Having lived through this past year following the Kimkins Scam from the frontlines—you would think not much has happened. You would be wrong.
Cleo was good enough to give us a rundown of the year.
The Lighter Side of Low-Carb: 2008: A Kimkins Year in Review
Let’s not forget all the wonderful publicity Heidi has gained for herself:
Diet Scams: Top 10 Worst Diets of 2008
3. Kimkins. Gives sketchy advice like super-low calorie levels and also laxatives (eeek!), but finding out that the diet’s supposed inventor and biggest success story actually weighs over 300 pounds must have been très awkward.
A Roundup of the Top News Stories in Diet and Food from 2008
This year also saw a lot of scandal around the Kimkins Diet, a plan called a hoax starvation diet by people now involved in a class-action lawsuit against the founder of the diet plan, Heidi Diaz (also known as Kimmer, who claimed to have lost 198 pounds on the plan but really used pictures from a Russian mail order bride website as her after pictures).
Diaz in turn filed a lawsuit against people she says sullied her name and interfered with her business, and Woman’s World magazine apologized for featuring the diet plan in its pages.
A Corona woman’s Internet-based weight-loss program has been named the worst diet product of 2008 by a healthy-eating Web site.
In announcing winners of its 20th annual Slim Chance Awards, the Healthy Weight Network — an online forum for health care professionals, researchers and consumers — said the Kimkins low-fat, low-carb diet amounts to a “starvation diet” that deprives members of many nutrients.
Last year I reported quite a bit about a supposed “low-carb diet” that was making quite a lot of news, called Kimkins. It turned out to be an unhealthy, dangerous diet that has generated a class action lawsuit. I wrote a review of the Kimkins diet in 2007, and then followed up on it with more information as it became available, including reporting on multiple types of fraud perpetrated by the owner, Heidi Diaz.
Unfortunately, the wheels of justice turn slowly, and the Kimkins site is still up. I checked in on it recently, and although there are a few minor changes in the diets offered by Kimkins, the essential diet, and my objections to it, remain unchanged.
Low-Carb Lifestyle Examiner: And the ‘Worst Product’ of the year diet award goes to…Kimkins!
One of the chapters of that book will be on the Kimkins diet scam.
After promoting this diet on my blog for months because it seemed to be helping people find their path to genuine weight loss, I realized thanks to the gentle nudge of some friends who delved deeply into the Kimkins plan that this was nothing more than a “starvation diet” that was encouraging lower and lower calories while cutting out the fat and the carbohydrates and promoting its members take laxatives (what was known as “the plan behind the plan”). EEEEK! This was so shocking to me that I wrote an open apology to my readers for exposing them to this dangerous diet scheme.
Consumer Health Digest, December 23, 2008
Slim Chance Awards issued. Frances M. Berg, M.S., who operates the Healthy Weight Network has issued the 20th annual set of “Slim Chance Awards” to weight-loss scheme promoters. Her 2008 picks are:
Worst product: Kimkins diet. Heidi “Kimmer” Diaz promised loss of up to 5% of body weight in 10 days. She also claimed to have lost 198 pounds in 11 months and showed before-and-after pictures that turned out to be fakes. Many users developed chest pains, hair loss, heart palpitations, irritability, and menstrual irregularities caused by the near-starvation (500 calorie per day) diet.
Denver Low-Carb Examiner: New Year’s diet plans: Resolve not to get ripped off
Membership Websites: There are online sites that charge you to join to get access to their diet plans, discussion forums and recipe sites. Some charge per month while others offer a lifetime membership. The problem with these sites is you can’t see what the plan is until you’ve already ponied up the cash to join. You have no way to evaluate the quality of the information being offered, or if the dietary advice you are getting is even medically safe or sound.
