please stop by these Kimkins members’ blogs to lend support and help sound a warning:

Fat Brat Candee Candee Vickie Nonnie Tinkerbell Tarvos HappyFatSkinnyGirl Pattigreenbean Elaine Cyn Mr. B Stephanie HarmonyNote

Kimmer Encourages Child to Continue On!

Kimkins Exposed follows up on the story of the 14-year-old girl doing the dangerous Kimkins very low calorie diet:

Kimmer Encourages Child to Continue On!

Child Still Cheered Along on Kimkins!

Just a few weeks ago, Kimmer told Jimmy Moore that Kimkins does not permit teen members. In her advice to this child she said:

I agree with all the replies above, except about needing more calories simply because of your age. A calorie is a unit of energy, that’s all. If we eat too much energy, it’s stored as fat — whether you’re 14 or 84. If you have excess body fat, you have CALORIES hanging there, again whether you’re 14 or 84.

However, if you want to up your calories, simply add more food. You’re a teenager, so a couple servings of dairy are important (or use supplements with your doctor’s advice). String cheese, Dannon low carb yogurt, broccoli, kale, cottage cheese are good sources of calcium and will give you extra calories.

So Kimmer acknowledges that this member is a young teen, and tells her that she does not need to eat adequate calories even though she is a teen. Why hasn’t Kimmer refunded this teen girl’s membership and advised her to seek her parents’ help?

Teen on Kimkins Starvation Diet?

Kimkins Exposed reported several developments in the current situation involving a teen on the Kimkins site who is being cheered for eating 500 calories or less per day:

14-year-old Begs Kimmer for Help

Teen Spamming for Kimmer

Update:  Teen on Kimkins 

Christin Dispenses Diet Advice Online Without Qualifications

Kimkins Exposed takes a close look at Kimkins’ new public relations staffer, covergirl Christin:

From her FitDay records it’s clear she starved herself to lose the weight. Now in her My Daily Plate food journal it’s clear her diet is now filled with mostly packaged products and her calorie intake, which is up and down, is still below what should be normal for a woman her age, weight and height. But she is the face of Kimkins and now representing the company too as Director of Media and Public Relations. While Christin may indeed be a good person, and we have no reason to believe she’s not, one cannot distance the fact that she has been a paid affiliate all along, thus has had a vested interest in promoting Kimkins. Now is a paid staff member who is a corporate officer. When people read her words encouraging them and others to starve themself, they need to be aware of this conflict-of-interest.

Blogger Outlines Kimkins Diet Medical Risks

Sherrie from Pinch Of… reviews the Kimkins diet and discusses its medical risks:

This post here is just some concerns of mine regarding kimkins, I have seen a lot of people try to deny the very low fat and calorie side of this diet or people try to say claim the safety of Kimkins based on their own success when they did not really do it. So I wanted to make a few points about why I don’t see it that way.

The next part I will go into concerns regarding gallstones, rapid weight loss and lean protein (aka Stefannson and the “rabbit diet”).

I thought, a good topic to post on would be the fat intake, as the more and more I read up on about kimkin’s and other’s fitdays the more I see how extremely “anti-fat” this diet is.

Kimkins Diet Review - Dangerous Side Effects!

Dharma shares her experience with the Kimkins diet:

By August I started noticing some disturbing things. I constantly felt a burning sensation in my mouth, and I smelled smoke, as if something was burning, off and on every day. This got worse and worse, and I did some internet research and realized I had Burning Mouth Syndrome, or BMS. There were no definitive treatments. By September I had developed a list of symptoms that indicated serious hormonal disturbances: Hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, morbid thoughts, depression, fatigue, and frequent periods. As if that weren’t bad enough, my hair started falling out in large chunks.

At first I just thought I was going through menopause. All the symptoms fit. I started using progesterone cream. It worked. My hair stopped falling out, the hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia, and other symptoms slowly went away. My periods went back to normal. I had started eating more and more because it temporarily helped the BMS. Thank goodness for that. I gained the weight back that I had lost, but I also regained my health.

My hair is growing back in now. I have a lot so it never really showed much, and I’m grateful for that. I still have regular periods, no more menopause symptoms, but the Burning Mouth Syndrome, although very mild now, didn’t completely go away. It took six months for things to get bearable again, and six more for me to feel like I have my life back. I still use progesterone cream. Some of the symptoms return if I don’t. I believe the low calories permanently affected my hormone levels.

The scariest part of this story to me is that I did not lower my fat and calories to nearly the extent that many on the Kimkins diet do or for nearly as long, but I still had serious fallout. I never bought the idea of “starvation mode” either. But on a diet of 900 calories including 50 grams of fat, my body was starved enough for nutrients that it could not produce the hormones I needed. Younger people may have a higher tolerance but that makes it even more dangerous, since the longer one goes eating insufficient calories and nutrients, the more damage I believe will be done, and it may not be reversible!! I’m just grateful that my symptoms started before things went too far.

I’m convinced that low calorie diets like Kimkins not only do NOT work (the weight comes back), but are dangerous. The allure of weight loss is so prevalent and so addicting. I hope the voice of reason will prevail!!