Who didn’t start their first diet when they were just a few pounds overweight? Dropped some weight and then put it back on, plus a few pounds more? Kept on repeating this cycle with each attempt ending up at a higher weight?

This dieting pattern is called a “feast and famine cycle” and is caused by restrictive diets.

The body’s natural response to excessive calorie restriction is:

• Reduced metabolic rate. As much as 15 – 30% fewer calories are burned.
• Cravings, especially for sweets and fat.
• Increased ability to store calories as fat, whenever excess calories become available again.

The result? A binge, and/or quitting the diet. Or for the unfortunate that “manage” to fight the hunger, anorexia.

During the period of re-feeding, weight is put back on. Even worse, while the weight loss was both muscle and fat, the regain is primarily fat. We end up bigger and with lower metabolism than before the weight loss as fat doesn’t burn as many calories as muscle does.

After this episode, or a period of time, the restrictive diet is restarted. The diet works, I did lose weight. I just wasn’t strong enough to stick with it.

Wrong! If the diet is not sustainable, the diet is wrong. It’s not the dieter’s fault. It’s the diet’s fault.

So what works for weight loss then? It’s obvious that restrictive diets are not doing us any favors. I strongly believe in lowcarb and “healthy eating” which to me means to eat the right foods, but not limit how much I eat.

With lowcarb, there is no need to feel deprived. There is no need to go hungry. If hungry, then eat. It’s not a diet, it’s a Way of Eating (WOE) that can be sustained long term.

And guess what? When we are ready for maintenance, we have learned how to eat. Do yourself a favor and follow Atkins as written, climbing the carb ladder. Then there is no sudden change from “weigh loss mode” to maintenance, with the common regain and struggle.

Beware of quick fixes that promises fast weight loss, like Kimkins. Not even the founder has been successful on the diet, but still keeps on promoting it. While starvation produces weight loss, the damage done to your body in the process might be permanent even when the weight loss isn’t.

The term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences to the individual’s health, mental state or social life.

Is there such a thing as food addiction? No, not according to the author of Breaking out of Food Jail, Jean Antonello R.N., B.S.N.

People who do not eat enough food on a regular basis tend to get compulsive about food and eat without control at times. This is an adaptive response, not the result of an addiction. There is, however, an addictive process involved; it’s the addiction to dieting.

I agree with Jean. I have never known anybody that could be described as “obsessed” with food unless they were dieting. Diet addicition is a much more fitting term.

I also believe that dieting causes eating disorders, and not the other way around. Severe calorie restriction, like the starvation diet Kimkins, will surely result in an unhealthy relationship with food.

The most natural reaction to excessive food restriction is cheats or binges. Or anorexia. Neither of them is a result you want from a diet, and it will not make you any healthier. Isn’t that the most important with weight loss? Health?

What is strange is that dieters keep on going back again and again to the too restrictive diet after a cheat or binge episod. The diet works. Uh, no, it doesn’t. If you can not stay on it, it doesn’t work.

That the diet doesn’t work is not to blame on the dieters, it’s the fault of the DIET. Look for something else. Less restrictive. Higher calories typically means slower losses, but over time it will surely equal or exceed what can be accomplished on starve/binge yo-yo cycles.

I doubt it but it wouldn’t hurt to try. Kimkins Review has a call-out for how you can help. Only by getting some low carb proponents on the panel can we influence how the new food pyramid will look. At least we can hope for some improvement.

And quoting Dr. Michael Eades who got the question why it matters as nobody follows the USDA recommendations anyway:

I explained that although he may not pay attention to them, plenty of other people do. The law that established the guidelines mandates that every bit of food or money for food that the government doles out has to follow the Nutritional Guidelines. Approximately 54 million people are fed daily by the government, and they all have to be fed according to the guidelines. Who does the government feed? The military, people in the prison system, school lunch programs, numerous people who receive commodities from Uncle Sam, Federally funded daycare centers, the list goes on and on. So the Nutritional Guidelines are not a meaningless, harmless little bit of government doodling – they are of great importance. It would be nice to see them move away from a diet that composed primarily of carbohydrate. The only way this will happen is to get some low-carb advocates on the panel.

I never paid much attention to the food pyramid but looked at it on Dr. Eades blog. It looks a lot more scary when you see it that way than just looking at the numbers above (not that 65% carbs don’t look scary in themselves). No wonder people get fatter and fatter.

