We have looked at the ravishing Deepika Padukone sporting a beautiful saree and showing off her sleek waist after taking the Kellogg’s Special K Diet Challenge for 2 weeks. Diets promising such life altering results often give us a strong hope that we might also end up looking like that after 2 weeks of a certain kind of meal plan The diet proposed by the Kellogg’s special K is: 2 meals, 2 weeks, and lose up to 2.5 kg of weight! So what is the Special K diet challenge? Does the Special K diet really help you lose weight? If it does, is the Special K diet challenge really good for your health? And will the weight loss stay off? Are some of the integral questions which bounce off our heads when we read about this result oriented meal plan. What is the Special K Diet Challenge and does it really help you lose weight? The Special K Diet challenge is a diet program in which you are supposed to eat two bowls of Kellogg’s Special K cereal and one fruit for breakfast and have the same for another meal (lunch or dinner). The 3rd meal is supposed to be a healthy well balanced meal. If you’re hungry in between meals, then you can have 3 to 5 servings of fruits and or vegetables. Along with this, you are also supposed to exercise for 30 minutes a day. So, in short 2 out of three major meals of the day have to be one bowl of Kellogg’s special K and one fruit. Now to get to the weight loss maths involved, one bowl of Special K cereal contains 120 ml of skim milk and 30 gm of Special K cereal. In total that is 210 calories. Add a fruit, which is around say 60-100 calories. That is 300 calories per Special K cereal meal. An average healthy meal should be around 600 calories. Add a couple more snacks of fruits and veggies in the day, each at about 100 calories. That’s a total of 1200-1500 calories per day. Most people’s daily calorie intake ranges between 2100 to 2500 calories. So, on the Special K diet, you are consuming around 900-1000 calories less per day. Such a large reduction in your daily calorie intake (about 1000 calories less) can be considered a crash diet. If you add 30 minutes of moderate exercise, that’s another 250-300 calories. So, the Special K diet and 30 minutes of exercise can create a daily calorie deficit of around 1300 calories. Is the Special K Diet challenge healthy?Two bowls of Kellogg’s Special K with skim milk does provide some nutrition- that you get from the benefits of milk, the cornflakes in itself is not very healthy. The Special K challenge could be healthy or unhealthy, depending on how you balance the third meal, and your other mid meal snacks. Read about low calorie nutritious snacks. Is the Special K Diet challenge realistic?The fact of the matter is that you are reducing your daily calorie intake by 1000 calories and this change is happening overnight and not gradually making your body go into a stress situation as it is used to a certain amount of calorie intake per day so it obviously slows down the metabolism thereby creating a ripple unhealthy effect in the body, so whenever you consume more calories than that you will end up gaining more weight. This calorie deficit will also increase your cravings. Will the weight stay away even after we stop the special K diet?Well as long as you maintain your calorie intake to the same level, no you will not gain back the weight you have lost but if you increase your calorie intake or go back to your regular food habits you might end up putting on the lost weight and more as remember the low calorie meal plan slowed your metabolism down hence it won’t burn the extra calories as efficiently as it used to thereby converting it into fat and storing it in your body for the time you decide to take up your next crash diet.We have dissected the diet as much as possible, so now the final call is yours, whether you want to reduce your calorie intake suddenly and have a less efficient metabolic rate or groom your body into a more efficient metabolic machine by gradually decreasing the calories and increasing exercise. It is up to you which decision to take because in the end maintaining an ideal body weight for the rest of your life is what matters most to live a healthy life.