Jimmy Moore: Unwavering Dishonesty, The Early Years

Another timely repost in light of Jimmy Moore's recent self pity party.   I'm a bit back logged to update this for the 2011-through present day version, so I'll include a few pertinent "memes".  The first is an annotated version of a slide he was using when NuttyK was producing weight loss for him in 2012 through 2013.

This next one relates to Jimmy Moore's current "problem" ... which is that he is NOT healthy as he claims, and he lied about it before.  Repeatedly.

His "friends" need to wake up and smell the burnt buttered coffee.

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Original Publish Date:  9/30/2012

Apparently some people belonging to a private paleo FB group aren't receiving Jimmy's recent message of divisiveness too kindly.   One of the reasons I blogged on his latest attempt at dividing the paleo community is because most people -- paleo or low carbers -- who are new to the community, have no clue who this Jimmy Moore guy is and what he stands for.  I would still be hugely surprised to learn that most of the paleo peeps weren't caught off guard when they met Jimmy at AHS11, PaleoFX or any of the other events in the past couple of years.   Just listening to his original podcast or reading the odd blog post (that I'm convinced few if any ever do), it would be easy to see how one might have no clue what really makes this huge influence in the community tick.  And it is exactly his continued influence over the dialog that will keep him on my radar here, especially since he has been so contradictory and disingenuous over the years.  So on IPMG, Jimmy responded to some criticism with two questionable statements:

Anybody who reads my blog regularly knows I am dead honest in all of the things I share there. That's something my readers expect and I give it to them straight.

and 

I've remained quite consistent in my position since the very beginning of my blog in 2005: find what works for you, follow it exactly as prescribed and then keep doing it for the rest of your life. I've never wavered from this message one iota.

These sorts of statements are nothing new for Jimmy, I could have sourced similar from any number of blogs and comments and podcasts over the years ... but these two particular versions are important for their certitude and lack of any wiggle room left for clarity.  Adding in the frequency with which he has repeated such sentiments over the years, and his insistence on continuing to repeat them is rather damning to Jimmy's credibility as any sort of "leader", as well as his personal and professional integrity.   

But what does this "find what works and stick to it" meme really mean?   If Jimmy were true his own advice, he would be:

• Eating 100-125g carb/day per the original Atkins diet maintenance prescription  (Dissing a LF Success Story in Dec. 2005, 1 yr maintenance of 180 lb 2004 loss)
• Engaging in 45min-1 hour cardio near-daily (This was his New Years Resolutions 2007 post, discussing slacking on the exercise a bit in 2006 and its importance to his LC weight loss/maintenance.)

Jimmy's snide attitude towards the subject of that Dec. 2005 post and his bragging about how many carbs he could then eat would be easier to swallow were it not for the fact that in April 2006 Jimmy leveled with his readers about an approximate 15 lb weight gain over the past month.  At least his solution at the time was to follow his own advice and cut back his carbs (to what worked for him before), and -- gasp!! -- "hitting an extra 15 minutes on the elliptical machine to burn off just a few more calories than usual".

If Jimmy stuck to his guns about what worked for him, he'd also be:

• Consuming  LC "junk" including diet sodas that helped him enjoy his diet w/o binging.  (On his Dreamfields Kick Jan. 2010) ... or 
• Not -- as it was in late 2008 when he had his last "sane" weight loss giving up the LC sweet junk

The link is a later post, but throughout Jimmy's blogging he credited particularly sugar free sweets for helping him keep the sweet tooth satisfied.  Still, tis amazing how Dreamfields didn't induce binging by producing perceptible blood sugar swings in Jimmy back when he thought it was low carb.  One could say ditto for so many other products, like the Julian bread, that he later turned to demonizing well, well, past the point of owning a glucometer with which to ascertain their effect on his blood sugar levels and any relation to his weight struggles. 

OK, sure I'm being overly nit picky with Jimmy in those early days.  He was dealing with a relatively measely 15 lb gain after all.  No biggie in my book really in terms of the amount (compared to 180 lbs), but the short timeframe is curious and disturbing.  Still, he apparently got his handle on things by whatever means in 2006 and began 2007 weighing only 220 lbs -- 10 lbs lower than "goal" -- despite apparently erratic exercise. 