Just to amuse myself, I decided to redo the food pyramid for a low carb woe (way of eating). I didn’t add any food items so the “fats” segment ended up pretty empty – just a jar of mayo that is on the top in the USDA version.

It didn’t surprise me that the pyramid is pretty much flipped upside down. But notice that the “oh so important veggie” segment is in the same place and no smaller in the lowcarb variant.

And to further amuse myself, I created a Kimkins food pyramid. This one was simple. Just erase most of the food items. The pyramid ended up a lot smaller too as the typical Kimkins menu is 500 – 600 calories as compared to the 2,000 in the USDA pyramid.

Laxatives are not useful for weight loss. They cause loss of water weight. Not fat loss. The drop on the scale is not permanent. As soon as you replace the lost water, your scale will be back where you started. 

You would think that a diet “guru” like Heidi Diaz would know this. And I think she does. Is she also aware that her advice to take laxatives to produce a temporary scale loss might end up killing someone?

Extensive laxative abuse can cause:

• Dehydration.  Dehydration can cause weakness, blurry vision, fainting, kidney damage, and (in cases of severe dehydration) death.
• Electrolyte imbalance.  Electrolytes are minerals (sodium, potassium, calcium, etc.) that are in body fluids in very precise amounts and ratios.  Electrolytes are responsible for proper functioning of nerves and muscles. Laxative abuse can upset a person’s electrolyte balance and cause improper functioning of vital organs, like the heart!
• Laxative dependence.  This is when the colon requires larger and larger doses of laxatives to produce bowel movements.  People often become so dependent on laxatives that their body loses the ability to produce bowel movements on it’s own without the aid of laxatives.

Or listen to the advice of someone that tried it:

Okay, I had a really long reply typed but here’s what I was going to say in a nutshell. I’m only 23 years old, and I have been dealing with this problem for 10 years already. And, don’t do it, seriously, please read this and seriously consider the truth, and hopefully you will realize that it doesn’t help you at all in the long run.

Okay, yes taking laxatives or I should say abusing them will actually help you lose weight. But, the ways that they do it are as follows:

• You realize hey I weigh less today!
• Then, you convince yourself that you don’t want to eat because you don’t want to gain the weight back.
• You find yourself drinking less.
• You get nauseated when you attempt to eat.
• And, you constantly have diarrhea, you can’t control when where or who is in the public restroom at work/school when you have it.

Look, it’s not pretty, but it gets worse. If you still think it’s worth it, listen to the rest. Picture yourself thinner, and then picture yourself smiling, and when you look at that smile, broken and thin brittle teeth. Pretty huh? True though, because laxatives can remove the calcium from your body because it won’t let your body absorb the calcium Hardly no one seems to realize that this is a horrible side effect. Your teeth can practically crumble. And your bones…easily broken.

Also, you can end up in the hospital for any of many many reasons, where they will pump you full of potassium (oh, and that reallllllly hurts!! It causes your arms to swell, and every vein they put the iv in with that crap, collapsed).

And, you can get jaundice (where your skin turns yellow) from your liver enzymes being high because of organs failing, and end up with a not so pretty scar on your stomach.

And, think about your colon, no seriously think about it for a second, think about the alternatives to keeping it healthy.

Okay, so those are the physical problems.

I’ve tried to sum it up for ya, but it’s not a short list. I hope that you realize that this is a baddddddd decision, and not one easily kicked.

The TRUTH recently posted a series of PM’s from Kimmer (aka Heidi Diaz) where laxative abuse is recommended.

Is it enough? Kimmer recommends a multivitamin per day for her 500 calories starvation diet, Kimkins. Theoretically, this will provide the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) for all essential vitamins and minerals. Does that mean that my body gets everything it needs to function? As the energy will be taken from stored body fat and the rest will be delivered by the pill? I know for sure, that the fat soluble vitamins will not be absorbed as the Kimkins diet is practically void of fat. But what about the other vitamins and minerals in the pill?

For reasons that scientists have yet to figure out, the body processes vitamins differently when they arrive in food than in pill form – probably because foods interact with one another in a way that may help nutrient absorption. So far, nutrition specialists said, scientists working in labs can’t beat what nature does.

Even multivitamins, which typically contain the recommended daily intake of a host of nutrients, are not universally accepted by nutritionists.

Alice Lichtenstein, a professor at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition, said there is no evidence that multivitamins are hazardous – but she said there’s also no compelling proof that they do much.

