[podcast flashvars=”titles: ‘Heidi Diaz Interview pt 1′”]http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/wp-content/uploads/llvlcep70-Kimmers-of-kimkins.mp3[/podcast]
Welcome to a VERY special edition of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore!” This is the episode you have all been waiting for…a real first an exclusive in the world of low-carb diet reporting.
Yes, it’s our SEVENTIETH EPISODE SPECIAL! Yay! (Cue the confetti…)
Just kidding! The real special event is that Kimmer, the flesh and blood person behind the Kimkins diet juggernaut, is giving her first ever live interview! Wouldn’t you know our host Jimmy Moore would be the one to land it?!
Jimmy is very pleased to be bringing you this in-depth five-part interview (totaling over an HOUR of pure interview time) where Kimmer answers EVERY question that all of YOU submitted!
Episode 70 is Part 1 of this interview.
LINKS MENTIONED IN EPISODE 70
– Full listing of the Kimmer interview questions
– Low-Carb Friends forum
A VERY SPECIAL THANKS to the lady with the screen name RightNOW at Low-Carb Friends (sorry, I don’t know her real name) for taking the time to type out a full transcript of this podcast episode. Click on the link below to access it. ENJOY!
Transcript of Episode 70
(music-intro)
This is Episode 70 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore” and today we have a very special interview that I conducted earlier this week with Kimkins founder Kimmer. Now, there’s been a lot talk on the Internet over the past few weeks about who Kimmer is, and this diet that she has called Kimkins that has been featured in PEOPLE magazine, as well as most recently in Woman’s World magazine. So we’re gonna get into that interview in just a moment.
First I wanna tell you about a brand new sponsor to “The Livin’ La Vida Low Carb show with Jimmy Moore.” It’s Parkside Distribution and their wonderful Flax-Z-Snacks products. Go to Parkside Distribution dot com and you will see a listing there of all the wonderful healthy low-carb products for you and your family. Now these products are outstanding, I have tried many of them myself, the granola is absolutely my favorite, but they also make hot cereals, pancake and waffle mixes, pizza crust mixes, sweetened nuts, and so much more. Of course they are very friendly for your lowcarb lifestyle so check it out. Again, the URL is Parkside Distribution dot com for the Flax-Z-Snacks products.
Today we’re gonna share with you part 1 of my interview with Kimmer. And uh, it was quite an interview, there were quite a few questions submitted to me via e-mail, as I requested, wanted people to send me the questions they had for Kimmer, about her diet and about her, that they had, and uh, there were quite a few questions that were listed, and so I think you will hear over these next five episodes uh over the next few weeks exactly uh all the answers to all those questions that you’ve been having.
Now, if your question was not asked, then you only have yourself to blame, because I had a week-long invitation inviting anyone and everyone to submit their questions so if you did not get your question asked, I’m sorry but boo-hoo on you, because, I gave ya a chance! So without further ado let’s get into Part 1 of my interview with Kimmer from Kimkins.
(music)
J: Welcome to “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore” and today we have a very special edition of the podcast. We have with us the woman of the hour, yes she’s the one that everybody and their mama’s talking about right now in the low-carb world. It’s Kimmer from the Kimkins diet. Welcome!
K: Hey Jimmy!
J: How are you?
K: I’m a little bit nervous but I’m doing good!
J: Well don’t be nervous, we’re just gonna ask questions that some of my podcast listeners and blog readers have had about you and the Kimkins diet, and uh, how ’bout we just get started.
K: Well let’s do that.
J: Alright. Well tell us a little about your weight loss journey, uh. When did it actually begin, how long did it take for you to lose that weight, and how long have you kept the weight off.
