Friday, September 14, 2007

Kimkins Experience Part I

Ok, this is my first attempt at blogging altho not my first attempt at rambling on (hence the name of my blog!)

I need to write about my thoughts on Kimkins. What pulled me in was that it was low carb AND Kimmer's weight loss of 180+ lbs and the fact that she claimed 5 years maintenance. A real person with real weight loss maintaining her weight and showing others how to accomplish what she did for the low, low price of $39.95 for a lifetime membership. It seemed too good to be true!

As it turns out - it WAS too good to be true! Am I a "victim" of Kimkins? No, I am a victim of my choices. I do however feel extremely betrayed - with more on that later.

I joined Kimkins in January 07 after I saw it mentioned in People magazine. I've done low carb before and it seemed to the "perfect" low carb WOE - low carbs & low fat. What I didn't do before when I did low carb was get all of the info necessary. I didn't read all of the books - I just read the sections about what you could and couldn't eat.

Soon after logging into Kimkims I experienced great disappointment. This magical plan that was going to melt my weight off in a few months was laxatives and 500 calories a day. Or less because as I clicked on member's fitday journals I saw many who were 300-400 calories a day. I swallowed my disappointment and went about my life. Still knowing I needed to lose weight and knowing that low carb was very good for me but still thinking that Atkins was bad because of all of the fat.

From time to time over the next few months I logged back into Kimkins and read posts, etc. I read the success stories . . . . . wondered about some of the before and after pics, read the testimonials, looked at the fitday journals, and then went on about my life.

The article in WW came out. Of course we all know that every diet that WW advertises works, right. And they research it all so it must be valid, right? I mean, after all, hadn't I bought hundreds of WW magazines because of the diet inside - every time sure that it was going to be "THE ONE" for me?

Since I already had some knowledge of Kimkins I bought the issue about Kimkins. Read the article and was very impressed with Christin's weight loss. 100 lbs in 5 months - that is a miracle. I'd be ecstatic with 10 lbs a month . . . . 20 would put me over the top.

So with Kimkins in the back of my mind . . . I went on with daily life.

We had booked our 2nd cruise for December and while we were on our first cruise last December I vowed that I would lose weight before our 2nd one. Well, here it was getting into July and I weighed only 8 lbs less than I had at the beginning of the year. "Maybe I should give Kimkins a try." I thought to myself. SO back to the website I went. I spent a couple of weeks reading message after message. Finally I found a couple of posts that I could rationalize in my mind. One was that WLS patients were restricted to 500 calories a day. And I thought - if they can do 500 calories a day . . so can I, without the surgery.

At the same time, I read a post from a member who said she was doing Kimkins but she kept her calories from 1000-1200 and she was losing weight. So I sent her a PM and asked her some questions.

After thinking some more I decided I could do Kimkins. Especially as a way to get the carbs out of my system. So on 7/30 I started my Kimkins journey to weight loss (short journey that it was!) More to come.

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