slamboard

Read my Kimkins.com series here and see all the Kimkins-related Slamboard posts here.

Thanks to Kimkins Dangers, we may have some new insight into the truth about Kimmer aka Heidi Diaz. One of their readers found this PlentyOfFish.com profile of “Kimmer2″. PlentyOfFish is a popular free dating site started around 2003. This profile lists Kimmer’s son’s age as 16, which would date it about two years ago.

Could this profile be a hoax? At first, I seriously considered the possibility that the profile was faked. But here’s why I don’t think that’s the case: the uncropped photos on this profile, which appear to be of Heidi and her son Brandon (who is now about 18 years old) have not to my knowledge been seen anywhere else online.

Take a look at the picture with the marina in the background. Heidi send this exact uncropped picture to Catherine to crop and use as her before picture for Kimkins.com. Catherine has never released the uncropped photo to anyone else. Neither of us had seen the uncropped seated photo until now.

If Heidi did indeed create this dating profile herself, it seems quite likely that she is now an older, perhaps heavier version of the woman in the blue sweater. After all, why not post the red dress photo if that is what she looks like now?

Also, the profile says Kimmer is a former foster mom. If Heidi did not really have foster children when she accepted money fundraised in their name (summer of 2006) then she could perhaps find herself facing criminal liability for fraud.

Things are only going to get more interesting.

Today the Kimkins.com camp announced the appointment of Christin Sherburne as Director of Media & Public Relations.

Christin was the Woman’s World cover model. In the midst of the discussion in the past couple of months about the identity and weight loss claims of Kimkins creator Heidi Diaz (”Kimmer”) a story surfaced that Christin had begged Heidi to meet her during Christin’s trip to LA for the Woman’s World interview and photoshoot, but Heidi brushed her off. To the best of my knowledge nobody, even Christin, can say that they have met “Kimmer” in person or verify that she is the woman in her diverse assortment of “after” pictures.

Christin, a Kimkins affiliate who makes commissions from sales she helps drive to the site, has deflected my attempts to seek her comment on the alleged brush-off. However, I have been told that she was very disappointed and I wonder, given the revelations of the past couple of months, whether she still has faith in Diaz’s integrity.

Christin is facing a tremendous challenge as the Kimkins controversy swirls, damaging details about Heidi Diaz continue to surface, and more and more people come out against the Kimkins diet and the so-called “plan behind the plan” encouragement of starvation-level calories and laxative abuse. Many women are now coming forward with accounts of medical crises they attribute to the Kimkins diet. Even low carb blogger Jimmy Moore has renounced his support of the Kimkins diet.

I have information that suggests that new information about the identity of Heidi Diaz may be about to surface in the coming weeks, making Christin’s new position even more difficult. Stay tuned.

Read my series about Kimkins.com and the controversy about Heidi Diaz (aka Kimmer) here.

The Body Mass Index has been a widely used calculation both in healthcare and in scientific studies related to obesity. Recently published studies have put the measurement into disrepute and many professionals have already begun to reduce their reliance on the number as a definitive factor.

I think it is still a useful tool for hands on management of human health. The basic shortcoming of the statistical tool is that it does not differentiate between body fat and lean muscle mass.

Most people who on a weight loss program, regardless of how regimented or casual it is, are measuring their weight. Ideally they should measure it every day. The other input for BMI is height, which doesn’t change much from day to day in an adult human.

I think BMI can be useful for setting a realistic goal at the beginning of a weightloss program.

Source for this post: Canada.com

So my header today is as close as I could get to the colors commonly used for packaging and promotions for McDonald’s.

I had a quick look at their site and I noticed that they include a couple of pages from qualified experts on health and diet. Dean Ornish is one of these experts. These pages are essentially a platform for the promotion of good diet and health. They do not endorse any particular McDonald’s product. They do not promote the restaurant in any way and seem to have very sound facts and advice.

