I'm writing to alert you to a fraudulent and dangerous starvation diet plan (not just low carb, but very low carb, low calorie and low fat) which goes by the name of 'KIMKINS No Faster Weight Loss. None' on the internet. This diet was written up in June in Woman's World magazine and quickly climbed to approx. 40,000 members making the founder, Heidi K. Diaz a very, very wealthy woman.

The diet was based on the claims of the founder, Heidi K. Diaz, aka Kimmer, who said she lost 198 lbs in 11 months and had maintained that loss for over 5 years. She began cultivating a diet advice following as early as 2003 on a popular low carb forum. She was so successful that she left that site in 2006 and began her own PAID forum. After the WW article, the forum subscription price jumped to $59.95 (which is what I paid).

One of the main reasons I joined was the promise on the forum home page, 'personal coaching by the founder, Kimmer!'.

From the home page in June:
Included In Your Membership
Kimkins Diet
Food Lists
Sample Menus
Recipe Library
Support Forums
Online Personal Journal
Direct Access to Kimmer

The draw for this sort of forum and diet comes from people desperate to lose weight and keep it off. Those unfamiliar with dieting, or with the low carb lifestyle are usually those most easily misled by this diet scammer (that would be me).

Furthermore, Diaz has spent many hours in the past several years spamming the internet (craigslist and Yahoo Answers in particular until she was stopped) promoting her insanely low calorie (some call it anorexic) diet to TEENS. I personally know of at least two teenagers who followed her diet and posted actively on the forum, in spite of Kimmer's stated policy of not allowing teens on her site (a documented lie).

The promise made by Kimkins.com was:

'What if I told you that you could lose weight at turbo speed? Experience natural appetite suppression? Would you be interested?

Don't worry! No awful prepackaged foods. Forget about diet pills or risky surgery. The plan I'm talking about is all natural with everyday food.
It's called Kimkins and was developed by me, Kimmer, in 2000 when I weighed a morbidly obese 318 pounds! In less than a year I lost 198 pounds and kept it off!

Are you getting excited yet? You should be!

Kimkins has literally changed the lives of real people just like you who were at their wits end about their weight problem.'

So what's the problem??

**It's been documented (by private investigator) that Diaz has NOT lost weight and is in fact, morbidly obese. The entire diet plan is based on fraudulent claims!!

**Although the published versions (there are 5 versions of the Kimkins diet) are already low calorie (approximately 500-800 calories per day if followed to the letter), the practical advice (well documented) on the forum is to continue to drop calories and fats resulting in many, many Kimkins dieters living on 300-600 calories a day for months. I have screenshots of advice from 'Kimmer' advising me to effectively drop my daily caloric intake from approx. 800 to more like 500-600 a day and telling me she looked forward to me becoming one of her *success stories*)

**People are experiencing SEVERE health and medical problems as a result of following this diet (documented). Note: I experienced health issues as a result of this diet and gave it up after 6-7 weeks and am still recovering at the date of this writing.

**Diaz stole the success story photos for her site from Russian Bride websites (documented).

**She bans people from using her forum for the slightest infraction (asking questions she doesn't like, or questioning the published photos of herself on the internet) with NO refund. A class action lawsuit is underway by those defrauded and banned without refund (documented).

**Kimmer no longer gives personal advice, she is MIA from her site since early in October citing that she 'sold the site' to an anonymous new owner.

The Better Business Bureau has given Kimkins.com an F rating.
KTLA News ran a special report on two consecutive nights last week, in which actual footage of Diaz is shown evading reporters.

Every one of the original administration/success stories has since left Kimkins, and in fact they all now have blogs explaining what a terrible mistake their involvement was with Kimkins and Heidi Diaz, the 300lb+ scammer behind the diet. Their stories of personal dealings with Diaz are truly chilling.

If you wish to research further, please go to these sites:

http://kimkinsexposed.wordpress.com/

http://winningweight.blogspot.com/

http://kimkinsdangers.blogspot.com/

http://the-journey-on.blogspot.com/

http://openbench.blogspot.com/

http://kimkinssurvivors.wordpress.com/

http://www.3fatchicks.com/Diets/Diet_Articles/Kimkins%3A_Anatomy_of_a_Diet_Scam/

About.com expose:
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/populardietplans/a/kimkinsdiet_2.htm

Each of the sites above will have links to literally dozens of other similar links, all working together to attempt to stop Heidi Diaz and the Kimkins diet scam before someone dies.

Thank you for your time,

A very concerned ex-Kimkins member and Concerned Citizen

Ex-Kimkinite
Northport, Florida
U.S.A.