When it comes to losing weight, I am the queen of trying anything once! I have been bombarded with the thought of taking the Special K Challenge courtesy of Kellog’s marketing ploy for many years.

Three weeks ago, I wanted to see if it worked because I needed to lose 10 pounds anyway and it seemed like the perfect time to to do it since I needed to drop just a dress size to fit nicely into a lovely spring wedding dress I hadn’t worn in years. it was either lose the weight or buy a new dress and I didn’t want to spend another $200 on a new dress so I certainly had the desire to make the Special K diet work.

I always conduct research on a diet before I try it and I recommend you do the same. I am not in the habit of merely taking anyone’s word for something that directly affects my health.

The whole premise of this diet is to cut down drastically on your caloric intake by eating a bowl of cereal with skim milk and a fruit at breakfast and lunch, and to top the day off with a sensible dinner; voila, you lose weight! You can also mix in 2 Kellog’s snack bars as snacks. The problem with this diet in its pure form is that it doesn’t provide much protein or fiber. For this reason, I had the choice of switching to a better and more balanced cereal such as the Kashi Go Lean cereal but I decided I could do that at a later date. I stuck with Special K!

However, I made a few changes that can probably help make this diet a little healthier and more balanced. It starts with taking a multivitamin supplement every day to ensure you are getting adequate amounts of nutrients. In a moment, I’ll tell you whether it worked or not as well as how I felt through the whole two weeks.

Here’s my Special K diet plan:

Breakfast

1 1/2 cups measured Special K cereal with a cup of skim milk

4 nice size strawberries

Mid-Morning Snack

Sugar-Free Muscle Milk, Chocolate Flavor (8.25 ounces) (100 calories)

Lunch

1 1/2 cups measured Special K cereal with a cup of skim milk

1/2 of a banana cut into thin slices

Mid-Morning Snack

Sugar-Free Muscle Milk, Vanilla Flavor(8.25 ounces) (100 calories)

Dinner

8 ounces of chicken or fish

2 cups of green beans or asparagus

To make this diet effective while at work, I had to take a little cooler with plastic ice gel bottles and place my skim milk and my measured cereal in a plastic Ziplock bag. I also carried a plastic cereal bowl.

Here are the results:

Weight before starting this diet: 142

Weight lost during the diet: 5 1/2 lbs.

Final weigh-in: 136 1/2

Now, I’m certain there must have been some water weight involved because I lost it so fast but the good news is I was able to squeeze into my dress for at least one afternoon and night! One thing I found is that I don’t believe this is a sustainable diet. It’s more for those crunch times when you need to lose weight for the short term and quickly!

I weighed myself two days later and the scale read 138 1/4. Maybe I drank one too many rum and diet cokes during the wedding!

Oh well, I guess it’s back to round two of my Special K Diet!