The Special K Diet
Review and Recommendations

Special K Diet Background
The Kellogg company created the Special K Diet based on the Special K line of foods, which includes a variety of breakfast cereals, bars, and drinks.

Kellogg promotes the diet as the Special K Challenge and states typical weight loss results of 6lbs in 2 weeks and cites scientific studies supporting these claims.

The diet recommends eating Special K cereal products for any two of breakfast, lunch, or dinner. For the non-Special K cereal meal, you are instructed to eat a meal of your choice as you normally would. The diet also calls for you to eat two snacks per day consisting of Special K products like protein snack bars, cereal bars, crackers, etc., as well as a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Kellogg recommends this diet for anyone that is overweight, which is indicated by a BMI value of 25 or greater.

Customizing the Diet for You
Kellogg provides a simple website (specialk.com) where you can design your own version of the diet. This site steps you through a few questions about what is important to you on your diet, lets you select which Special K foods you prefer, and then creates a two-week daily menu for you to follow. You can then further customize this plan on the website, if desired, and either print it or email it to yourself or others.

The specialk.com site also offers a user forum where you can interact with others that are on the Special K Diet or who are interested in the diet.

Sample Menu
After stepping through the menu planning tool on the specialk.com website, you are presented with a complete two-week menu. An example of a day on this diet might look something like this:

Breakfast – Special K Red Berries Cereal

Snack – Special K K20 Strawberry Kiwi Protein Water

Lunch – Special K Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Meal Bar

Snack – Special K Chocolate Delight Protein Snack Bar

Dinner – Your choice of a nutritionally-balanced low-fat meal

The nutritional content of each of these Special K products is provided in the menu created on the website.

When eating cereal as a meal, Kellogg recommends using 1/2 cup of low-fat milk or 2/3 cup of skim milk over the cereal.

Conclusion
The Special K products are not high in fiber or whole grain content so this diet is not as nutritionally-balanced as some other diet plans. However, the low-fat, lean nature of this diet is generally good and will likely result in a lower calorie intake for most people. In most cases, this is enough to successfully lose some weight. However, this diet should not be, and is not intended to be, considered a long-term weight loss plan. While reasonably healthy in food content, the benefits of this diet are short-term and minimal.

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