Greetings from Quackamole.

"What is this blog about?", you may ask. "What is with the deformed mole?" Well, there is a tale behind it, pun intended...

This is my small contribution to the increasingly surreal soap-opera that is Kimkins. Haven't heard of it? May I suggest you grab a can of (diet) soda, a large plate of snackage type food, and settle in for the tale.

In the beginning there was a lady who contributed to the lowcarbfriends message boards under the name of Kimmer. She built up a large following with her ideas about dieting the low carb way (Dr Atkins style) and eventually began her own site at kimkins.com with a couple of friends from LCF. I believe she charged about $15 for people to join this site, which was where she posted all manner of info about her own version of Dr Atkins, provided a messageboard for members, and promised support from herself, as she said that she had lost 180 pounds doing the diet.

Her big break came when she managed to get her diet on the front page of Women's World magazine, with a double page spread inside, extolling the virtues of her diet.

At about the same time, she increased the membership fee to $60 (for lifetime membership - remember this, it gets mentioned later). By her own admission, membership shot up to around 40,000. Do the mathematic$.

Lets shift focus back to the magazine article. In that article she referred to herself as Kim Drake. Various before and after pictures were touted round in the magazine and on the Kimkins site. However, none of Kim Drake's photographs were used. Quite strange considering that she had lost a lot of weight - surely she would want to show off her new figure!

Over the next few weeks, "Kimmer" refused to meet any Kimkins members, or even meet for interviews, claiming that she had what sounded like a form of agoraphobia, and didnt like being outside or near crowds. The low carb forums buzzed with speculation. Slowly, small snippets of information were discovered - that Kim Drake's real name was Heidi Kimberley Diaz: that many of the before and after photos on her website and elsewhere were faked, that she herself had not lost any weight at all, and looked, if anything, more obese than her "before" photo.

Running parallel to these discoveries were questions about the safety of Kimkin's VLCD diets, the suggestions that Kimkins members use laxatives as an aid to slimming, and more. Several Kimkins members and admins asked Kimmer about the safety of the diet plan:- the result was that anyone who queried the plan was banned from site (despite "life long" membership) and three admins resigned.

Further information was now coming in thick and fast - that Heidi and her husband had divorced, that Heidi had been taken to court over an unpaid student loan, that she was on disability, that her claim to be fostering children was false, two family members stated that she had scammed them, that she had been in jail (currently we don't know for what offense) and more.

Everything that was now coming out was digging a deeper and deeper hole for Heidi. At the time of writing, several government agencies are investigating her affairs, a class action suit is being organized, and other avenues are being looked into.

All because she didn't want us to know her real name, and didn't want anyone to see how she had failed at her own attempts to lose weight.

A mystery will ALWAYS attract attention, Heidi. Your diet, VLCD etc apart, actually worked. People did lose weight following your plan. So why, oh why, weren't you upfront about yourself? Yes, there may have been some cruel remarks, but I think that most people who are wanting to lose weight have often put it back on, and they would have understood your dilemma.

Nobody would have dug into your past. Nobody would have contacted your ex, or your son, or other family members. And if anyone had heard a light tapping from your closet, they'd have ignored it. Instead, the skeleton in your cupboard is now well and truly in the public domain.

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Oh, about the mole with a beak - a couple of days ago, Heidi commented about not trusting anyone with a duck avatar. Within an hour, almost every poster on the Kimkins related forums had a duck avatar.

The reason for her mistrust is simple - she feels that the duck is a mole....