K: Well, Jimmy I’ve been overweight probably my whole life. I was a stocky child and a chubby teenager. I started developing early, which is, is why I’m so familiar with stretch marks especially in the bosum and thigh area (J: TMI! TMI! laughs[1]). I ate the same as the rest of my family but I gained and they didn’t. I didn’t find out till I was sixteen, I got pregnant at 16, it was my first bloodwork actually, and they found out that I was severely hypothyroid. Um, If that had been treated earlier maybe I would have been taller, maybe I wouldn’t have gained as much weight. (J: yeah.) But you know, you work with what you have. (J: Sure.) Um, I found that lowcarb worked since my first stint with Stillman. But just like everybody else, I tried various diets. I was looking for that one thing that would let me eat whatever I wanted and still lose a pound a day. (J: Yeah.) Never found it. And then when I neared my 40th birthday, I said you know what, let’s just do this once and for all, (___ ___?) my weight and stop complaining, you, I didn’t want to keep that cycle up of losing big – and I would lose 50-80 lbs – and then regain it.
J: Oh yeah. Well how much did you weigh at the very beginning, and how much was your ending weight after you lost it, what was it, 11 months? (K: That’s right.) And then, how much —
K: I started at 318. I, and then my final weight now is between 118-122 or just in between there. And it did take 11 months. And that includes losing 11 lbs the first day, I’m a water sponge, I retain water like no one you’ve ever met. But my weight lost success is not unusual on Kimkins. I mean you can see that with Christin, the girl that was our cover girl for Women’s World. 100 lbs in five months. And Christin tells me that she’s never been on a diet before, which I found astounding. And especially in Texas where all the pretty girls are.
J: So how long has it been since you’ve kept the weight off?
K: It’s been five, five and a half years.
J: So a little more than five years, you’ve maintained right around that 118-122 mark.
K: Yeah. Yeah.
J: Wow. After you lost your weight, following your own customized weight loss plan that took the best elements it seems of all the different diets that were out there to formulate Kimkins, you started posting over at the Low-Carb Friends forum, and created quite a following there. So tell us what those early days were like for you posting about your weight loss success at Low-Carb Friends.
K: Well, I lost my weight WHILE I was posting at lowcarb friends. (J: ok.) In fact I was writing a post when the first plane hit the World Trade Center on 9/11. (J: Oh wow.) And, I would have to say that there were definitely two camps: The Pro-Kimmer and the Anti-Kimmer. And things haven’t changed much apparently.
J: I was gonna say, that sounds familiar. (laughs)
K: It wasn’t easy at the beginning. A lot of people were really upset at what I was saying. (J: yeah.) The idea that calories count was only a half step away from skinning kittens it seemed. And when they found out that I also did periodic water fasting, well, the bloodhounds were let out, and they’ve never been called back. But I didn’t give up and you know why? Because I knew that I was right. All of this arguing the fine points of total vs. net carbs, that didn’t matter, but people following my ideas and finally, finally losing weight for the first time in months, that was tremendously important. And that is what started the snowball. If the ideas didn’t work, if people weren’t getting that positive reinforcement, if they weren’t having hope for the first time (J: yeah.), none of this would have carried on. (J: That’s true.) People have such generous spirits, and when I was at lowcarb friends, I got offers for money and champagne and gift bags and all kinds of things, because they were finally happy, that they learned how to lose, and they wanted to give something back. I turned down all the offers of course. It wasn’t about money, I wanted to help people lose, I wanted them to understand that their is a very fast way, a
quicker way than what they had been trying.
J: Well, and a lot of people are concerned about losing weight fast, uh, I know you have an answer for that.
K: The, the idea of losing fast, that is the entire purpose behind gastric weight loss surgery. (J: Right.) And we all know that insurance companies don’t wanna pay, they don’t wanna pay anything, they will fight you over pediatric visits. But they are very willing to shell out forty thousand dollars for weight loss surgery, because that’s much cheaper than anything they’re gonna run up against for all of the complications for being obese. That includes diabetes and all of those complications including limb amputations. Kidney failure. Heart disease. High blood pressure. Following, following anything less than (several?___?) hundred calories a day, that we’ve heard, you know, for a million years, there’s nothing wrong with that.