But with little fanfare/disclosure, Jimmy gained almost 30 lbs during the first 5 months of 2007.  If only he'd taken his own advice from Dec. 2005 to

"Whatever, whatever, whatever you do, listen to me on this: Don’t try to do both low-carb AND low-fat at the same time. It will lead to failure faster than you can say ACHOO! The solution: DON’T DO IT! "

and again returned to what worked for him previously despite the apparent false-start in '07.  But when presented with the affiliate $$ of Kimkins and her true starvation diets most know (or should) what happened next.  Because jump in and promote and "lead by example" Jimmy did nonetheless.  It's truly sickening that Jimmy managed to continue to grow his business (his discussion forum) after having to come clean on his part in the KK fiasco that included such egregious offenses as altering comments on his blog to change their meaning.  The seedy nature of this whole episode and Jimmy's ethics aside, with his foray into this first major fad-crash-diet to reign in his excesses,  Jimmy most definitely wavered from this message as applies to himself.  Do as I say, not as I do?  Apparently ...

It's instructive for those not familiar with Jimmy's history, that he got down to 212 or 213 with KK in July 2007, but ended the year some 40-45 lbs heavier than he started it.  Mr. Dead Honest, or is that Honesty is Dead, Moore followed up the KK debacle by being anything but open with his readers as to the fallout vis a vis his weight.  It was actually an opportunity for him to show what the aftermath of such crash approaches generally is, but rather he chose to hide his regains.  It was only months later that readers learned Jimmy's weight in January 2008 was in the 260-265 lb range.   A much belated revelation that would demonstrate that this Jan. 1, 2008 post was anything but honest!

NOTE: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! It has been exactly four years since I started livin' la vida low-carb beginning on the Atkins diet in 2004 and I'm just as excited about it now as I was then. It's working for me and keeping my weight off. WOO HOO!

Even if one cuts him some slack for the mysterious weight gain, he most certainly did not return to his mantra, e.g. take his own advice, and stick to what had worked for him.  He was eating like 4000 cals/day maybe more while undertaking a rather modest resistance training regime.   Unlike 2007, there was no 2008 New Years' wrap-up/kick-off post updating his status.  Only hints of weight gains.  On the main blog, it wasn't until Jan. 14 when he  posted his One-Month Weight Lifting Progress Report with the first post KK real hints at trouble in paradise:

By the way, my weight has increased a few pounds during this, but I’m not worried about it. I KNOW it is muscle weight and I haven’t cheated at all since beginning this. 

On January 22nd of that month he finally stopped taking the creatine he blames to this day for this mystery gain, described on the menus blog as slight, repeatedly.  By March he wrote:  "My weight is doing GREAT right now!"  -- Well, if true, again he didn't take his own advice because something was still amiss in LLVLC-land by April's end.  Here we still see glimmers of reality in Jimmy's writings:

NOTE: Sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm eating too much for my new smaller body. When I weighed 410 pounds, it was very easy for me to put away some food. For example, when I ordered a pizza, I'd get one entire large pizza just for me...and another one for Christine to nibble on a few slices so I can finish the rest of her pizza, too. It was a whole lotta carbs and calories I was stuffing in my mouth and I would STILL be hungry a couple of hours later (no thanks to the blood sugar rise and fall rollercoaster ride!). Now it's four years later, 180 pounds gone, and I'm eating a good amount of calories. They're primarily high-fat, low-carb calories, but calories nonetheless. Is it possible for your body to get adjusted to your new size and thus require you to take in less calories than before? Sure. I don't think you have to necessarily count those calories, but it can be deceiving when you have been used to eating more food for most of your life. That's kinda what I'm dealing with right now and trying to figure out what level of calories will work for me to better manage and control my weight. I'll be speaking with a low-carb doctor about this soon for guidance. I still LOVE this way of eating and will never eat any other way again!

