How do you shake it?
Do you drink the Huel just after shaking it?
In blender put in fridge night before
Just to hitch a ride on @ChristinaT’s question, I’ve always been very good at no-impact endurance exercises like swimming, rowing, cycling etc (and absolutely useless at strength and power based exercises). I will have more time this year and I want to do some endurance events like 10km+ swims but after 4km which currently takes around 90 minutes I tank out and I can’t carry on.
I would also appreciate some advice from the clever people on nutrition during these type of things. Currently I have a 90g Huel powder + 12g of Cacao powder as my pre-workout meal and I find it works brilliantly.
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Hi - I haven’t read the study. The article doesn’t actually relate the Huel as it seems to be about protein shakes. I’d need to read the full study to see what it was actually saying. I’m a bit of a sceptic with The Mail as they have a habit of twisting results for the sake of a ‘nice’ story!
One thing I will say is that inadequate BCAA at meals has been linked to increased body fat.
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There will be no negative effects from taking the BCAAs. There are benefits of an adequate* leucine (that’s the ‘2’ in your 2:1:1 formula) intake in respect of muscle gain and fat loss. However, there’s probably no benefit from you supplementing with BCAAs.
*if you’re eating a good diet, you will be having sufficient leucine. Huel is high in leucine.
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Other than quickly absorbed energy to keep me going mid workout ?
Or are carbs better during workout anyway?
I shake it hard with my hands (i’m talking about my shaker 
)
And i drink it 1 to 10 min after
I hate to drink it cold
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Amino acids are not efficient energy sources. Carbs, consumed conservatively, are better peri-workout.
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You’re spot on here.
The other important thing is the study was conducted in mice!
This is how I feel in real life 
In a more serious note, I have not read a lot about some of the topics here, such as, “Negative effects of BCAAs via serotonin pathway” or how they could affect your mood.
Probably isn’t the first time you’ve heard about the flat Earth, either. Not trying to mock you, but to remind to take everything with a pinch of salt. There is a lot of pseudo-science and miss-information going around.
I think this is the case with BCAAs. Some try to put them as miraculous ingredients that will enhance your focus, endurance and muscle growth; others will claim that excessive BCAA supplementation will lead to insulin insensitivity and obesity.
The truth is much more complex. A good review to showcase some of the many roles of BCAAs:
Even though their role in protein synthesis is not consistent across different studies, it is clear that BCAAs can reduce the negative nitrogen balance in the living system. Evidences have shown that BCAAs can prevent muscle loss in both young and elderly people. In addition, BCAA-supplementation has benefit to patients with liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. BCAAs have also been used on critically ill patients with severe burn, sepsis, surgery, and trauma in different studies. Some of those studies have found beneficial effect after BCAA administration while some did not. However, BCAAs administration did not worsen the condition in any of the cases. Our current knowledge regarding the role of BCAA in insulin regulation is still not clear. It has been reported that increased BCAAs level is associated with CVD, diabetes, and MSUD. But if an individual gets a diet which is low in BCAAs it can affect the overall body protein synthesis, insulin regulation, glucose homeostasis, glutamate-glutamine pool, and antioxidant level. Therefore, further studies are needed to fill up the knowledge gap between BCAAs metabolism and the related regulation of these amino acids
This is the conclusion. Take into account that this is a review done in 2014 and that new relations and players might have been found since them.
Ok, so let’s refocus.
Will BCAAs help you in your MTB tour?
There is some evidence that BCAA supplementation, together with arginine and citurlline might help reducing muscle damage during endurance excercise and improving performance.
Here is another very comprehensive read: Protein and the Adaptive Response With Endurance Training: Wishful Thinking or a Competitive Edge? - PMC
Given that BCAAs are also essential and that muscle protein synthesis is elevated following but also during exercise (Konopka et al., 2017), extended endurance exercise may evoke an environment of suboptimal BCAA availability. For this reason it may be beneficial to the overall adaptive response and/or performance (via substrate availability) to provide a source rich in BCAAs during extensive exercise
But I want to highlight this:
To summarize, evidence of the role of protein on endurance training adaptations and performance is scarce.
My initial thoughts were the same as James’.
I must say that there seem to be some evidence to support BCAA use during endurance, but it would not be my focus.
Carbs would be my go to for energy (as you are doing, currently).
From friends that I have doing long term competitive endurance (triathlon and long cycling) exercise:
- They always have a source of water and a source of electrolyte+sugar drink (your “lucozade”). Drink regularly.
- Every hour they tend to eat something. Banana, biscuits, gels (mainly races because $$), dry fruit (dates), cereal bar… Mostly they focus on getting more carbs (simple). Stuff that you can easily eat and absorb.
- Eat big before the rides (night before carb up).
Regarding these methods I can only say that it works for them. I would strongly recommend you to keep doing the water + isotonic glucose loaded drink approach; plus eating every hour if possible.
From what I’ve gathered most do not bother with protein within the workout and focus on having them before and after.
Mmm, I feel like I’ve written tons, but I might have missed the point
Not a doctor or licensed nutritionist, but my answer would be no. Equally, you might not be gettin any real/major benefits, though.
I think this is a solid option as long as you make sure you eat as much as you need after. 400kcal shake might not be enough. But for a protein source it will be good.
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Haha thanks @Latestfuels
I’m not looking for any miraculous results - just something to keep me going on long days, that I can simply put in my water, because eating anything isn’t really an option til I stop for a proper break.
It sounds like it’s probably not doing me any harm, so I’ll use this bag (it’ll last me months) and most likely stick to just carbs in the long term.
Cheers for your input 
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