Skinny Bitch is an irreverent book. It has an unapologetic tone. It began climbing the Best Seller list after Victoria Beckham was photographed with a copy in her lithe hand.

The book is anecdotal and offers advice about a strict vegan diet. Some people who bought the book have been vocally disappointed about an unadvertised focus on animal rights.

The authors are a bit perplexed and even offended that the people are crying foul over the chapters detailing inhumane conditions in poultry farms.

I attended a course called Issues in Agriculture when I was in my early twenties. There is an author whose work I came to detest while I took that course. His name is Peter Singer. He is brilliant and eloquent and, in the end, rather boring.

I suspect that when skinny bitches who are in PETA take a serious tone, they probably sound a lot like him.

I don’t have a problem with the fact that the marketing of a best seller failed to detail the less saleable parts.

There are 174 customer reviews of this book on Amazon.

Sources:NYT, Wikipedia

In the Kimkins controversy storm that has swirled these past few weeks around the net’s most popular low carb blogger, Jimmy Moore, I had started to wonder whether my admiration of the man had been misplaced. Turns out, absolutely not!

Many people have called Jimmy stubborn, misguided, a hothead, and much worse — but it takes a real man of integrity to shoulder the responsibility that Jimmy did on Friday with his no-holds-barred apology to the low carb community and renunciation of his affiliation with Kimmer/Heidi Diaz of Kimkins.com. My respect for Jimmy Moore has deepened profoundly.

Jimmy appears to be in the process of removing every last Kimkins affiliate link and positive blog post he has made about Kimkins. This represents a big financial hit for him. However, the low carb community is rallying around him and I can only hope that this lost income will be cushioned by the increased support.

Heidi Diaz is publicly “supporting” Jimmy’s decision right now; reading between the lines, though, she implies that he made the decision for business reasons, and I really don’t think that’s the story. I would advise Jimmy to prepare for the possibility that Heidi will turn on him now, but I’m sure he’s seen and read enough at this point to know that already.

Bravo, Jimmy Moore!

UPDATE: Looks like at least one other former Kimkins affiliate has decided to sever ties.

This is part six of a series of posts about successful fad diet site Kimkins.com and its mysterious and controversial creator, “Kimmer,” or Heidi Kimberly Diaz. My wife Catherine was Heidi’s business partner in the founding of the Kimkins.com site. You can find the first post and table of contents here.

Heidi spent July and August of 2006 alternating between manic promotion of the Kimkins.com site and periodic frustration over the demands of her members on her time and attention. By mid-August, Catherine had seen enough that her initial respect for Heidi was a distant memory and she was increasingly unhappy in the partnership. She was walking on eggshells to avoid unnecessarily triggering Heidi’s irritable moods.

This unhappiness accompanied a worry that had been forming in Catherine’s mind. In negotiating the partnership agreement, Catherine and Heidi had agreed in their contract that Heidi could buy out Catherine’s interest in the partnership at any point in the first 12 months of the Kimkins.com business for a certain lump sum. After 12 months had elapsed, the contractual buyout price would change to an amount equal to Catherine’s share of the profits for the trailing 12-month period immediately preceding the buyout.

Kimkins.com had exceeded expectations in two ways: it was both more profitable, and far more work, than either Heidi or Catherine had anticipated. Kimkins.com was more than a full-time job for both of them. The bottom line was this: because of profits that exceeded far exceeded expectations, if Heidi bought Catherine out in month 12, she would pay just a small fraction of what the buyout would cost in month 13.

By late August, Catherine had become thoroughly sick of Heidi, her moods, and the way she did business. There was no love lost; it was obvious that Heidi was only tolerating Catherine’s presence and influence in business decisions because of the work and technical expertise Catherine was contributing. A suspicion was becoming a certainty: Heidi would avail herself of Catherine’s presence as a business partner until nearly the end of the 12-month period and then buy her out.