Fact of the matter is that, while podcasting about low carb and weight management and blogging all about the glories of low carb and all that, 2007 had not been a good year for Jimmy/LLVLC and he really lost his grip for most of 2008.    He finally came clean in May of that year when, ironically enough, he referred to 2006 "blip" by saying:  "But you get right back on plan again and all is well."   This post, entitled When You're Low-Carbing Perfectly And Producing No Weight Loss--What Gives?, was one of the first I came across -- linked to by Jimmy Moore himself in future posts on the topic -- where Jimmy began his quest for some metabolic derangement at the root of his troubles.  In that post we learn:

in mid-December [2007], my weight was 235 pounds. Six weeks later [end January 2008], I weighed 260 pounds ...   It was at this point that I decided to come off of the creatine in early February since that weight gain was sorta freakin' me out a bit. I fully expected the weight to come back down some... But it didn't happen and it hasn't happened. In fact, although my diet didn't really change from what I was doing before I started lifting weights (except for maybe a little more protein since I was trying to grow muscle mass), I have been hovering around 265 pounds for nearly four months in a row.

Where was the straight talk from Jimmy Moore while all of this was going on?? To go from admitting to a 15 lb gain in 2006, and to weighing 248 before KK in 2007 to going on 9 months of silence on the true nature of his weight issues was not being honest and forthright.  It would have been one thing to use descriptives such as "considerable" or "enough to be worrisome" w/o putting numbers to it, but it was quite another to refer, repeatedly, to his post KK gains as "slight" or "a few pounds".  From August to January he had actually gained over 45 lbs.  That is not slight even in context of a 180 lb weight loss.  No way.  At 265 he was looking at consistently 45 lbs heavier than he began 2007 weighing and over 50 lbs from his 2007 low.

Beyond the deception, however, here is where Jimmy's "find what works for you and do it forevermore" meme long ago rang hollow.  This was also the time when Jimmy sought to identify some other reason for his weight issues. 

It has been so disconcerting to me that I went to see a low-carb doctor [later identified as Dr. Eric Westman] earlier this month about it to see what was going on. What was I doing wrong, if anything, and how can we get the weight to come back down again? I was adding muscle to my body, yes, but my waist has also increased by a few inches. What gives? 

And we got our first real glimpses of the stubborn Jimmy who would really have none of the advice given to him by his faithful well-meaning readers:

Of course, when I started sharing about this recent weight gain at my forum and at my menus blog, the typical responses started pouring in from people trying to offer their own guidance about what I should do: you're eating too much food, your calories are way too high, you consume too many low-carb "products," you aren't eating often enough, you don't exercise enough, yadda yadda yadda! I know everyone means well and I sincerely appreciate their suggestions for my diet. But I wasn't convinced I was doing anything at all wrong with my low-carb lifestyle and I still don't. Nevertheless, I'm stuck.

That's why I went to see this low-carb doctor. Perhaps he could pinpoint exactly what's going on with my weight. He ran a series of tests on me, examined my dietary choices, looked at the supplements I am taking, and asked me about any changes I have made since the weight gain took place. I told him about the weight lifting and adding more protein to my diet. 

Westman put him back to strict Induction and had him cut the frankenfoods (and cut back on diet soda)  and stop the supplements.  Jimmy complained that 2 weeks of doing "it even more strict this time around than I did in 2004" had produced no weight loss.   Over on the menus blog, he posted this on Day 1: 

9:30AM 4 eggs cooked in butter with cheese ; 3:00PM Side salad with Ranch dressing, mixed veggies (broccoli, squash, green beans, and red peppers) with butter, sausage, bacon, eggs with bacon, sausage, ham and cheese ; 8:15PM 4 sausage patties

CURRENT WEIGHT: 266.2 NOTE: Well, it was day one of some minor changes to my diet and I did okay. There were some little issues that came up late in the day, but I survived. :) I'll be sharing more about what I have changed specifically later, but for now you'll see in my menus a sneak peek into these changes that will make me even healthier and leaner than I've ever been. Sometimes it takes a refocus to get you going again and that's what I'm doing.

