To be fair, my involvement was related to things that did happen yonks who in terms of acting for companies that wanted to set up multi jurisdictional regulatory frameworks and then selling those companies eventually (big tobacco companies bought a bunch of vape brands).
Much as I worked for companies that wanted to buy halal stuff even tho I’m not a Muslim myself, or betting companies even tho I don’t believe in gambling personally.
So while I know a lot about it, I personally have no “skin in the game” so to speak. Just a cynical view of virtually any research which isn’t independently funded (having done a bit of setup in that sector too back in the day!)
On the first point, no - always be dubious of people recommending things. I do think we’re right though My involvement was a small e-commerce business that the EU killed with regulation.
On the second point, I’m out at the moment but if you’re genuinely asking I’ll post again later. From memory though… ( I accept that these will look odd til I find links to back them up )
Around 5% of smokers succeed in quit attempts. About 2% is cold turkey, the other 3 use NRT.
Using NRT in a quit attempt (gums, patches etc) has a failure rate of around 90% irrespective of the number of attempts.
Smoking rates stayed mostly level for years, reducing by very small numbers as new people quit or start. After vaping went mainstream the number of people in the UK that smoke lit tobacco has dropped by about 6%. The big thing is that teens now experiment with vaping and then stop soon after. In the past they experimented with cigarettes and ended up hooked.
It’s pretty widely accepted even by the NHS and PHE but here’s a randomly googled article with some independent research anyway! Twice as effective seems to be the baseline for vaping in the short term but as so many keep vaping its likely to be far greater in the longer term.
@Bee it really is. I’ve actually done a fair bit of examination of proposals for research (when they request funding from various different “corporate charities and foundations” I have worked with and no matter how useful some studies would be, if there isn’t an angle somewhere then they ain’t getting funded!
Interesting read. Thanks for posting. This intrigued me as the interpretation of whether it represents a successful outcome depends on your viewpoint I guess.
“Researchers carried out a trial with 886 smokers who sought help through NHS stop smoking services. People were randomly assigned to either nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products (products such as patches or gums that can deliver a dose of nicotine) or e-cigarettes, plus one-to-one support for at least 4 weeks. After a year, 18% of e-cigarette users had stopped smoking tobacco, compared to 9.9% of NRT users.
Of those e-cigarette users who had stopped smoking after 1 year, 80% were still vaping regularly. Questions about the long-term safety of e-cigarettes are still unanswered, however they are likely to be much less harmful than long-term tobacco smoking.”
So if I’m reading that right:
9.9% of smokers who used NRT had stopped smoking
3.6% of smokers who used a vape had stopped smoking of all kinds (either tobacco or vaping)
14.4% of smokers who used a vape had switched from smoking tobacco to vaping
To me that still reads that achieving the best possible outcome of neither smoking or vaping is more reliably achieved with NRT according to this study.
Like I said though, it depends whether you consider a switch to a less bad habit a success
Giving up smoking is tough however you do it. If only we could convince people not to start in the first place. But on the positive side I believe the numbers of people starting smoking has been dropping fairly consistently for years now.
I suppose from one perspective, we don’t know long term issues. The main point is to stop smoking, whether or not that is achieved by replacing something much less harmful is besides the point, at this stage it is about making smoking itself socially unacceptable.
I think in terms of harm reduction rather than full cessation of nicotine intake. As I mentioned before I actually enjoy vaping without the nicotine, bonkers as that may sound! Just like I enjoy the taste of coffee in the evening but only have one actual caffeinated coffee and that’s either in a fasted state or mixed in with my earliest huel.
We have completely derailed this poor chap’s topic, so I apologise to the OP!
Also, you’ve slightly misinterpreted the data here. I think. Bit tired but the one year numbers for nicotine replacement therapies aren’t given and I refuse outright to believe that 100% of them stayed quit.
Nicotine increases metabolism which can contribute to weight gain. Therefore should one reduce nicotine use, thereby reducing the metabolic rate, it may be worthy to plan interventions to retain this rate. I have always been taught on smoking cessation updates that the risk of weight gain increases when coming off cigarettes for this reason.
