Kimkins Diet Review

This one is a mess. A brief history: Kimkins is an online diet program which surfaced in 2006, created by a woman claiming to be a longtime yo-yo dieter who'd finally found success with a diet she developed herself. Going by the screen name "Kimmer", this woman trolled diet websites and message boards and posted prolificly, touting her story of having lost 198 pounds in a year - and keeping it off. Her program was a low carb, low calorie hybrid of the Atkins Diet, which she called (after herself) "Kimkins." She developed something of a following in the message board community, and kimkins.com was born.
Kimkins.com is a (one-time, for life) fee-based site where members have access to the Kimkins diet plan and - what seems to have been the most important element - community support and regular posts and q&a's with Kimmer herself. Though Kimmer has no health or medical field training or credentials, the original site featured photographs of her at her pre-Kimkins weight of 318 pounds, and post-weight loss looking slim, fit and lovely. And that was enough to entice people to sign up. And what is her "diet"? An extremely low carb, extremely low calorie diet bordering on the dangerous. We are talking max calories per day here ranging from 500 to about 1000, with the average recommendation being about 800. Though if you could get through the day on 400 calories, you were encouraged to do so. The diet had no nutritional value, though advocates overlooked that in view of how much weight they were losing. The devotion to Kimkins grew, some would say in a rather cultish way. Testimonials abounded - real and otherwise - and in 2007 the buzz propelled Kimkins to the pages of People and Women's World magazines. The national attention netted Kimkins over $1 million worth of subscriptions in one month alone.

And this is when it began to fall apart. Kimkins members began going public with tales of how the diet was making them sick. The limited calories were causing fatigue to the point of passing out, the nutritional deficiencies were causing skin deterioration, heart palpitations, menstrual irregularities and hair falling out. The strong encouragement to use laxatives on a regular basis was creating dependency. Paying members who spoke up in disagreement or complaint were unceremoniously banned. Many believed that the near-bullying encouragement to stick with starvation practices was preying on the vulnerable and encouraging, if not outright causing, eating-disordered behavior. To give an example: it's been widely reported by former members that a term used regularly on the boards was the acronym "SNATT" - and SNATT was something that successful dieters need to be. And what is SNATT? "Semi-nauseous all the time" - because if you're nauseous, you can't eat. The Kimkins story really blew open when a private investigator hired to surveil Kimmer snapped photos which show she is not the woman whose photos were featured on the site, and she is, in fact, a morbidly obese woman weighing 300+ pounds. Turns out the attractive "after" photo on the site had been lifted from a site featuring Russian mail-order brides.

The California Health Fraud Task Force got involved and as of today there is a class action suit for false advertising, fraud, unjust enrichment, and negligent misrepresentation against "Kimmer" (real name Heidi Kimberly Diaz) working its way through the system in California. The complaint alleges that Diaz falsely claimed to have lost 198 pounds in one year and is in fact obese, that members' lifetime memberships were unjustly terminated, that Diaz made false claims that the diet is safe, that members using the diet plan suffered medical complications, and that Diaz's Web site displayed phony "success" stories using photos from Russian mail-order bride websites.

And the kicker? Kimkins.com is still kicking! Still online, still soliciting fees. Talk about no shame!