Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

Is Kimkins a Cult?

We generally associate the word cult with religion, but the definition is actually broader than that. Wikipedia describes a cult as a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the mainstream. So, yeah, I think you could argue that Kimkins is a cult.

I think the one saving grace with Kimkins is that its devotees are not in the physical care and control of their leader. I recently read some anecdotal information from an anti-kimkins blogger who knows some people who are still following Kimkins. The impression I got was the some Kimkins defenders who argue that it is a safe and viable diet actually cheat regularly on their diet.

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.

People Continue to Defend Heidi and Kimkins

YouTube commentary is truly the lowest form of discourse. The anonymity encourages people to throw all semblance of civility out the window. Lying and outright outrageousness are pastimes for many users. But I digress… what I really wanted to post about was the fact that someone chose to post a comment on the YouTube version of the Heidi Diaz surveillance video this week. It is not a smart ass kid or a petty jokester, someone wanted to express their outrage about the exposure and defend the diet against its detractors. I will quote it in its entirety:

People should be ashamed of themselves. Invading someone’s privacy because the diet failed for you or caused a side effect. NEWSFLASH, all diets cause side effects, some minimal and others more extreme. No one held a gun to your head and forced you to join the kimkins site or to even do the diet. This diet works wonders for people who are SEVERLY obese, not people who need to lose 10 pounds to fit into their party dress for the weekend.

I think that this 25 year old American Girl with the really pretty name and no videos or favorites might even be Kimmer.

What Can be Learned from the Kimkins Controversy?

How do you react when your children express curiosity in the interests and stories that you are pursuing online? There are a lot of life lessons to be learned from the Kimkins saga. Educators talk about ‘teachable moments’ and there have probably been a quite few of them in households where the exposure of the Kimkins fraud was being followed or carried out.

There’s a valuable lesson in business ethics. There’s a valuable lesson or two about human health. I think there are even lessons to be learned about collaboration and communication. If you have teens looking over your shoulder occasionally, it may dawn on them that adults are just as prone to ‘teh drama’ as they are.

A Change on This Site

I just removed a page from this site. I had been published a long time ago and it had links to several people who had been blogging while on the Kimkins diet. Most of those blogs are now either gone or inactive. I have saved those links in an unpublished page just in case anyone was using that page as a resource. It would appear that most people who are actively warning others against Kimkins are concentrating on new dieters at the moment.

Less Weight Loss to Watch on Kimkins

It turns out that two individuals whose weight loss was being chronicled on the landing page of Kimkins.com had been recruited by Jeannie. Jeannie aka Tippy Toes is no longer on staff at Kimkins and these individuals asked to have their pictures removed from the homepage. I have heard that they were banned shortly after. Their pictures and statistics reflected typical weight loss for a low carb diet. The removal of these pictures leaves only Heidi Diaz and Singing Lass on the watch us lose graphic. This table promises real time weekly updates. These have not been forthcoming from Singing Lass.

For more details, check out mariasol.

Kimkins Patio Picture Search

Finding the Russian Bride pictures was quite a windfall. Finding out the truth about this former after picture has proven more elusive. I have recently noticed a unique idea involving posting the picture on blogs that are not a part of the low carb community in which this controversy has been swirling. I found this image on a recipe blog.

There are some references to the original use of this picture in the series of posts on Slamboard. Heidi had told Catherine that it was a current photograph taken by her son. The clothing style has lead many people to believe that the photo is actually decades old. I believe that I heard video taped testimony by Heidi Diaz to the effect that she does not recall where she got the photograph   Edit: Upon review of the KTLA footage of the deposition it appears that her “I got it off the Internet” statement was about the Woman’s World after picture.

The Good Fight

The effort to bring the Kimkins fraud to light involved a lot of blogs. Some blogs, like this one for instance, were created expressly for that purpose. Other blogs were established blogs that were devoted to the cause until results were achieved and then went back to their regularly scheduled programming. There were also some blogs that may have only mentioned the controversy once or twice.

I would like to say thank you to all the other bloggers.

I would also encourage the people who started blogging because of the Kimkins Controversy to continue blogging about something else. I notice that some bloggers chose to use Blogspot while others went with WordPress. As an experienced blogger, I would recommend using WordPress as a template but registering a domain on your own.

Generating interest in the Kimkins controversy was easy. Generating interest in your own ideas about weight loss or any other topic may prove more difficult. Here is a list of sites that can be useful for generating readers:

Blogexplosion
MyBloglog
Blogcatalog
Technorati
Bloghub
Blogflux
Eatonweb
lsblogs
Globeofblogs
Blogit

I am unfamiliar with a few of those tools. I am not a big fan of Digg, but it is sometimes worth a try if you have a story that you think is of great general interest. Blogrush is a very new thing that some people like and others are not that excited by.

I became aware of a really interesting person by way of her interest in the Kimkins scam. Joy Nash is moderately famous for her Fat Rant and she has a blog that goes by the same name. Go check her out.

Kimkins Scam Exposed on National Television

Fox’s national morning show, The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, profiled Kimkins as part of their diet scam expose series yesterday.  The Morning Show brought a doctor and nutritionist on for their opinions.  Former administrators Christin and Deni told their stories about the fraud and their issues with the diet.  Jeannie Baitinger (TippyToes) and Delaney (Singinglass at Kimkins, an admin who has done most of the banning when people have asked questions about Kimmer) also appeared.  The biggest bombshell is that Jeannie announced that Heidi is, indeed, Kimmer.  After hearing the thinly-veiled disgust in Tippy’s voice when viewing the Heidi Diaz surveillance tape (”look at the woman”) don’t you wonder how long Tippy will be employed by Heidi?

Jimmy Moore recorded the segment and uploaded it to YouTube.  Watch it now:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Kimkins Spotlight: Google AdWords

Our readers have had tremendous success in getting the message about the Kimkins scam to Kimkins affiliates — good work!  All three of the affiliates we have spotlighted so far have pulled their links.

Now it’s time for the big guns, because we want to stop one of the major sources of new signups for Kimkins.com — the paid ad placements on Google and Google network sites from Google AdWords.  If you go to Google and search for “Kimkins” you will see that there are ads at the top or right side of the search results.  These “Sponsored Links” are paid advertisements from Kimkins affiliates or Heidi herself.

Google has a policy of refusing ads for sites featuring “miracle cures” and Kimkins is certainly marketed as a miracle cure for obesity.

Click here to contact Google AdWords to encourage them to remove these Kimkins.com ads and prevent future advertisers from buying links to Kimkins.com.  Remember to tell them:

• The “Kimmer” success story is untrue and fraudulent.  Kimmer (Heidi Diaz) is a morbidly obese woman and there is no evidence that she ever lost the weight (http://www.slamboard.com/category/kimkins-diet/).
• A great number of the other success stories are fakes using stolen pictures.
• The Kimkins.com claims of weight loss are exaggerated and unreasonable:  ” There’s no faster diet! None!”  “They’ve been told their entire lives they should be happy with slow 1-2 lb a week weight loss.  How depressing and untrue!” “Kimkins is perfect for all diabetics!”
• The Kimkins.com site advocates extremely low calories, laxative abuse, and even fasting.
• Many Kimkins dieters have suffered side effects such as heart palpitations, menstrual irregularities, hair loss, dizziness, and faintness.
• Many Kimkins members have been banned for no good reason and the site is currently rated D with the Better Business Bureau (http://www.labbb.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportPage_Expository.aspx?CompanyID=100055868).