How Jeanessa Got Scammed

My first low carb diet was in 1998.  I was 19 years old, 193 pounds and determined to lose some weight!  A co-worker was doing Atkins and dropped 15 pounds in two weeks with very little effort.  I wanted to be like her.

So, I bought the Atkins book, read it from cover to cover and started low-carbing.  I lost about 25 pounds the first 3 weeks.   I went off the diet and sustained my loss for about six months before I quit and gained it all back plus some over the next nine years.

I gave thought to dieting again from time to time, joined Low Carb Friends (LCF) in 2004 and ALF around then.  I joined other sites as well, posted and tried to get going, but mostly lurked.  It was at LCF that I saw Kimmer’s posts.

She wrote very eloquently and seemed to show a lot of knowledge about low-carbing and dieting in general.  And she had lost a TON of weight: 198 pounds.  I thought her story was one of the great low carb successes that you read about and that was that.

I took a break from lurking for awhile and when I came back, Kimmer was in full force at LCF.  I found out about Kimkins when I saw a poster on LCF with the word Kimkins in the WOE portion of their profile.  Well, I looked up Kimkins and read all I could.  I read many of Kimmer’s posts and sucked up everything she had to say like a sponge.  But the diet looked pretty strict and I was of the opinion at that time that I needed something I could really and truly sustain for life, so I decided not to try it.

Several months later, a very close aunt of mine had a massive stroke at the age of 53 that left her in a wheelchair and partially paralyzed.  Within a few months of that, my moma had breathing problems and I rushed her to the ER.  I sat with her in triage for four hours and on February 23, 2007, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and given months to live.

I cried myself sick for days, but I got up.  I put a smile on my face and became an even better daughter to my mother.  I also looked myself in the eye and said, “Jeanessa, its time to do something about your weight.”

I decided to visit some of my infrequent haunts.  When I went to LCF, I saw that Kimkins had its own section and when I went there and lurked, someone said that Kimmer had started her own site called Kimkins and when I visited Jimmy Moore’s blog, he had some Kimkins success stories listed and a link.

On March 20, 2007, I signed up.

I spent several days reading posts and figuring out what would work for me to eat on the diet plan.  I saw people’s pictures and got excited!  People were really losing weight, so it had to be awesome.  Then, I read some people’s fitday journals and I paused. When I first saw 300 and 500 calorie day entries, I thought that maybe people just weren’t inputting all of their daily intake into fitday. Then, I saw 300 calories, 500 calories for whole months at a time! 

But…it was working and Kimmer seemed so adamant about it being safe and sustainable.  So many others had success.  I rifled through all of the success stories for inspiration and decided to get started.

I boiled up a batch of eggs and grilled chicken breasts and cut them into strips on my George Foreman.  I bought cans of tuna in water and Bumblebee chicken.  I bought iceberg lettuce and Wishbone Spritzer salad dressing.  I bought a case of Diet Rite soda.  I was ready to get started.

By noon of day two, I was so dizzy that I couldn’t stand.  My hands were shaking.  I felt like I was going to puke every time I so much as smelled a food-like substance.  I posted on Kimkins about SNATT and asked how long it took to get over SNATT and received a few encouraging responses.

I forged ahead.  It would be worth it to lose the weight.  By the time I got home, all I could do was park the car and sit there.  It took me a few minutes to make it into the house and when I did my husband took one look at me and said, “Nope, you’re not doing this diet.  Eat something now.  You can find another one to do.”

So, ended my foray into Kimkins.

I started to look around Kimkins with new eyes, ones that were no longer desperate for weight loss.  The calories and the benefits just didn’t add up.  There was no place to dissent on the Kimkins.com site and the few posts I read on LCF were immediately denounced.  I went to Jimmy’s blog.  He seemed like a nice reasonable guy and I trusted his advice.  So, I posted a comment on one of his Kimkins posts, asking how 500 calories could be healthy.

Jimmy told me that Kimkins did not advocate 500 calories.  And then Kimmer chimed in and asked me if I was afraid of Starvation Mode.  She referred me to an article she had written on Starvation Mode, describing how it did not exist.  She went on to say that I could wake up with diabetes one day and that would be irreversible.  No one else voiced anything in support of my question.  I felt well and truly silenced.

A while later, I read a blog, A Pinch Of, and she questioned Kimkins!  It rang so true for me and I posted there, thanking her for voicing a concern that I had.  How could 500 calories, low carb, unsupervised be this miracle diet that everyone was so excited about?

Within a few weeks, the Why the Fascination Thread became prominent and so many of us got the opportunity to come together and voice our concerns and see that we really did have the same questions and that something just wasn’t right.

Kimkins Survivors opened and my heart bled for those women who had been “tough enough” to sustain the diet.  I was so glad that I felt so awful those first few days and that my husband had voiced his concerns.

Then, Slamboard posted the pictures of Heidi K. Diaz, Kimmer, who I had always known to be Heidi from her LCF days.  And I posted in support of KimPossible after seeing her attacked for asking questions on the Kimkins website.  I was immediately banned without any warning or notice.  My request for a refund was denied.

It occured to me then, that Heidi had no intention of fessing up, of acknowledging the affect of her diet or addressing the allegations of fraud.

What a way to do business!  It became clear to me that she wasn’t going to address our concerns and neither was she going to stop without some outside assistance.  So, I contacted John.

Every one of our voices counts and is necessary.  We are not a means to an end, expendable or easily silenced.  Please join me in the fight to stop others from being scammed.

So, how did you get scammed?