Catherine decided to be proactive and demand a renegotiation of the buyout clause. Catherine told Heidi that she could not continue to devote all her time in return for such an undervalued interest in the business, and she requested a more equitable buyout. She felt that there was a good chance that Heidi would opt to buy her out right away, and she looked forward to getting out of the partnership. As she anticipated, and to her relief, Heidi soon announced that she was exercising her option to buy Catherine out.

The details of the transaction were set out and all the business assets were conveyed at the end of September 2006. Between her share of the site profits during her tenure and the buyout lump sum, and based on a 50-hour average workweek during the time she was involved with Kimkins.com, Catherine made just over $10 an hour for her time launching and developing the business. However, the education and life lessons she acquired were tremendously valuable.

Catherine was happy to be out of the partnership on what seemed at least to be civil terms. Heidi had made a show of being polite and gracious toward Catherine. It’s amazing how women who dislike one another can go through the motions of being nice, but Catherine had no illusions about Heidi’s real feelings. She was, however, somewhat taken aback when she realized that her Kimkins.com membership had been cut off a few days after the buyout was final. Shrugging it off as Heidi’s prerogative, Catherine moved on with other projects.

Then Heidi did something so inexplicably vindictive and downright wrong that Catherine has not forgiven her: she attempted to smear Catherine’s honesty and integrity to Kimkins.com’s most successful affiliate, Jimmy Moore.

To provide a little background, when Jimmy joined Kimkins.com as an affiliate he requested payment by check instead of PayPal. Since she knew Jimmy would be a valuable affiliate, Catherine made an exception to the PayPal-only rule and agreed to cut a check for him every month and mail it from our home in Europe. The final affiliate payments from Catherine’s last month with Kimkins went out on October 5, 2006, and Catherine mailed Jimmy’s check as usual.

On October 7, 2006 Jimmy wrote to Heidi to inquire about his affiliate payment arrangements now that Catherine was gone.

Heidi replied, with a copy to Catherine, on October 8 [emphasis added]:

She [Catherine] assured me that all affiliates were paid at the end of September. She sent me an Excel spreadsheet which I have been unable to open so I don’t have an accounting of September expenses, including affiliates. I hope everyone was paid!

Catherine responded to both Heidi and Jimmy, again October 8:

The check went out as it usually does last week to Jimmy. All the other affiliates who were owed money by the Kimkins affiliate program were paid via PayPal, even the affiliates who had not yet reached their minimum, as per our agreement Heidi. I will forward the PayPal receipts to you if you’d like since you seem to be uncertain about whether the payout took place.

Heidi, this is the first time you have followed up with me about your access issue with Google spreadsheets since you mentioned the day of the Kimkins handover transaction that you had a one-time problem logging in. I had assumed that it was resolved since I had not heard from you! Please let me know what email address you are using to access Google spreadsheets and I’ll make sure you can get in or send you a file copy instead.

I am frankly surprised, Heidi, that you would use such a tone about the issue when you have not informed me that you were still unable to get into Google spreadsheets. My receipts and books regarding Kimkins are open and if you need further documentation about ANYTHING let me know.

Jimmy, it was a total pleasure working with you! As in the past, if you do not receive your check by the third week in October let me know and I’ll get it reissued to you. The amount for September was $287.52. Heidi has possession of the affiliate program and database if you need details. If she is still using the same software, affiliates have a log in and are able to go in and see their reports at any time. I’m sure Heidi would be happy to help you out with that if you need your log in reissued.

To which Heidi replied on the same date [emphasis added]:

Jimmy, I apologize for you being in the middle. I received the password for the affiliate program and no training or guidelines. From what I see you earned $655 last month, but Catherine has a different figure. I’ll research it and make up and difference owing.

Catherine was shocked. We wondered, why would Heidi lie about such a thing? There was nothing to be gained by attempting to damage Catherine’s reputation in this way and, with Catherine in the know about many of Heidi’s lies and manipulations, it would seem that there was much to lose. My opinion is that some people are just wired that way — to react first by lying instead of telling the truth, and by being mean rather than being kind.