No mysteries there!  Shortly thereafter Jimmy discovered his phantom reactive hypoglycemia.  Yes, newsflash, if you eat a ton of protein and fat and virtually no carbs, especially if you're already taxing your liver to make essentially all of your glucose, your BG just might go down a point or ten following a huge low carb meal.  In fact, his response was stunningly normal, as was both his fasting and postprandial insulin response.  Jimmy was not hyperinsulinemic in the Summer of 2008.  Nonetheless by August Jimmy was convinced of this RH and had Westman prescribe Metformin for it (this makes NO sense as Metformin suppresses gluconeogenesis to counter hypERglycemia, but whatever).

And then an odd thing happened.  Despite going into reality remission from time to time, Jimmy did some tweaks such as calorie counting (Yes, he did! From sometime in the Fall 2008 up until mid January of 2009!),  half portions, and a  sweet free challenge.  The result?  They helped bring his weight back down! I honestly don't know how someone whose livelihood depends largely on their weight and diet, who is "openly" blogging on this, including daily weight updates on his menus blog, somehow magically forgets this fact, or wasn't celebrating conquering that mystery regain spike.  But forgot about it he did.

On January 1, 2009 (that page has all of January 2009 on it), Jimmy Moore weighed 239.0 lbs.  That was quite a feat considering he had reached 274 lbs in 2008.  There was no big hoorah over having lost 35 lbs and being a measley 9 lbs from his "goal".  Don't get me wrong (go read for yourself), he mentions he's close to goal, and even marvels at how his clothing fits, but where's that trademark WOO HOO! ??  And then ... on January 18, 2009 Jimmy wrote:

You'll notice I've stopped listing my calories, carbohydrates, and weight starting today. This is a deliberate change because I created this menus blog to provide information to others about how this particular low-carber eats. Unfortunately, this blog has become something much different than I ever expected--a daily barrage of criticism, scrutiny, and putting my diet under a microscope. I'm not interested in that in the least.

While I don't mind getting constructive feedback about what I eat on my low-carb, my primary purpose here is merely edification for both long-term and newbie low-carbers to see how Jimmy Moore eats. When I lost 180 pounds in 2004, I never paid attention to my calories, I only made sure my carb intake was around 25-30g daily. While I weighed on a daily basis back then, I've become convinced that is more discouraging than encouraging now.

I'd love to know what was going on in his head at that time that made him go back "underground" with the weight.  It had crept back up to 243.8 the previous day, down from a high of 247 and back up from dipping to 236.6 -- but these weren't horrific swings or cause for panic unless something else was going on.  I can understand not tracking calories everyday but since he planned to weigh daily anyway, and he prided himself on openness and honesty, it was a curious decision. 

Well, not so curious when one realizes Jimmy was earning sponsorship/affiliate dollars by linking to various foods he was consuming (often provided free to him) as part of his menus, and having daily reminders of his weight issues was probably not helping this endeavor.   

Why did I entitle this "The Early Years"?  Well, here's about where I come in -- when I had stalled out in 2009 blissfully unaware of who GaryTaubes was or of what all I was about to learn.  I went looking on the internet and found Jimmy Moore.  At this time he was doing something very proactive to get his name and websites to pop to the top of search engines.  Folks, the Meet Jimmy has only been updated with his second book publication and the Before & After with a few links to updated pictures) since I first laid eyes on those pages in early 2009.  For some time I had no idea Jimmy was struggling with his weight based on his occasional posts on his LLVLC Discussion Board.  And then someone linked to his menus blog.  What I discovered was rather shocking.  For starters, right on up until he closed the thing down after AHS11, the About bio on the menus blog exclaimed that he had lost 180 lbs and maintained the loss ever since.  Nothing uncertain about that, and that alone was enough to perk my skeptical (not yet bunny) ears up.

This was the time when I was a newbie -- and why I feel so strongly about Jimmy's continued dishonesty in the face he puts forward on his various podcasts, etc.  Selective honesty on his part, is no "dead honest" ... not even close.

To be continued ...