So who wouldn’t lose weight eating just 500 calories? Why would you need to pay for expensive HCG injections when the calorie limitation will cause you to lose just as much weight in itself?

The HCG proponents (sock puppets) share their wisdom. The tiny HCG amount supposedly enables you to draw from your fat stores, and the HCG makes you not being hungry.

How funny then that the Kimkins starvation diet produced the same results, without the HCG. Kimmer suggested 500 calories or less. Lean protein, just as the HCG protocol does. People following Kimkins did lose a huge amount of weight, quickly. But they also suffered health complications due to it.

There is no reason to think that HCG would work any different, in my opinion. The dieters starting out on Kimkins didn’t feel hunger initially either. Ketosis does that to you.

Here is a study that shows no difference in weight loss or hunger with or without the HCG:

Our investigation was designed to retest the hypothesis of the efficacy of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) on weight reduction in obese women in a clinic setting. We sought to duplicate the Asher-Harper study (1973) which had found that the combination of 500 cal diet and HCG had a statistically significant benefit over the diet and placebo combination as evidenced by greater weight loss and decrease in hunger. Fifty-one women between the ages of 18 and 60 participated in our 32-day prospective, randomized, double-blind comparison of HCG versus placebo. Each patient was given the same diet (the one prescribed in the Asher-Harper study), was weighed daily Monday through Saturday and was counseled by one of the investigators who administered the injections. Laboratory studies were performed at the time of initial physical examinations and at the end of the study. Twenty of 25 in the HCG and 21 of 26 patients in the placebo groups completed 28 injections. There was no statistically significant difference in the means of the two groups in number of injections received, weight loss, percent of weight loss, hip and waist circumference, weight loss per injections, or in hunger ratings. HCG does not appear to enhance the effectiveness of a rigidly imposed regimen for weight reduction.

[Am J Clin Nutr. 1976 Sep;29(9):940-8. Ineffectiveness of human chorionic gonadotropin in weight reduction: a double-blind study. Stein MR, Julis RE, Peck CC, Hinshaw W, Sawicki JE, Deller JJ Jr.]

Getting calories from body fat doesn’t mean that you get ALL nutrition your body needs. The body fat doesn’t contain vitamins or essential fatty acids. And don’t fool yourself that a vitamin pill will provide what should be gotten from food.

Coincidentally, many Kimkins dieters complained about “excessive” hunger around week 4 - 5. The HCG protocol is following the 500 calorie diet for 3 weeks, when food is added.

But how many of the HCG dieters stop at 3 weeks? Perhaps they, just as the Kimkins dieters, decide to fight the hunger by filling up on non-calorie food such as broth and diet soda? After all, they all want to get to goal as quickly as possible.

And how many of the HCG dieters regain the weight like most of the Kimkins dieters did? A 500 calorie diet teaches you nothing about how to eat to maintain weight loss.

HCG is just another quick fix, in my opinion. A magic pill for a desperate dieter that wants to find an easy way to get the weight off. And of course, HCG is a big money maker for the companies selling it. They most likely use sockpuppets to help promote the product. As with other fad products, support threads on diet boards are populated by people new to the board, that post on that thread only, that have “fantastic success” with the product, and encourage other board members to buy it.

After all, there are other low calorie diets out there. Just look at the latest issue of Women’s World or some other women’s magazine and I can guarantee that the recommended diet is low calorie. It may not be announced as such but adding up the suggested foods end up with 1000 cals or less. For example, egg white omelet for breakfast, 3 oz chicken for lunch, 6 oz salmon for dinner plus the rest fat free or low fat. Salads (with fat free dressing of course), a slice of whole wheat bread and half a cup of brown rice will not increase the calorie count by much.

So why is the Kimkins Diet so much worse? Especially now when there supposedly is no calorie limit on it any longer? Not that the recommended 70-90 gram protein, 3 cups salad veggies, with minimal fat easily add up to more than 500-600 cals.

What I see as the main danger with the kimkins diet is not the diet in itself. It’s the cult-like atmosphere on Kimkins “support” forum. Where people are encouraged to starve themselves. Where feeling icky is applauded.