Catherine had had it, and after defending herself and offering full disclosure of all financial records to Jimmy (an offer that stands to this day) she wrote to Heidi on October 8:

I am really aghast at how you are behaving with Jimmy and I simply do not understand it. I have always been 100% honest and forthright in my business dealings with you and the Kimkins affiliates and I have the records to prove it, so in the end you are going to make yourself look bad to try to imply otherwise.

If this slanderous behavior continues on your part I will have no choice but to defend myself with the truth. If necessary, I will publish a full accounting of our business dealings and records (minus the members’ identifying details of course) and forward it to our affiliates, the IRS, and Social Security Disability Insurance authorities.

To the best of Catherine’s knowledge Heidi backed away from her smear campaign with Jimmy once Catherine stood up for herself in this way.

The check, of course, arrived in the mail late and was cashed by Jimmy without incident.

NEXT: Kimkins.com Part VII - Business Lessons Learned

Phil McGraw has admitted no wrongdoing in relation to his involvement with promoting a diet supplement.

…And how’s that working for you?

The class action suit resulting from consumer’s impressions that they were being misled or defrauded was started in 2004 and a settlement was reached in 2006 that will see $10.4 million in cash and product being handed out to consumers.

Here is some interesting back story. The company that made the diet pills shares an office building with Phil McGraw’s litigation-consulting firm. This is the firm that was Phil’s principle endeavor before he met Oprah when that same firm provided legal consultancy services to Ms Winfrey. She was being sued by Texas cattle ranchers.

The cattle farmers failed in their bid to milk millions from HARPO.

Dr. Phil quickly became a regular on Oprah and eventually was given his own show. Dr. Phil gives some sound advice about parenting and relationships. I think he needs to stay clear of issues related to marketing and consumerism, because he has a habit of contradicting himself in both word and action.

Sources: LawCash, WomansPassions

I had intended that Part V of this series would deal with an issue that arose during July and August of 2006. The issue, and the doubts it engendered, impacted the contractual relationship between my wife, Catherine, and her business partner Heidi Kimberly Diaz (”Kimmer” of Kimkins.com). It does not, however, have much direct bearing on the current controversies and questions surrounding Kimmer and Kimkins.com. Upon review and careful consideration, I have decided that I do not have enough documentation and source material to discuss that particular issue publicly at this time. Instead, Part V will shed light on the guerilla marketing tactics that resulted in the “celebrities on Kimkins” rumors.

Looking back through the email record, it’s remarkable how much progress was made in the development and marketing of Kimkins.com in the two months post-launch. Between the June 2006 launch and mid-August, Catherine implemented Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing pay-per-click campaigns, an opt-in follow email list for newsletters written by Heidi and member contributors, a Flash-based member chat program, and an affiliate program.

While Catherine was developing these new features, she was also handling technical and payment customer service for members and dealing with ongoing script bugs and technical issues arising from the inadequacy of the webhosting server and its subsequent upgrade. Heidi/Kimmer was spending a great deal of time posting actively on the Kimkins.com forums every day. Also, Heidi was continuing to do substantial guerilla marketing on Craigslist, Freecycle, and similar sites. Kimkins.com had become more than a full-time job for both women.

Heidi’s marketing activities were beyond the scope of her role per the partnership agreement, and the extent of Heidi’s actions were at times unclear to Catherine. Catherine continued to be puzzled and somewhat troubled by how driven Heidi seemed to market the site — particularly given the fact that the organic search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaigns, and affiliate program were getting good results. The site was profitable and growing. It seemed odd that Heidi was so extremely motivated in her marketing efforts if she was using her share of the profits for charitable purposes. At times, Heidi would complain about the burdens of advising Kimkins.com members while continuing the marketing activities seemingly without pause. The ebook remained unwritten.

