Exante / ketosis / Huel

Weight loss
1

Hi

Tried Huel around a year ago and just couldn’t drink it, which was a shame as I loved the idea of it.

I’m overweight, not huge, but overweight none the less and have issues with enjoying food too much and often find the need to diet for a year then have a fantastic year putting all the weight back on :neutral_face: (and hate myself for around a year afterwards )

Anyway, I’m just in the middle of 2 weeks on exante which has worked miracles, helped me lose weight fast and tastes ok. I find it simpler to cut out food completely so I dont have to really think about it.

Exante works by restricting your calorie intake and putting your body into ketosis so you burn fat first.

I’m wondering if I returned to Huel or other similar product (I’m hoping huels new chocolate flavour is to my taste) if this would bring me out of ketosis if I ate with a small balanced meal for my evening meal ?

Also, if anyone who works for Huel reads this, I think you’d benefit from selling sample packs of your product, as sometimes the thought of paying £45 for something you may hate could be off putting for potential customers.

Thanks for any advice given.

Greg

2

Yes, it likely would.

The reason you’ve lost weight is due to caloric deficit, rather than “ketosis making your body burn fat”.

Huel’s nutritionist is a sceptic of Keto, so I don’t envision any Keto products coming soon.

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3

Hey Greg, I had a look at Exante and I’m really sorry that all this confusion has been caused.

There are different ways to enter ketosis. It appears with Exante you eat 800kcal a day, so you enter ketosis through starvation. This isn’t Exante specifically, this is through drastically reducing your calorie intake. You could do this by eating 800kcal of potatoes or mars bars.

When you start to eat more calories again (even if this is Exante) you will come out of starvation mode and ketosis, this will have to happen as 800kcal a day is not sustainable. When your body is starving your body will not only be burning body fat but also your muscle to meet its needs which will result in weight loss but this is not a good thing.

What I personally don’t like about their marketing is they are mixing ketosis achieved through starvation with ketosis acheived through nutrition (high fat, moderate protein and very low carbohydrate diet). Even then ketosis still works for weight loss at its core by reducing calorie intake, like any other diet.

You’re better making smaller dietary changes over a longer time period that you can stick for the long-term, this will help you from putting weight back on.

This guide can help: https://uk.huel.com/pages/guide-to-fat-loss

If you feel Huel may help in this respect what is it you didn’t like exactly? One of the main reasons we don’t offer samples is because it can take a few goes to work out how you like your Huel and get to your liking, which you can’t do with samples.

On subscription Huel costs £40.50, you can also be referred by a friend for £10 off your first order.

I’m not going to push Huel to you, but I feel you have been missold slightly with Exante so at the least, if you have anymore questions please let us know. The people on this forum are great.

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4

Thank you Dan for your well thought out answer, appreciate that.

With my previous experience of Huel it was purely that I didn’t like the taste. I tried mixing with peanut butter, chocolate powder, cinnamon etc - but just couldn’t get past the peculiar underlying taste - and that you had to drink so much of it. I often wondered if I’d had a dodgy batch as so many people in here absolutely love it - though taste is of course subjective. Think I threw an entire bag away, which is wasteful - and also why I believe you could sell smaller bags/samples or even singular bottles or the ready made bottles.

I may well give your new chocolate flavour a try in the very near future.

Thanks again
Greg

5

That’s not a problem at all Greg.

That’s fair enough, the formula has changed from a year ago but I appreciate your reservations.

Let me know if you need anything else and I will be happy to help.

Best of luck!

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Simple answer, maybe you don’t like one of the ingredients in Huel. I know I’ve seen people round here who can’t get on board with the oats flavour. How are you with porridge?

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I eat, and enjoy those oat so simple sachets. Can’t exactly state what it is I dislike about it , it’s just ‘weird’ I guess.

I very much enjoy purition, exante and in the past slim fast shakes - maybe I should try with milk

8

I’ve never heard of Exante but @Dan_Huel’s mars bar diet caught my attention :rofl::rofl: or maybe @ChristinaT can come up with a recipe for a mars flavoured Huel shake? :drooling_face:

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@anon52829317

1 scoop unflavoured Huel
1 scoop Original Huel
1 scoop chocolate Huel (for the nougaty flavour I guess lol)
2 heaped tsps raw cacao powder
1 tsp cacao flavour boost
1 tsp caramel boost

I reckon that would do it

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10

You just had to ask :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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11

Whahahaha that’s really quickly! :partying_face:

@ChrisH0402 I could not resist… :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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12

Haha I might upchuck if I drank that :laughing:

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Haha proof it’s mars-like then :joy:

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McDonalds did a limited edition Mars Chocolate milkshake in the summer of 2011. I’m not a McDonald’s fan at all - nutritionally, ethically, or taste-wise either. BUT omg that was the best thing I’ve drunk in my life. I put half a stone on that summer :joy::joy::joy:

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15

Oink! :pig::laughing::laughing:

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You could do this by eating 800kcal of potatoes or mars bars

Blockquote

Sorry, I disagree with this comment, so much so that I did register to post.