The RDA, or RDI (Reference Daily Intake) as it is now called, was developed based on getting the nutrition from FOOD, not a PILL. Will my body absorb what it needs from a pill? And is the RDA enough?

The RDA was developed during World War II by Lydia J. Roberts, Hazel K. Stiebeling and Helen S. Mitchell, all part of a committee established by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in order to investigate issues of nutrition that might “affect national defense” (Nestle, 35). The committee was renamed the Food and Nutrition Board in 1941, after which they began to deliberate on a set of recommendations of a standard daily allowance for each type of nutrient. The standards would be used for nutrition recommendations for the armed forces, for civilians, and for overseas population who might need food relief. Roberts, Stiebeling, and Mitchell surveyed all available data, created a tentative set of allowances for “energy and eight nutrients”, and submitted them to experts for review (Nestle, 35). The final set of guidelines, called RDAs for Recommended Dietary Allowances, were accepted in 1941. The allowances were meant to provide superior nutrition for civilians and military personnel, so they included a “margin of safety.” Because of food rationing during the war, the food guides created by government agencies to direct citizens’ nutritional intake also took food availability into account.

I have not been able to find anything about what method they used to develop the RDA.
Surely they did not have the time to perform actual studies to see how the body responds to different vitamin and mineral levels. My guess would be that they looked at a “typical” diet of perhaps some 2,500 calories and then calculated what nutrition it would provide to use as their bench mark.

Despite the fact that RDA has proved useful, most physicians, medical practitioners, dietitians, and laypeople tend to assign too much authority to the RDA standards. Instead of using RDA as the minimal amount needed to prevent deficiency diseases, the society tends to use RDA as the maximum amount of daily nutrient intake. Chronic diseases, for example cancer, heart diseases, osteoporosis, indicated the fact that the RDA standard is not sufficient to prevent or deal with the root of chronic diseases. Studies in nutritional sciences and the medical field further show that we need a greater amount of nutrients than those recommended by RDA to provide optimal level of protection.

The RDA is constantly undergoing adjustments as new research suggests increase/decrease of a certain vitamin or mineral, mostly based on new studies where a certain vitamin or mineral is showed to protect against some disease.

But to my knowledge, there has been no long term study to see if the RDA is in fact representative of the nutrition a body needs. Especially when this nutrition is not derived from food but supplements.

Of course, now we know that she really looks like this:

Seems that the “no-exercise” diet didn’t work for her.

I’m going to share my weight loss story. It’s anecdotal but so is Kimmer’s. Except my story is true and hers isn’t.

When turning 46, I had slowly put on about 20 pounds over a couple of years. Before then, I had been a “naturally skinny” person for reasons that are unknown to me (and the medical community at large, it seems).

Vanity didn’t send me to the gym, but my doctor did. At my annual check up, he was lecturing me about my cholesterol and the risk for osteoporosis (small bones). I refused to even consider medication for it, and bit the bullet and started to go to the gym.

I lost 16 pounds over a period of 5-6 months. No diet at the time. I looked great (well, my body did) and I felt great. Next annual showed perfect cholesterol and the doctor didn’t even say anything about possible bone loss. The latter might be due to me not shrinking. I was still the same 5′6″ as I always had been.

I maintained my weight loss for over two years, and then the pounds started to creep back on again. Why? I didn’t stop exercising but went to the gym much less often and stopped challenging myself.

This time, life changes had made the gym less practical and I decided to try to diet off the pounds instead. Did it work? Not really. One month of Atkin’s induction showed no weight loss at all. Not even a single pound.

The gym still not being practical, I somehow found callanetics. Callanetics is a great workout to do at home, and I highly recommend it. It looks deceivingly simple but try it, and you will see that it isn’t. Or better yet, have your husband to try it with you. If he is anything like mine, you’ll laugh your a$$ off. Callanetics requires both flexibility and coordination which is not all that common in men, at least not if they are older.

This time, it also took me about 5-6 months to get back to my goal weight, from combined regular exercise and a low carb diet.

Did I try Kimkins? Yes, I did. This was at the time when she dominated LCF and I tried it a few times when I was frustrated at lack of scale movement. I never lasted more than a few days on this starvation diet. And, no, it wasn’t from carb withdrawal as I was already low in carbs. Most important, however, was that by the 3rd day, I could no longer exercise. That seemed counter productive so I gave up any quick fix attempt and went back to regular low carb with enough nutrition to carry me through my workouts.

Last fall, I regained 5 pounds. Why? Hmm, I stopped exercising again. See a pattern here? I do.

