100% Huel Diet: Time to Act

Weight loss
1

Feel like writing a post here would be useful even as a journal for myself and then if anyone comments that’s even better.

I’m 6ft 2ins, 16st 10lbs and today (literally this morning) marks my start of a 100% Huel diet.

I’m excessive in everything I do, spending, eating, anxiety and until 7 months ago drinking.
I had hypnosis for my alcohol consumption and it was incredible, as they say all hypnosis is self-hypnosis, I knew I wanted to stop drinking and needed help.

As James Smith always says, if a placebo works, it still works - so hey, 7 months without a drink has seemed unthinkable to me for most of my adult part of my 42 years.

So, I replaced binge drinking with Dairy Milk and cheeseburgers, and then when COVID hit I gained a stone in 4 weeks.

After dabbling with free samples of Huel back in 2018, I googled it this week again and came across an article on Medium, which really talked to my personal issues.

So, out came the joint account card with attached promise from my long-suffering-of-my-fad-diets wife that if we spent my part of the grocery budget on Huel and I didn’t drink it, my fingers would be going in the blender.

So it arrives, and onto the next, I tried shaking it, I can’t do it. So I have installed a blender in pride of place in my kitchen so I can’t avoid it, I mean I can barely fucking navigate around it, given the size of it.

IMG_4878
IMG_48784032×3024 3.29 MB

I am on Huel Black (chocolate) and to be fair, it’s palatable. It’s not as palatable as fish and chips, but then I’m not on a forum to document my rapid weight gain and inevitable death, I’m here to lose weight and be a fit, healthy Dad for my 3yr old son.

So, I’m on 3 meals a day, all Huel, starting weight 16st 10lbs, and away we go.

Exercise-wise I am inclined to run, although I have gotten so fat it actually hurts at the moment, so my exercise is limited to walking a couple of miles a day with my son (sometimes with him on my shoulders for added burn ha ha) and wife, and the occasional jaunt of frisbee, football - where I blow hard out of breath after a sprint. THAT’S the shameful feeling I want rid of.

Updates as and when they happen.

12 Likes
2

These two points go together I think. Going from Dairy Milk and cheeseburgers to 100% Huel is gonna be unpleasant. The analogy I’ve used in the past is to imagine your digestive system is a production line. You have trained the staff to handle cheeseburgers and Dairy Milk. They can take a cheeseburger and turn it into fuel for your body and while it’s not ideal fuel, they are really good at it. They’re specialists. Now you’ve stopped the cheeseburgers and flung in a whole load of stuff that’s alien to them, and said “keep making fuel!” and they don’t know how to do it. They will learn, but it takes time.

So they are going to fuck up, and shit themselves, and go on strike. For some people it’s worse than for others, but everyone has to go through an adjustment period. It will be easier on you, your family, and your toilet, if replace one meal with Huel this week, two next week, and go 100% the week after. I understand the desire to embrace this new diet immediately and make positive changes, but 100% right away is just self-sabotage.

Best of luck with the diet and I hope you keep updating. And I secretly hope you ignore my advice and we get hilarious posts about you shitting the bed.

10 Likes
3

Hey thanks for this and totally understand where you’re coming from. Possibly also my own fault in the way I worded the original post!

So I decided to do a 5-day fast in April just because I do that once a year for shits and giggles. Admittedly not many shits and less giggles.

Then the Huel arrived and last week I did a shake per day in place of 1 meal, and cut my calories down as the Mrs ordered some “Hello Fresh” meals before my diet plan, so that was low cal and pretty light.

So I should correct it to “this week is the week I start 100% Huel after mucking about with it last week”.

That said, I’ve been using “Alli” supplement for a few months so shitting myself is always a peripheral option :laughing:

4 Likes
4

Aye that sounds better!

5

Hey Ben, lovely to read your message here and it’s great to have you on the team using Huel. I definitely can do it - what are you aiming for?

I would piggy-back off what @David has said about going 100%. If I’m honest, I would keep it at a few Huels plus your HelloFresh meals if you feel like 100% Huel is too much. I’ve written some comments to someone else whose goal and plan has similarities to yourself. I think it’s important to make changes to your diet that you can maintain long term, we don’t see Huel as a short term diet option but more a sustainable change to your diet, long term (but we would say they eh?!)

All the best to you, and do keep us posted, read around the forum and chat with others too. Great to have you here.

2 Likes
6

I agree with David and Tim. Going 100% is too difficult unless you’re proper disciplined. To make it easier, you just have to tweak your goals a little. Try swapping one or two meals a day with Huel instead. Rather than saying “now’s the day I go 100%”, say “now’s the day I have Huel for breakfast/lunch”.