Other crazy, fad, diets might produce the same physical ill effects (and quick weight loss), but there is nothing to motivate you to keep on doing them. You just abandon them as not doable. Another failed diet attempt.

Not so with Kimkins. When struggling to stick to the diet (and who wouldn’t?) you just log on to Kimkins.con to get support for why you shouldn’t give in to your body’s demand for nutrition. Hear people saying KUTGW (keep up the good work). Look at you! You have lost so much! Keep going! Don’t be weak!

You get inspired by the success stories on the site. Big losers. Real or not, who cares? They have pictures! They look pretty and skinny in the “after” photos.

No negativity at all on the site. Just upbeat posts. Friendly challenges where you get to know people. Checking in daily to say hello and read about your friends’ overnight whooshes. How many pounds they dropped. Hoping to do the same.

To me, that is really the danger with Kimkins. Not the diet, but the website. Without the brainwashing that goes on there, nobody could stick to the diet long enough for it to do much harm. Without the forum and people posting there (even if they are mostly sockpuppets by now) there wouldn’t be a Kimkins.con.

I have great hope that Kimkins.con will soon be gone from the internet. The site was funded by members that signed up based on fraudulent weight loss claims (Kimmer’s 198 pounds) and an article in Women’s World that had fake pictures (Kimmer’s Russian bride photo). The Class Action Lawsuit may force the shut down. Or, Heidi Diaz might decide to shut it down due to lack of new members. Sockpuppets don’t bring in any money.

And the latest Kimkins defecter, AmyB, is also calling Kimkins a cult on her blog

Magicsmom says: Every one of us who was taken in by Heidi has to go through a process which is exactly like grieving. You go through stages, and I believe it is very similar to this:

The seven stages of grief are:

* Shock or Disbelief
* Denial
* Bargaining
* Guilt
* Anger
* Depression
* Acceptance and Hope

Why do people leave? How do people leave?

Members typically:

1. walk away

2. are thrown out (banned)

3. lose their group to dissolution

4. or are convinced to leave by outside people

in roughly that numerical order.

“Walkaways” may leave gradually because of love for family or friends or what is called “cognitive dissonance” — a growing realization that the ideals of the group are at odds with their actions. They may float into new groups or eventually return to their original group. Frequently they do not face the damage that they have endured, and they experience reduced functionality for many, many years.

Banned members are tossed out by their leaders or groups for real or imagined offenses — or to keep other members in line. This group may experience the most traumatic re-entrance into mainstream society. They usually have not rejected the beliefs or leader of their group and have the added guilt and shame of having been rejected.

Someone involved in the disbandment of their group may experience an ego-strengthening sense of power and control. If the group disbanded against their wishes, they may experience a depth of despair similar to a castaway (banned).

Those who are counseled out, through persuasions, or the like, usually experience the smoothest and quickest recovery.

reFOCUS: Recovering Former Cultists’ Support Network

The keys to recovery after leaving a high-demand group or cult are:

Education or knowledge

Support

Patience

Education

The over-riding factor is education: educating oneself about what happened to you while in the group and why it still affects you after you leave. Its crucial to understand the techniques that were used to gain your compliance, to shut down your critical thought processes, to manipulate your experiences and your emotions, to isolate you psychologically and sometimes physically from gaining information and feedback from the world outside the group. These techniques have an effect for quite some time after you leave the group. And it is important to understand that these lasting effects are normal under the circumstances, and that they will begin to dissipate once you do understand them and can begin to unravel them.

Support

It is so important to build a support team for yourself. Look for people who are willing to learn and to be there for you when you need to talk or to just spend some time together. The most powerful support can be found in other former members of groups have had very similar experiences to your own and are going through the recovery process as well. It is so good to be around people who really get it!

Patience

Yes, I know it is hard to be patient with yourself in the recovery process. Remember, we had a lot of practice living on the edge and being expected to produce results yesterday. A residual effect of living that way is to expect recovery yesterday and to be very impatient with ourselves. Also, remember when you were in the group, the leaders or the ideology could never be wrong if something was wrong, guess who it was! So, we tend to say whats wrong with me in the recovery process. Guess what. There is nothing wrong with you. Recovery takes time. It takes education. It takes support. And it takes giving yourself a break.

Edited to add:
A comment reminded me that I didn’t fully finish this post.