J: I’m sorry, following how many calories? I couldn’t hear you.
K: I’m sorry. Following the usual mantra of around 1200 calories a day (J: Uh huh.), there’s nothing wrong with going lower than that. And what happens on Kimkins because of ketosis, is that you naturally lose your appetite and then your body draws on fat stores. Which is why the fat is there.
J: Well and I’m gonna come back to that in just a moment about the calories thing because that is one of the major concerns that a lot of people have, and even myself I, I could never go that low in calories (laughs) in a day (K: Oh you could, Jimmy) but that’s for me personally, I would not do that, and like I said I’ll get into that in just a moment. Let me continue on with the Low-Carb Friends thing because at some point, they didn’t wanna be your friend anymore, and they said bye-bye Kimmer. And so tell us a little bit about how that experience made you feel and was that the impetus for you creating your own site where people who wanted to follow what you were saying could gather and get some support.
K: OK, let’s make some corrections to that. (J: OK.) I don’t think that the owner or the admins at Low-Carb Friends were annoyed back in the 2001-2005 era. (J: OK.) But many members were. The consensus seemed to be that my Ask Kimmer thread, which had over 100,000 views, was too prominent. It was giving the wrong impression to visitors that Kimkins was “the” diet. There were also multiple posts in the main lobby addressed to me asking questions and I guess that was just, you know, all too much for some people. And admin at Low-Carb Friends told me very nicely that they were going to move all the Kimmer threads to another forum off of the main forum. But, I didn’t like that idea at all. And to be honest, my feelings were hurt. I felt as though I was being pushed into a back room. And, I posted about how I felt, and again to be honest, I probably should have kept it to myself. That turned into a (___?___?) war, which isn’t something I wanted, and that is continuing to this day, that is a lot of what the brouhaha is about. I’m very fond of the Low-Carb Friends admins, particularly Dottie and Cheri, and I didn’t wanna make their jobs harder than it already was. But just before this happened at Low-Carb Friends, there was a member who had never talked to me before, but she sent me a PM and asked if I wanted, if I would be interested in writing a book. Well an e-book. Now, people had pitched me about writing a book before, and various business ideas but I had turned them all down, that wasn’t my interest. A book, well, a book, a book wasn’t great for someone like me because I’m a perfectionist, it would never be perfect. But an ebook would be different, I could change it, and I liked that idea.
J: So whatever happened to that e-book?
K: (laughs) It’s in the works Jimmy (J: Oh, it’s still in the works! ’cause that’s one of the criticisms that some people have had (K: it is) is that you promised that e-book and it never came.) Well I can do a quickie — we grew so tremendously, my gosh. I did not expect this, I didn’t see it coming, I probably would have set things up differently, I would have structured things differently, I am working incredible hours right now. But I want the ebook to be good. I can write a quick e-book, there’s no problem with that at all. (J:yeah.)
But I want it to be good. But when the brouhaha at Low-Carb Friends happened in 2006, she and I decided to start a separate website, and that it would be a fun idea, and that would eliminate the stress for the anti-Kimmer people. I thought ok I’ll be gone, they can relax, life is good. (J: Yeah.) Well that didn’t happen. (J: (laughs) I was gonna say, ‘Many are the plans.’) Well (__?) I was still mad when I left, and to be perfectly frank I could have handled my leaving a lot better than I did. But I’ve only got a certain amount of patience. My kids get first dibs, everybody else has to share what’s left. (J: Yeah.) And they were still bickering at lowcarb friends after I left and I felt badly, because the admins had to bear the brunt of that. I, I appreciate that even more now with my own site, and how hard the people aspect is. But Tom, the owner of Low-Carb Friends, was very gracious, they gave me tips to avoid some pitfalls, when I started on my own. (J: yeah.) And I listened. That doesn’t mean I follow everything, but I listened to everything he said.