Now I’m back in the gym (no longer being able to motivate myself to get it done at home) and have gotten rid of 4 of the 5 pounds.

Exercise might not be required for weight loss for you, but it is for me.

For the pinky swear challenge that started yesterday, February 1, Kimmer had promised to share some weight loss “secrets”. She announced the first “secret” yesterday; eat like a post-op WLS patient!

This is what she said:
“I’ll share a secret with you: the diet that gastric bypass and lapband patients follow after surgery is very Kimkins like. lsn’t it better to do the diet and skip the surgery?
We’ve got quite a few tummy surgery members. It’s not a fix-all and some people regain the weight because they find foods that are easy to eat after surgery (milkshakes, candy, mashed potatoes/gravy, Twinkies … )
[That would be Kimmer, talking from her own experience. We believe that she did have WLS surgery years ago, lost some weight but then regained it all.]

It’s always an option if you decide to go that way and there’s nothing wrong with having it done if you and your doctor agree it’s the way to go. How about surprising yourself and stick to Kimkins for a month and see for yourself? The Kimkins Shake Option is nearly identical to the post surgery liquid diet. And be sure to take a good quality multivitamin. I go with generic Centrum from Wal Mart (some ladies use prenatal).”

Kimmer is suggesting that Kimkins members do shakes only for a month! And where is the recommendation to see your doctor? VLCD’s (very low calorie diets) should never be attempted without medical supervision.

The most frequently recommended shake on Kimkins is EAS Advantedge, Carb Control. Each shake provides 100 cals, 4 carbs. The maximum allowable number of shakes for Kimkins Shake Option is 4, i.e. a total of 400 cals per day!

Note also that all the “over-the-counter” shakes on the market clearly state that they are not intended as meal replacements, just for protein supplementation.

For an informational post about a REAL WLS diet, please see BamaGal’s post at Diary of a Mad Housewife.

On a similar note, I received a report about the Admin sock puppet Gary. He listed his menu and made the comment that if he found that the calories were less than 800 when plugging them into Fitday, he would add a handful of nuts as a snack. This is a 200+ lbs, 6′3″ man that is on maintenance since several months back! 800 cals? Is that what a Kimkins dieter has to look forward to in maintenance? Obviously.

“DELANEY DEAVER (aka SingingLass): We don’t tell people to starve, we encourage them to eat and I think there’s gonna be eating disorders that happen, you know, in any situation when somebody has an issue with food, but we try to prevent that from happening by giving people support.”

Giving people support? People with eating disorders? On Kimkins? And who are “we?”

To my knowledge, the only admins left on Kimkins are:

• Kimmer, aka Heidi Diaz. An obese woman that have scammed and defrauded thousands of people over at least 10 years. A lying liar that lies.

• Singingass. A student, working as an online psychic and occasionally singing opera.

• Lasttime4me. A sock puppet, or if not, certainly does have the personality of a sock. Kimmer normally creates colorful characters. This one isn’t.

• Tarvos{k}. Hasn’t been seen there for a long time. His blog still exists but is empty. As far as I remember, he didn’t do all that great on the diet either, still being over 400 lbs. And anybody reading his posts (and blog before it was scrubbed) realizes that this man has issues.

So who is going to help the people with eating disorders on Kimkins? Heidi Diaz? Singingass? Lasttime4me? Would you trust any of these three with anything? Especially related to diet or eating disorders?

Actually, we do know what type of “support” a dieter on Kimkins would get. Read this post by Medusa: FROM MY MOLE INSIDE THE KIMPOUND: KIMMER RESPONDS TO THE STARVING WOMAN…

Edit:
For Eating Disorder information, please go to Eating Disorders Today
Joanna Poppink, LMFT, Los Angeles psychotherapist, stopped by to comment and provide this link.

Note, this is a psychotherapist, specializing in eating disorder recovery. Who would you listen to, Joanna or Heidi? Heidi has no qualifications whatsoever to dispense diet advice or advice to a person with an eating disorder.

WELCOME BACK!

And, staying with the subject of anorexia and bulimia, Medusa has a very important post today:

ANOREXIA NERVOSA & BULIMIA NERVOSA…AND THEIR LINK TO THE DEADLY KIMKINS DIET

Please go and read it and be reminded why people like Heidi Diaz and websites like Kimkins have to be removed from the internet.

You might also want to go back and read one of the earlier posts by the original Kimorexia blogger:

Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be anorexic