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.

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.

“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.

A recent study found that teenage girls who used severe methods to lose weight were more likely to become obese than girls who ate a high-fat diet. A Duke expert says radical weight-loss measures change the body’s metabolism and actually promote weight gain.

Adolescent girls who try to lose weight by extreme measures such as vomiting, laxative abuse and skipping meals are actually more likely to become obese than girls who eat a high-fat diet.

The finding, part of a four-year study of almost 500 teenage girls in Austin, Texas, was published in the April 2005 issue of the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Dr. Terrill Bravender, medical director of the Duke Eating Disorders Program, says the study results shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“Although this seems counter-intuitive, it actually makes quite a bit of sense,” he explains. “We know from other research that skipping meals sets you up for eating more food throughout the rest of the day. Appetite increases dramatically and satiety control decreases. It’s almost like the body goes into starvation mode in those instances and actually over-compensates for the lost energy that it’s experiencing.

“Adolescents or even adults who fast for prolonged periods of time or severely restrict their caloric intake are more likely to binge-eat to compensate for that lack of food intake, either earlier in the day or in days prior.”

In effect, says Bravender, employing severe methods to lose weight is likely to have the opposite result. “As with any attempt at controlling weight and managing health, moderation is the key. Episodes of starvation or extreme weight loss-control most likely lead to subsequent binge eating, which negates all the work you’ve done with those extreme weight-loss measures. The best approach is moderation in eating, eating a well-balanced, healthy diet, limiting snacking and getting a modest amount of daily physical activity.”

Bravender, director of adolescent medicine at Duke, notes that there are many other factors that contribute to an increased risk for obesity in children and teens. One of these factors is parental obesity; another is parental attitudes toward food.

“I think this an example where parental modeling of good behavior is incredibly important. We know that obesity tends to run in families for a variety of reasons. Genetics is one reason, but even in adoptive families we see a higher likelihood of children being obese if their adoptive parents are also obese. I think that has a lot to do with modeling around food.

“This includes not just the types of foods that are available in the home, but also eating styles, for example decreasing snacking and making sure to eat at proper mealtimes. Parental attitudes toward food also have a huge influence on children. If parents see some foods as a reward, or see some foods as ‘good’ and others as ‘bad,’ children will internalize that message and develop those same attitudes about food.

“There’s a study from a number of years ago looking at 9- and 10-year-old girls. Over 40 percent of those girls said that they either were on or had been on a diet to lose weight. Those 9- and 10-year-olds didn’t come up with that on their own. I’m sure they’re imitating their parents.”

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