Two bowls of cereal for 2 weeks and then what?

You've been hiding in outer space if you haven't heard about the Special K 'Slimmer Waist for Summer' Challenge, purporting that you can drop a dress size in two weeks by eating a bowl of the cereal for breakfast, a bowl for lunch and then a 'nutritionally balanced meal' for dinner.

The bumph says that the diet has been designed for people with a BMI (body mass index) greater than 25, but when I put my vital statistics into the online BMI calculator, I found that with my BMI of 24, it was still suggested that I should occasionally replace dinner or lunch with Special K, where I've eaten a bowl of cereal for breakfast.

This, said my feedback, was to just to keep me "on track and maintain your healthy weight." It did also say to me "As you're normal weight, Kellogg’s Slimmer Waist for Summer is not suitable as a 2 week challenge - but you might however like to do a 'kick-start' day."

Actually, no. I might not. Because I can't imagine a worse way to 'maintain' my weight than to spend more than half a day starving and waiting for 'proper food', because I've only eaten 2 bowls of starchy carbohydrates, however vitamin-enriched they are. For my breakfast I'd much rather have 2 eggs scrambled in butter with spring onion and grated mature cheddar, and be full until 2pm without food on my mind.

Now don't get me wrong, I actually love the taste of Special K but, regardless, it doesn't fill me up or satisfy me. I know that if I tried that diet ever - I'd be hungry, hungry, hungry. And is that a way we need to be? Is it bloody hell.

But the question I have for Kellogg's is, really, what are you expected to do once the two weeks is over? Because let me tell you - if you haven't learned any new eating habits (and how can you have if you've only been scoffing cereal?) then your dress size will be right back up to where it was in no time (and possibly more).

Which is exactly what happened to a friend of mine, who told me she'd lost almost 2 stone doing the Special K diet, only to end up a size 16+ (and bigger than ever) a mere few months later.

Comments

[Jomay]

I love cereal but I think I would go off it very quickly if I had to eat it twice a day to replace other delicious and satisfying meals. Just another fad to add to the long list already out there!

[gem]

i did this and lost weight, but yes, put it all back on again. now i have managed to change my eating habits long term, and am gradually loosing weight at a steady pace, im starting two weeks again tomorrow just as a boost before my hols! my bmi is 22