Replacing meals with cereal?

[MAC33]

Ok, I heard that if you replace one to three meals a day with cereal and lowfat/skim milk that you can loose fat easily. I'm planning on doing this because it's pathetically hard for me to get my diet good enough for cutting. But I know I'll be able to do this. The cereal that I would be using for this is Honey Bunches of Oats. Is this a good idea? Does it work? Any experiences/advice? Thanks in advance

[katt]

IMO commercials just want to sell cereal.......

[Myztek]

Special K is the cereal that I've seen with this on the box.

Yes, you would probably lose weight by doing this, seeing as how a serving of Special K (I don't know about Honey Bunches of Oats) contains 180 calories without the milk.

[Tha Don]

Yes, you would probably lose weight by doing this, seeing as how a serving of Special K (I don't know about Honey Bunches of Oats) contains 180 calories without the milk.

yes, weight as in muscle loss, i don't know about fat loss

awful idea IMO, replacing meals with sugary complex carbs, from a micronutrient perspective it is very unhealthy indeed, i wouldn't recommend anyone attempts this rubbish

[FranktheTank]

If you decide to do it, go with Cheerios. Only 1 gram of sugar per serving, but once skim milk is added the sugar goes up to 6 or so if you have half a cup. I'd go with oatmeal, which contains no sugar.

[CowPimp]

Yeah, you can replace all your meals with cereal and be devoid of nutrients, but I prefer not to. Anything that reduces caloric intake will work; it doesn't have to be cereal. You could just not eat one of your three meals a day and it would probably work. Will it work in the long run? No. You won't stick to it forever. Fad diets don't work in the long run; healthy eating habits do.

[Gordo]

Don't "diet", just eat sensible and do something that you can do for life

[KentDog]

I always hate seeing those Special K commercials because I feel they are morally shady. The average person eats 3 meals per day, they suggest replacing 2 of those 3 meals with one bowl of Special K cereal for two weeks and they "guarantee" you will lose weight. This is the same sort of thing Slim Fast aims to do.. tell you to replace meals with their product which is not necessarily healthy but very likely less calories than your typical meal had you not replaced it with their product. Of course if you consume less calories than you expend, you will lose weight.. and as others have said, it may not be all fat, and it certainly will not be the healthiest way to do it.

[NeilPearson]

Not all cereals are created equal. In the end it comes down to calorie consumption. You will notice Honey Bunches of Oats and Whole Grain Cheerios have about the same calories per serving but Honey Bunches of Oats is 3/4 of a cup and Whole Grain Cheerios is 1 cup... And Kix is 1 1/4 cups for the same calories. There are also some good Kashi and generic unsweetened puffed wheat and puffed corn cereals that come in at about 70 calories per cup which is less than any of the ones I mentioned. Really if you look at the labels, most cereals (even the sugary ones) all come in fairly close in calories. The serving size and the sugar content are a lot different for those same calories though.

I have a bowl of low sugar cereal every day just because it is easy and have lost 35 pounds with this in my diet. But the rest of the diet is crucial.

For people that are overweight, you can lose weight eating just about anything if you pay attention to calorie intake and try and get lots of variety in your diet. This means lots of fruits and vegetables, meats, good cereals... you can even do pasta like lasagna or even worse on occassion as long as you account for it in your calorie intake. The better you eat, the quicker the weight will come off... Unless you are looking to get to single digit (competition low) body fat percents, you can eat just about anything as long as you have a lot variety of good foods in your diet and you set a calorie limit and make sure you don't go over it.