A Keto / Low Carb diet is generally based on either under 30 for Keto or 30 - 50g carbs daily.
Now a diet of 800 calories of potato actually comes to eating 1KG of potatoes (based on using maris piper potatoes), that comes to 790 calories, 178g carbs, 2g fat and 21g protein.

If you then want to look at 800 calories of Mars Bar that’s actually 3 Mars bars at 780 calories, that comes to 120g carbs, 29.7g fat and 7.5g protein.

Neither one of those “diets” amount to Keto, let alone Low Carb, what they do amount to is a starvation diet.

It’s important to understand that Keto does work, it’s been scientifically proven to work by people far more intelligent than me and has demonstrated improvements in people suffering with a number of ailments (including T2 diabetes, blood pressure and for nearly 100 years it’s been used to treat epilepsy).

Now people can successfully live a Keto based lifestyle for the rest of their lives and do so with no adverse affect.

I just wanted to be clear, an 800 calorie diet of potatoes or Mars bars will NEVER be a keto / low carb diet and saying such is just wrong.

Oh and to answer the next question, yes I am keto / low carb, survive on 1800c a day (25 - 30g carbs) and have successfully lost 42lbs of weight in the last 7 months (and still working on it), I am one of those people who is carb intolerant (I love a good mars bar, coke etc but then it makes me fat), the reason for coming back was to check to see availability of a low carb Huel (I’ve used it before and liked it but never successful with it long term).

17

I think you have misunderstood here.

As I said there are different ways to enter ketosis, this does not make a starvation diet a ketogenic diet.

The way you are talking about is through nutrition with a high fat, moderate/low protein and very low carbohydrate diet.

As I said about Exante what I personally don’t like about their marketing is they are mixing ketosis achieved through starvation with ketosis acheived through nutrition.

You can enter ketosis by being in starvation i.e. eating really low amounts of pretty much anything (potaotes and mars bars is the example I used), I did not say this is a ketogenic diet.

A ketogenic diet can indeed work for T2D etc, the way it works is through weight loss. There may be other ways it achieves this but the evidence is far from convincing in this area and is yet to truly separate this from the effects of weight loss.

Yes a ketogenic diet works for epilepsy and is well studied.

You seem to have taken offence to something I haven’t actually said. Please re-read what I wrote.

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Dan, your full comment is quoted above, my post was more about the fact that you would really struggle to get into Ketosis with 120g - 180g carbs per day, really anything above 100g carbs is going to increase your glycogen levels (unless of course you’re eating your 800c of Mars / Potatoes as OMAD in which case yes you “could” get into Ketosis with the Mars Bar / Potato diet :wink: but it’s unrealistic)

I get that you probably don’t like keto but having been someone who has tried all sorts of different ways of eating (Cambridge diet, Paleo/Primal, WW, SW and even Huel) and struggled with all of them (well, my only issue with Paleo actually was the cost of getting grass fed meat all the time) I think it’s important that people understand ketosis and why / how to get into it, it was your post telling people you could eat a Mars Bar / potato diet and get into keto that for me provided misinformation on ketosis and how to get into it.

19

Yes, my comment is correct. You say it yourself:

It was simply to help people understand where Exante are coming from with their marketing (a product relatively high in carbohydrates). This is quite pedantic and I struggle to understand why you have taken such an issue with what I have said. I’m not writing a PhD thesis on ketosis and the original post was never about that. Entering ketosis and a ketogenic diet are two different things. Entering ketosis can be achieved in several ways as I have mentioned. A ketogenic diet, is one way to enter ketosis. I’m not suggesting the other ways as healthy, realistic alternatives, I was making a point, which is quite clear.

It’s not that I don’t like keto or any other diet, they can be great for the right individual. However, I don’t like the overreach that can occur and the exaggeration of the benefits beyond what is most of the time weight loss however, that is achieved. I also don’t like when people attach their identity to a diet and lifestyle. It can create a stagnant approach, cherry-picking of data and dismissing negatives
of that diet and the benefits of others. That is not what science or nutrition is about, let’s take a balanced objective approach.

It’s fantastic that a keto diet works for you, well done! It doesn’t mean it is for everyone.

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Looking at the actual nutrition of Exante, I’m not even convinced it induces ketosis, be it via a ketogenic diet or starvation.

Very low calorie diets (VLCDs) are a valid method of weight loss if prescribed to one by a doctor, though they’re a terrible idea for self-medicating.

Regardless though, Exante has 17.0g of carbs and 13.7g of sugar per 202 calorie shake (taking unflavoured as the example). This translates to 68g of carbs and 54.8g of sugar per 808 calories. That is too much to enter ketosis for the vast majority of people. You’ll lose weight because of the calorie intake level, but - unless it’s medically supervised - it’s dangerous, and almost certainly won’t get you into ketosis.

EDIT: The salt content is also way too low for a ketogenic diet and would almost certainly lead to muscle cramping and headaches, at least for a few days, that would be entirely avoidable with a better formulation.

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