Cooked food is always going to be tastier. HelloFresh seems to work fine for your third meal (assuming you had it for dinner), so you may as well keep that the way it is. At least you get to keep eating some cooked food that’s healthy and enjoyable.

1 Like
7

Hi!
Recently I’ve changes from huel 2.3 to huel black 3.0. I’ve bought 1 chocolate and 1 vainilla. I find the chocolate flavour really distasteful. Maybe try vainilla, I highly prefer it.

8

The main advantage of 100% Huel is how simple it makes calorie counting. You can make an entire day’s meals in a couple of minutes, and know precisely how much energy they contain.

For me, that’s been a godsend. A home cooked meal made from fresh ingredients is not only more work to make, it requires more calculation. Not a huge amount, but when you have to do it day after day it becomes wearing. After a while you can’t be arsed.

I haven’t used Hello Fresh but I assume they provide nutritional information with their recipes, so the hard work is done for you if you keeping using them.

When I went 100% Huel I had powder for some meals and granola (RIP) for others. The crunchy meals added some valuable variety to my diet and made it easier to stick with.

edit: and I was on “two shakes and an evening meal” for months beforehand.

4 Likes
9

Yeah this is one of the advantages is Hello Fresh arrives pre-weighed and pre-packed for all sauces and items, so it’s a pretty accurate calorie count right off the recipe card.

The calorie counting is really the top advantage. I’ve been blending 2000ml of Huel at 8am then drinking it through the day at mealtimes and adding more when needed.

I totally understand the issue with 100% Huel diet being a bit extreme and requiring discipline; it’s almost reverse discipline for me.

If I eat a can of food, I know 100% of the calories of that can. Cooking stuff is where the wheels come off for me.
If I know I’m on 100% Huel and that will keep me alive and healthy then I can make peace with that.

If I say “But I’ll allow myself a healthy evening meal” I know I’m a slippery slope from planning to have a protein salad and then thinking “a treat won’t hurt” ending up blending a pizza and a cheesecake.

2 Likes
10

Thanks @Tim_Huel

Serious question, I posted on here as a way to keep myself motivated, but is doing questionable 100% Huel diet posts detrimental to the forum?

I’m pretty determined to do it and I know people totally have my best interests at heart, is me belligerently pushing on with it a negative thing to share? I’m happy to edit or remove - I’m new to this and don’t want to put stuff online that skews the usefulness of Huel through my own specific approach.

11

@Solyc Yeah think my next batch will be vanilla as I haven’t tasted vanilla Huel since 1.0

12

Yep, I get where you’re coming from. If the diet is too much of a faff, you’ll fall off it. If it’s too lax, you’ll cut corners. If it’s too strict, you’ll struggle to stay motivated.

But you’ll figure it out! And the 100% is doable and might be the best way for you. Everyone is different.

2 Likes
13

Yes.
Be wise and order a previously prepared one first, so you can decide which one you like the most before commiting.

14

I actually hadn’t thought of that… I just waded in and committed myself to 21 days of chocolate ha ha :confused:

15

I use MyFitnessPal. When I cook stuff, I just scan the barcodes and select the right quantity. For ingredients that aren’t listed (like certain vegetables), I type them in the search bar and select an existing listing. It takes 5 minutes but it’s not too bad. You can even create a Meal so that it’s saved for whenever you need it again.

Maybe going 100% is the right thing for you in that case. If you find cooking a chore much like David, it may just be your solution. He knows more than I do here.

I’d use bars for variety but that’s where my personal issue with 100% comes from. One is too small for me and I end up eating two instead. That means I spend just under £3 for a meal, making it too expensive for me. I wish they kept the old 400 (EDIT: I meant 250) calorie ones but with the texture and taste of the new ones.

16

the previous version bars were always 250 calories (even the 70g v1 bars) so were never really a full meal option. A higher calorie/larger Black version bar would be a great option to have though I think.

17

My bad, I got the numbers mixed up. I remember those things were like bricks. I still have a box lying around although they expired a long time ago. They were Chocolate Orange and I found them too strong back then.

Old Huel Bars 20200513_034148
Old Huel Bars 20200513_0341482988×4429 2.69 MB

They were longer, denser and more filling. I’m glad they fixed the texture, I just wish they kept the size. Calories aside, the new ones feel tiny.

18

I guess because the Black is more calorie dense - they could do one to that size which would more or less be up to meal level intake.

1 Like
19

No, don’t worry Ben - you do you! :hugs: Just promise me if you start to get bored of Huel and find it tough, then just switch in a healthy home-cooked meal to find a bit more balance!

Keep us posted!

3 Likes
20

I loved those old bars. Although not enough for a meal, it did feel like a good snack to keep me going in between meals. The new ones are too small for me for that purpose.
I would love to see a bigger Huel black bar :crossed_fingers:t2:

1 Like