Kimkins

EDIT: I have since learned things about Kimkins that are a cause for concern. I leave it up to the readers to research both sides of the issue and make your own decisions. DO NOT SPAM ME OR MY BLOG regarding Kimkins...get your own website, and praise or trash Kimkins to your heart's content. You have no right to hijack blogs that do not belong to you. Even if I loved Kimkins and thought it was the best thing ever, it is my blog and it would be my right to do so, regardless of the opinions of others.

For those who have been asking about the diet I am on, you can learn more at the Kimkins website. Kimmer has been putting up new success stories, some of which are ladies who have lost a lot of weight very quickly. If you are looking for fast weight loss, or can't stand being hungry all the time on all the other diets you have tried, you should check it out.

I've tried them all...at least all the diets I could afford. But really, aren't they all pretty much the same? Low calorie, low fat, and nearly impossible to do? I know that some people succeed, but unless they've kept the weight off for a minimum of two years, I'm not too impressed. And for those who have done it, I think that's great. But there are a lot of people out there like me, who can't last two days on those type of diets...who feel deprived, depressed, and discouraged every time they try and fail.

Maybe this diet isn't for everyone. But if you need to lose weight fast, especially if you're easily discouraged, and you want to feel better and not starve while you do it, this is the diet for you. I'm amazed at how little I am eating. I was really getting to the point that I was a compulsive eater. Maybe that's not even being honest. I probably WAS a compulsive eater. I was using food to "medicate" myself. Food was my drug. I thought I would never get control of it. For the first time ever, I am eating to live instead of living to eat. I never knew what that felt like before now.

Now, I've only been on the diet for a little over two weeks. I lost eleven pounds in about a week and a half. I'm retaining water now, so I'm hovering around 249 these last few days. I expect to get a "whoosh" of weight loss once I get past this week. I would like to lose weight a little faster, so I'm going to try Kimmer's "boot camp" which is a little stricter, so I can reach my next mini-goal of 230 by New Year's Eve.

For the first time, that seems possible. For the first time, I'm not fighting constant cravings or feeling like I need to stuff myself to feel "happy"...but never really feeling happy. Now I actually AM happy. Before this I was always depressed. Now I'm not, and that's a miracle in itself. It goes to show you how many physical and mental ailments are tied to nutrition. I was killing myself with refined carbs, especially sugar.

The best thing about this diet is that by joining Kimmer's website, you not only get the information about the diet and peer support, you also get direct access to Kimmer. It seems like she's always on the forums, answering questions, and every time I've emailed her, I've gotten a very quick response. She has been through this herself and lost 200 pounds, and kept it off, so she knows what I'm going through and is very kind and helpful. The photos above are Kimmer's before and after pictures from her website. Don't you just want to look like her "after"?!

I guess I sound a little Kimkins-happy. Well, I am! I can't help it, I feel like making up a bumper sticker for the website, or something, lol. The shame of it is, so many people will pass this diet by thinking it's another "fad" diet. In my opinion, mainstream medical and nutrition "experts" and the media automatically label a diet as a "fad" whenever it is anything but a low-calorie, low-fat diet. Statistics have shown those diets to be failures, but no one is willing to admit it. They are like the Wizard of Oz yelling "don't look at the man behind the curtain". Why do doctors say it's okay to lose weight fast with gastric bypass surgery, but not with a diet that makes you feel good and leaves you feeling satisfied? Things that make you go "hmmmm"...

Anyway, that's my experience so far. If you try Kimkins, let me know how you do. I'm so interested to watch other people's progress on this diet. That's why I go to the site all the time. I love the site and the people...so nice! Definitely worth it. I wish I'd joined sooner.

Day 4...slight gain

Today is Day 4 on Kimmer's Experiment. Yesterday I ate 1/2 a fried egg and about 4 ounces of steak, both leftovers, for breakfast. Snack was 2 boiled eggs. Lunch was chicken breast cooked in homemade buffalo wing sauce and a ramekin partly filled with seafood quiche. That was GOOD, so I had it again for dinner! My calories were a little higher, around 1168 I think. My fat was around 58% of my calories, in keeping with Kimkins, and my carbs were at 8. You're really not supposed to count carbs on the Experiment because the only carbs you're getting are from eggs, really. But tell that to Fitday, lol. I like to see what I'm eating anyway.

My weight was up .8 pound today, at 254. That's okay though. I can't expect to lose two pounds every day! In fact, if I'm done losing water weight, then I expect to only lose anywhere from a half a pound to a pound a day.

I'm not worried about the slight gain. That's how it goes. In fact, when I was on Atkins, I kept records, and looking back at them, there was a lot of up and down, but the overall trend was always downwards. One day I had gained five pounds, but two days later, I lost nine overnight! The body works in strange ways. I know I read an explanation of this in the Atkins book, but I don't remember it now. I lost my Atkins book! :-(

I also haven't had a BM (bowel movement) yet today. Sorry if that's too much information, lol! That's what you get on a diet blog, though. I'm usually extremely regular 1-3 times a day, which is the way it's supposed to be, regardless of what doctors say (too many people nowadays are constipated, so it's now considered normal to be "backed up"). But now it's 1 or less. Kimmer recommends taking milk thistle herbal supplements for anyone who is backed up--it sometimes happens on the Kimmer Experiment. I'm not sure if it happens on regular Kimkins or not. Milk thistle is supposed to help keep you regular, and that's a lot better than using laxatives, even the herbal kind. By the way, if you need an herbal laxative, I've heard Senna tea works well.

Anyway, the weight gain doesn't bother me. It's nothing compared to the six pounds I've lost so far. I started Atkins Induction less than a week ago, on Wednesday, November 8, 2006, at 260 pounds. Then I switched to Kimkins, starting with the Kimmer's 3 Day Experiment, on Friday, November 11, but I had already gone down to 257.4 on that day. Then I was 255.2 on Saturday and 253.2 on Sunday. So being 254 today is no big deal.

I think I may extend the 3 Day Experiment to 5 days or maybe 7. I cheated a tiny bit last night and added a little bit of shredded cheese to the Individual Seafood Quiche Cups I made. They were soooo good. The recipe is on the Meat and Eggers website (see sidebar for link) in the egg section. I tweaked it a little, used only shrimp, and used water and heavy cream instead of half and half. I also used different spices.

One thing I've found is that if I eat steak and hard boiled eggs, I have almost no appetite. But if I have something lighter, like chicken and quiche, I feel like I can eat more of it, and seem to get hungry quicker. But overall my appetite is extremely diminished. For the first time, I know what it feels like to eat to live rather than live to eat. It's an amazing feeling. My emotional eating was becoming almost compulsive the last few months, and the scales showed it. I actually have total control of my eating at this moment. Thanks be to God--it surely feels like a miracle to me!