My Kimkins Journey

I saw the Woman’s World article in June and joined immediately (about, June 4, 2007). I was not new to Low Carbing (had done it many, many years before) and this looked to me (from the article) like Atkins but less fat, etc. I was planning on starting Atkins the following week anyway.

I immediately hooked up with about 15 other women who had started at the same time. We started a thread called the June Bugs and checked in each day with each other and started to get to know one another.

Most of us did pretty well on the K/E diet version. Some had some problems with not feeling real well, etc. but we all basically ignored our symptoms as we were told it is all part of the SNATT (Simply Nauseous All the Time) and we would get into Ketosis quicker and lose weight quicker.

Everyone was happy with pretty fast weight loss the first couple of weeks. I don’t know who was “tweaking” and who was not. (If any)

About 3 weeks into the diet (June 25, 2007) someone asked about the pictures of Kimmer, and me being the big mouth that I am, I posted a thread with both pictures side-by-side and asked “Are These Both Kimmer?” It was a very innocent question as all of us women were wondering as they didn’t look the same person and we wanted to know what the person looked like we were following.

Well, I started to receive several posts about my asking this question and how “mean” of me to post it on a public web thread, etc., etc., etc. I even had Admin’s and Kimmer respond to it. I posted back that it was an innocent question. Kimmer told me there were other places I could go if I wanted to cause trouble asking this question for the 10,0000th time (or whatever). I told Kimmer if it caused so many problems she could delete the thread. Kimmer refused to answer my question and to remove the thread. (NOTE: The thread has since been removed.) One person did stand up for me and state that she did not think the question was asked to be mean.
Immediately, I and the other ladies started posting about the conflict on our new thread named Jewels (June 25-28, 2007). We just couldn’t understand the controversy. We also asked the girl who supported us to join our group.

A few Personal Messages were sent back a forth between myself and our elected “team captain” for the thread. Apparently, Kimmer read our PMs.

Not knowing at the time how Kimmer “knew” anything we said, Kimmer sent myself and the team captain a not so nice PM telling us she “moved” our thread, wasn’t happy with what we were saying in our thread and to stop and get back to losing weight. Through this correspondence, we realized that Kimmer had read our PMs to each other as she stated things we only said in them.

Realizing that this was not an “open forum” and nothing was “private”, we immediately decided to exchange e-mail address and we communicated that way. We soon found another site where we all could go and communicate and not be threatened and not have to worry about asking “innocent” questions in the quest of our losing weight and supporting each other. Up until this time, we all had been very supportive on the Kimkin’s site and always tried to help the Newbie’s.

After moving to our new site, several of us still went to the KK site but posted very little. I changed my logon also from “katinsac” to “tinklc”. I stayed in some challenge groups as they were a help to me to continue losing. However, as a couple of our girls started having some problems, we realized real soon how unsafe this Way of Eating really was. One of the ladies was sick for two weeks, several gained a lot of weight by just eating off plan for one meal and it took a week or two to loose that weight. We all moved on to different types of diets for each of us. During this time we discovered Low Carb Friends and saw all the controversy and “why” this was a bad way to eat. This explained some of the problems some of the girls were having. Some of us went back to KK and started to delete our posts which had personal information in them, etc.

After reading Becky’s Blog (littlebit), I then realized that it was Becky who had “mentioned” to Kimmer about our thread, etc. I/I do not blame Becky as she was always nice and helpful to all. I didn’t see Becky give out a lot of “bad” advice but I did see Kimmer doing it and others who “learned the Kimmer way” give out advice they had seen her give.

My own problems with the KK plan was…I found myself eating between 100 and 300 cals a day due to the “don’t eat if not hungry” advice. It was nice not being hungry and the weight did come off pretty fast, however, I did tweek the K/E plan a little with bacon and spam. It was difficult when I stopped and tried to “up” my calories again too. To this day I still feel “weird” eating more. I also have noticed I am loosing more hair than usual when I brush my hair. I followed that plan for two months and now see why my hair is thinning.

To this day I have not been banned (yet) (9/11/2007). I thought for sure I’d get banned responding to Becky’s blog but haven’t. But, I’ve heard Kimmer has been trying to “clean up her act” also. The other reason may be that I changed my name right after our incident and maybe she hasn’t found me yet. I also don’t post often other than the weight loss challenge, just read what is going on.

As of 9/18/2007 I AM BANNED! I had made a comment on the “Kimmer Chatter” thread, where I “thought” we could say things about the controversy, but I guess not. My comment was deleted. I went back and asked why as it was not a “bad” comment and a new Admin chewed myself and another person out. She basically said if we didn’t like it there we could leave. Well, we both have been banned.

I do feel that this way of eating is unhealthy. I do feel that Kimmer took advantage of everyone just for the money. I do feel that Kimmer is a fraud. I know that Kimmer DID NOT loose the weight she claims to have. I do know that the pictures of Kimmer and most of the Before and After’s are not real. Need I go on? I feel this women’s site needs to be shut down to protect the innocent and this women needs to be accountable for what she has done. It is too bad that the information will always be able to be found by some unsuspecting person and I’m afraid of the harm. I’m sure someone has already been harmed but the problem with the Internet is….we will never know…they will just disappear.