In August, while evaluating search engine rankings and inbound links for the Kimkins.com site, Catherine ran across a rumor on a message board that Jessica Alba was doing the Kimkins diet. She suspected that it was a rumor planted by Heidi, but she was not sure. Catherine suggested that I write a quick piece on the rumor on a celebrity blog I ran. I did a post, “Is Jessica Alba Doing the Kimkins Diet?” or something to that effect, and that was the end of it for a few weeks.

Then, on August 13, 2006, Heidi excitedly pointed Catherine to my blog item, apparently unaware that it was I who had written it. Catherine told Heidi point blank that the blog was mine and asked Heidi if the original rumor had, in fact, been planted by her. The following are direct quotes from Heidi drawn from emails dated August 13/2006:

Yes! I’ve planted “seeds”, 1 post here and there, on teen sites. I went to one celebrity site where you an “ask a question” and mine was “I heard Jessica Alba lost weight for her tour by doing a new diet called Kimkins. Is that true?”

I don’t care if it’s one of Martin’s sites, LOL. We have “almost credible” information that Jessica Alba did Kimkins. We can certainly exploit, I mean, post on the blog, website, newsletter, Jimmy?

I knew it wasn’t Jessica Alba. She doesn’t know Kimkins from a bag of beans.

In a subsequent email:

One of the foster boys has a huge crush on her [Alba] and she’s “young” — figured she’d be the perfect name to drop at various teen and celebrity sites. I do one post only, nothing obvious. I’ve done a couple other celebrities also.

Heidi justified the fake rumors thusly (again from an email on August 13, 2006):

Everyone size 2 girl on the Red Carpet does Kimkins or KE a week before. Whether they stick a Kimkins tag on it I can’t say, but they “do” Kimkins.

An Internet search reveals that Kimmer or someone on her behalf (as NikkiLuvsFun) appeared to still be pushing the fake rumor late last autumn:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061014161537AAs4n7p

Next: Kimkins.com Part VI - The Partnership Buyout and the Post-Buyout Backstabbing

A quick Google search for Kimkins, Kimkins diet, or Kimkins weight loss is all it takes to see how pervasive the Kimkins.com marketing machine is. It’s hard for low carb newbies and other dieters to make an informed decision if they don’t know about the raging controversy surrounding Kimkins and its elusive self-appointed guru, Kimmer.

You can help change this! Here are some things you can do to make sure that Internet searchers get to read more than just promotional affiliate advertising about the Kimkins diet:

1. Using the phrases Kimkins, Kimkins diet or Kimkins weight loss, link from your own websites and blogs, as well as message boards or other social websites, to URLs that contain information about the controversy such as:

   http://www.slamboard.com/category/kimkins-diet/
   
   http://www.lowcarbfriends.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=502606

   http://community.livejournal.com/kimkinssucks/

   http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=338380

   http://pinchof.blogspot.com/2007/06/okay-some-kimkins-stuff.html

   http://kimkinsexposed.wordpress.com/

   http://kimorexia.blogspot.com/

   http://kimkinsdangers.blogspot.com/

   http://kimkinssurvivors.wordpress.com/

   http://antikimkins.blogspot.com/

   http://kimkinsdangers.blogspot.com/

   http://www.kimkinscontroversy.com

   (if you know of any other relevant URLs, please let me know in the comments section so I can add them to this list)

2. Using social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us, bookmark relevant blog posts and web pages about the Kimkins controversy. Use the phrases Kimkins and Kimkins diet in your bookmark titles and tags. On this blog, you can click on the Digg button or the Bookmark button below every post and follow the directions to bookmark a post. Anybody can do this, whether you have a website of your own or not.

Kimkins has had excellent affiliate marketing and search engine optimization, and only an organized effort will help get the word out that everything may not be what it seems at Kimkins.com. Every link and bookmark counts!

Read my series about Kimkins.com here.