I’ve been using Huel for about 2 months now for the purpose of losing weight. It appealed to me because I’m lazy and don’t want to exercise or painlessly prepare/track calories. I do use My Fitness Pal to track calories but I only track high caloric foods. I don’t bother with tracking fruit and veg.
I’m 29, started at 93kg and have lost 6kg/~13lbs…
I try to keep to around 1400 calories per day which consists of:
400 calorie Huel shake for lunch
200 calorie drink/bar as snack before or after dinner (depending if I get hungry before dinner),
800 calorie normal dinner
I’m terrible at drinking water so chose sugar free drinks and also drink 2 cups of coffee per day. Maybe switch to coffee from Relentless? So you get the caffeine but not the sugar?
I also have a ‘cheat meal’ once every 1-2 weeks only if I have made progress to reward myself with like a takeaway (I still track the calories so I don’t overdo it).
Keep in mind that what works for some people might not work for others.
So I started on 25 June 2020 with Huel Ready-to-drink. 3 Drinks a day - around 1200 cals. Plus Cycling around 20km per day - 7 days a week. -
On 2rd of Aug I wanted to accelerate my low loss, so reduce now to 2 drinks a day 800 cals for the next two weeks, so until 16 Aug. I have purchased Ketone Test Strips to ensure it is all working and future monitoring.
i have also just purchased (arrive on sat) Premium Pure C8 MCT Oil | Boosts Ketones 3X More Than Other MCTs to accelerate the process further. I am aiming to burn 3500 cals per day.
Reasons - Below weight / Body fat - increase Muscle due to Covid 19 and Rheumatoid arthritis. Weight on 25th June 2020 was 14 stone 5 - my height in 5"10 and age 40, Male. I have not Measured my weight white since the 2th June as I can see I am Losing weight and don’t want to be Despondent on the rate. I will measure again on the 16 Aug 2020 - that would be 8 weeks and 3 days since I started.
Huel Black in the plan after the 16th Aug until Sept. When i am ready i plan to slowly going to increase my cals with Huel Black to 2000 cals then start the switch back to solid food.
Hi, I’ve been using huel for a while, but I’m just not great at regulating food intake. I’m a parent who seems to spend hours in the kitchen preparing food, so would graze, Snack and at bedtime have a bowl of cereal… and some toast… and a biscuit… then go to bed feeling bloated.
So huel works for me because a lot of the food in the house now falls into the “not for me” category. It’s like for me if the rules are these things are for other people, then I can largely avoid them. Huel makes counting calories easier for me, it’s programmed into MyFitnessPal and I just pick what I’ve had. Just the act of counting calories made a huge difference - that stray bag of crisps? Well when you see that having that means you’d only have 200 calories left for the day you actually weigh up whether it’s worth it. Do I want this now and a very low calorie meal later?
Also I’ve tried some other powdered foods, Plenny was fine (I quite liked the bars) but the thinner drink it made just did not fill me up the same way. For consistency I go for 400 cal huel with 500 ml water plus some flavour, blended and left in the fridge, and I am genuinely filled by this for hours. The bars I like as the provide me with some of the oral satisfaction I require - let’s face it, there are so many calories I’d eat ever day, not because of hunger, but because my mouth wanted savoury, or crunchy, or chewy, or sweet. Nothing to do with hungry. But I’ve also found that sometimes I need to just accept a little bit of hunger - especially on a weight loss calorie deficit, where before I would just eat when feeling hungry, now I just accept that I feel a bit hungry and don’t actually need to do anything about it. Unless I’m feeling actually weak from hunger I’ll often find it passes, it was just a hunger pang, and I was able to hold off until it was a time when I was meant to eat. I’m about a stone (14lbs) down over the past couple of months. I hope some of this made sense and might be of some help.
Oh yeah, and whilst your stomach becomes used to it you might fart a lot.
Unfortunately, even if you’re morbidly obese, your body never ‘wants’ to lose fat so we experience being in a calorie deficit as a negative sensation. If you’re being sensible with your goals and sticking to a reasonable deficit you can definitely learn to manage this.
My involvement was a small e-commerce business that the EU killed with regulation.