J: And it’s wise to do that, it’s always wise to do that. Well um, I think I’m gonna go ahead and get into some of the questions that were submitted by the readers at my LivinLaVidaLowCarb.com blog as well as the listeners of this podcast show, because they do have quite a few questions for you, and a few concerns that they wanted to share through, ah through the emails that they sent to me, so you ready?
K: Uh huh! Let’s go.
J: Alright well the first question says this: Is Kimkins simply a low or moderate fat calorie-controlled Atkins-like food plan?
K: Um. Kimkins is a combination of the original 1972 Atkins, a little bit of Stillman’s, plus my own tweaks, with a lower calorie emphasis. And even Dr. Atkins said that calories count. There is no resemblance to the current Atkins plan. They’ve gone in a different direction and their focus is different now. We focus on fast weight loss and that’s not gonna happen with the current Atkins.
JK: Well um and, just speaking as somebody who lost a whole lot of weight on the Atkins diet, the Kimkins plan does work for fast weight loss as I’ve seen in my own experience over these past six weeks, losing about 35 lbs —
K: 35 lbs in six weeks?
J: Yes on, on that evil Kimkins diet.
K: (laughing) I know! Gosh I wish it didn’t work!
J: I know, I know. But one of the questions Kimmer that I’m getting from a lot of people is, alright Jimmy you’re doing this, and you’re doing your own little tweaks with it as everybody should (K: Mmm hmm.), what are you gonna do once you lose the weight, for long-term weight maintenance? And that’s a question they wanna hear, how do you transition from Kimkins the weight loss plan to Kimkins the maintenance plan?
K: ‘K, well in the simplest sense, you can transition to any lowcarb plan, if that’s easier for you. (J: Yeah.) My struggle with coming up with a maintenance plan is coming up with something that is super simple. What I have found from studying the website is that even the Kimkins diet, which I think is ultra-simple, that people still have problems deciphering what the rules are, and interpreting what they should do in, in different situations. I’m working with different people now, that we can come up with something, and it’s something that you could write on the back of your hand and you would know always, how to maintain your weight, without — I can’t even follow Dr. Atkins’ plan of 5-carb increments, because there’s 5 carbs in a serving of asparagus, and there’s 5 carbs in a half a cup of cream cheese. The calories are wildly different, weight maintenance will be wildly different. (J: Yeah.) So it’s, it’s in progress.
J: Well, let me move to the next question, because this is another one that is really a big concern by a lot of people, and it goes back to the calories thing again. “How is your plan different from those very low-calorie anorexic diets?” Explain your, you were explaining to me earlier that 1200 is probably too many calories, because we’ve always been told that that’s the minimum we should be at though. What is your philosophy about why it is healthy to eat, say, 800, 500, 400 or even lower than that, calories in a day?
L: OK. Well, first of all, regular Kimkins has no calorie limit. (J: Neither does–) Members eat as much lean protein as they want (J: Right.), up to four USDA-sized servings of vegetables a day. Our rule for fats is “as much as you need for your menu”, which can vary widely. Um, some people need a lot of cheese, they’ll have a little bit slower weight loss, we do have two options that are lower-calorie including Boot Camp, but that’s portion controlled and (___?) option which is automatically calorie and portion controlled. But anorexia is a psychological disorder where a person sees themselves as fat although they’re at a normal or below-normal weight. Um, someone who chooses to eat low-calorie isn’t anorexic. Otherwise the thousands of patients who have undergone gastric weight loss surgery with the post-surgical 500 calories a day would classify as anorexic and they’re not. The Kimkins diet focuses on non-fatty proteins and up to four servings of nutrient-dense veggies with the best results of course coming from the leafy green types. (J: Right.) Now. If you take a basic weight watchers or Jenny Craig daily menu, take out the starches, take out the potatoes, the rice, the bread, the pasta, what’s left? Kimkins. Now is adding that stuff back healthier, just to reach a minimum calorie level? Come on.