While I have no problem calling Kimmer and Singing Ass “Cult Leaders” (even if the latter is just a wannabe) I do not want to attach the label cult to the former Kimkins members.

While many Kimkins members that leave go through stages of feelings that are similar to people that are leaving a cult, Kimkins did not encompass the member’s entire life in the same way as a religious cult so the “recovery” process should be easier.

I also forgot to include links to where to find support and to meet up with other people that have left or been banned from Kimkins:

• Low Carb Friends has an active thread with people trying to shut Kimkins.con down. Kimkins discussions are detained to this one thread. Many ex-kimkinites find it a useful place to vent anger while others see it as Kimkins bashing. Then you might want to find one of the many diet support groups on LCF instead.

• Active Low Carber Forum has many diet support groups.

• Jimmy Moore’s forum is a meeting place for many ex-kimkinites but the Kimkins Diet is strongly discouraged.

• Amy Eating Low is also a forum where many ex-kimkinites hang out, including Amy herself.

• Big Huge Minds is a brand new, very friendly forum.

A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an Internet community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks while pretending not to, like a puppeteer manipulating a hand puppet.

In current usage, the perception of the term has been extended beyond second identities of people who already post in a forum to include other uses of misleading online identities. For example, a NY Times article claims that “sock-puppeting” is defined as “the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company.”

The key difference between a sockpuppet and a regular pseudonym is the active exploitation of the pretense that the puppet is a third party who is not affiliated with the puppeteer.

I was an early member of Kimkins (June 2006) but soon lost interest and didn’t return to the board until the controversy started in July 2007. I immediately was surprised by the large number of “success in progress” stories that seemed unbelievable. The more I read, the more unbelievable it became.

Unbelievable is really the keyword here. Yes, I know that you see huge, quick losses on a low carb diet in the beginning, especially if the starting weight is high. But these people were happily posting for weeks while they survived on 400 - 500 calories, never had a stall, never had any problems sticking to the diet, never had craving, never were hungry, never complained about not feeling well. Unbelievable. I have been posting daily on lowcarb boards for 4 years, and I have never seen anything like it.

These posters also lacked personality. They were just reporting on their menu, their weight loss and how happy they were with the diet. Again, a characteristic I did not recognize from other boards where you get to know your fellow posters pretty quickly, or at least get some sense of the person behind the keyboard.

I’m sure the majority of these successful posters were Kimmer sockpuppets. Her admins at the time of the big inrush of new members when the WW magazine came out report that Kimmer hardly posted at the time. I think she did, just not using the name Kimmer. She was busy inventing fictional characters and posting as all these sockpuppets that created a happy and positive atmosphere.

I can just imagine how the members felt about themselves when they read those posts with their shiny lies — “Other people are doing so well, what’s wrong with me? I need to try harder, I need to eat less, I must be the only one who’s failing, or the only one who’s feeling so ill…”

I’m not sure the use of sockpuppets constitute fraud in the legal sense, but it is certainly unethical. Kimmer is using sockpuppets to promote her business, for her own gain.

In addition to the success stories, there recently has been a large number of a different type of sockpuppets. These are “newbies”, not all new members but all with few posts. They seem to be used as “fillers” to promote the sense of more active members on the site. They are characterized by either having a generic avatar or a distorted one, similar to this:

Now, this could be due to technical difficulties, similar to what Tippy Toes once had:
Well we are having some kind of tech problem. Don’t laugh but I had changed my avitor from the bikini pic to one in a black dress. This morning when I logged on the pic was all stretched out like a fun mirror at the circus. I looked like I gained all 112 lbs back overnight, RFLMAO! Now I have this flower till I figure out what happened. Still laughing!

This is a weight loss board. Would you post a picture that shows you a lot heavier than you are? Tippy didn’t. She replaced the picture until tech support had helped her post it so it showed up in right proportions. So why are these distorted avatars so common on Kimkins? It’s obvious that they originally were 3×5 pictures that got posted as 5×5. Here is the original of the above picture:

Is Kimmer starting to be sloppy? Doesn’t care anymore to keep up appearances? The remaining members don’t care, or all they all sockpuppets? I think it’s a combination of all of these.