In one well publicized case, a woman running a diet site claimed to have lost 198 pounds in a year, and maintained her weight loss for over 5 years. Her site offered the way to lose weight “just like her” if you paid $59.95. After an investigation prompted by a disgruntled business partner and upset members who were denied access to the site after paying for the “lifetime” membership, it was revealed that the diet’s founder was, in fact, over 300 lbs. She had not lost 198 pounds. Her “after” photo she used on her site and in an issue of Women’s World magazine was lifted from a Russian Bride website. Not only was her photo faked, several other “success” stories were fictitious, their photos also coming from Russian dating sites. (more) This diet founder is now the target of a lawsuit for her fraud as well as health problems experienced by those who followed her plan.
WORST PRODUCT – Kimkins diet. Heidi “Kimmer” Diaz charged users access to her Internet diet, claiming they could lose up to 5 percent of weight in 10 days safely and permanently. Essentially it is a starvation diet, and members complained of chest pains, hair loss, heart palpitations and menstrual irregularities. Eleven are now suing Diaz.
To call 2008 a typical year in the weight loss field would be too easy. This year’s awards go to an infamous huckster of diet infomercials, known for his outrageous disregard of injunctions against him; $139 body-shaping jeans impregnated with substances that supposedly reduce cellulite; a pill that’s “proven” to help your belly fat vanish; and a dangerous starvation diet launched recklessly on the Internet with promises of safe, fast and permanent weight loss.
WORST PRODUCT: Kimkins diet. It must have seemed an easy way to get rich quick. Founder Heidi “Kimmer” Diaz set up a website and charged members a fee to access the Kimkins diet, boasting they could lose up to 5 percent of their body weight in 10 days. “Better than gastric bypass,” there was “no faster diet,” and in fact she herself had lost 198# in 11 months. Stunning “after” photos were displayed. In June 2007 Women’s World ran it as a cover story, and that month alone PayPal records show the Kimkins site took in over $1.2 million. Then users began complaining of chest pains, hair loss, heart palpitations, irritability and menstrual irregularities. This was not surprising since Kimkins is essentially a starvation diet, down to 500 calories per day and deficient in many nutrients (appallingly, laxatives are advised to replace missing fiber). In a lawsuit, 11 former members are uncovering a vast record of Diez’s alleged fraud. They found that the stunning “after” photos, including one of Kimmer herself, had been lifted from a Russian mail order bride site. According to a deposition reported by Los Angeles TV station KTLA, Diaz admitted using fake pictures, fake stories and fake IDs, and a judge has allowed the litigants to freeze some of her assets.
With the amount of controversy surrounding this diet, it is a wonder that the website still operates or that anyone would sign up for the plan.
Kimkins was founded by ‘Kimmer’, a formerly obese woman who claimed to have lost 200lbs in a year by following her own low-carb, high-protein diet. She developed a diet plan based on her own experience and built a whole Kimkins empire, including diet program, e-book and Kimkins products. The diet appears to have had an enormous amount of followers who seem to have achieved substantial amounts of weight loss. However, there is a very dark side to this ‘success story’ which has recently been exposed through a number of online dieting sites, forums and even news media.
The controversy concerns the fact that not only is Kimkins extremely low calorie, to the point where some have described it as a starvation diet, but that ‘Kimmer’, whose real name is Heidi Diaz, never actually lost the amount of weight as claimed, and, judging by recently taken photos, is certainly still obese. Added to this is the fact that ‘Kimmer’ has no professional qualifications as a dietician or nutritionist but continues to take money from overweight individuals desperate to lose weight in whatever way possible.
AOL Body Web Site’s Notes | Facebook
Worst Product — Kimkins diet. Five percent body weight gone in 10 days if you pay a fee on-line for the Kimkins diet plan. Turns out founder Heidi Diaz admitted using fake pictures and stories to promote this starvation diet, leading some to complain of chest pains, hair loss, heart palpitations, irritability and menstrual irregularities. Yes, there’s a lawsuit.
Worst Product — Kimkins diet. Five percent body weight gone in 10 days if you pay a fee on-line for the Kimkins diet plan. Turns out founder Heidi Diaz admitted using fake pictures and stories to promote this starvation diet, leading some to complain of chest pains, hair loss, heart palpitations, irritability and menstrual irregularities. Yes, there’s a lawsuit.
This is just the type of publicity I love to see.
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