Hi all. My first shipment of Huel is on its way, and I am really excited to get started. I thought I would do a pre-Huel post to document where I am right now.
I’m 40 year-old stay at home mom with a precocious four year-old daughter. I’m also a “trailing spouse.” My husband and I are American, but we have been living abroad for most of our marriage. Like many Americans, I am clinically obese. Honestly, until recently it didn’t bother me much. I’m busy playing with my daughter, keeping house, traveling. Aside from the industrial strength bras and getting winded on stairs, it wasn’t that big of a deal.
This year, though, I have noticed a few blips with my health. After a bout with gestational diabetes, I monitor my blood sugar every so often to make sure I am not slipping into Type 2 diabetes. I had a few weeks of high fasting numbers for the first time this spring. I cut out daily sweets and things calmed down, but it was kind of scary. My blood pressure has always been normal, but a recent trip to the doctor for bronchitis showed pre-hypertension level numbers. I’m monitoring that now too.
For my 40th birthday, I gifted myself a Fitbit Charge 2 and it has been an eye-opening experience. I quickly realized that I wasn’t getting nearly enough sleep and was spending an awful lot of time sitting on my bottom. A couple of weeks in, I am getting 7 hours of sleep most nights and I have a 14 day streak of over 10,000 steps per day. Making just a few changes has been incredible. Now that I am taking marginally better care of myself, I feel like a different person. I have so much more energy and I am literally happier. I battle mild anxiety and depression, and those have become non-issues. Moving around feels just like an SSRI. I wish a GP would have mentioned that somewhere along the way. Naturally, I began to wonder what would happen if I started eating better.
This week I reactivated a long dormant SparkPeople account and started logging my food to kind of get a baseline idea of what was going on. My diet is terrible! I had no idea how bad it was! Way too much fat, not nearly enough vitamins and minerals. I’m surprised I don’t have rickets or scurvy or something! I have an appointment for a basic health screening tomorrow, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn my cholesterol is through the roof.
So, here we are. I like the idea of Huel. I’m bad about not eating during the day and binging in front of the TV at night. I’m hoping Huel will give me enough structure to rethink the way I eat. My plan is 2 or 3 shakes a day to total about 1000 calories. I’ve also restarted my Gousto subscription. Left to my own devices, I cook pasta in a cream sauce every single night because my husband loves it and it is dead easy. Gousto will get me out of that rut and their meals average 400-800 calories per serving. My plan is to choose a dinner in the morning and then use the Huel (unofficial, but seemingly awesome) app to help me measure out my powder for the day. I think 1600 calories per day will be appropriate for me, but I need to do some more research on that.
I’m hoping to update my progress every couple of days. Here’s an emoji so I can get a badge => 
) However, I’ve found sticking to Huel a whole lot easier than I expected. I think it’s the fact you don’t have to think about eating anything else!
I’ve still managed to have some pretty tasty food, from chinese take out to home cooked quesadillas and keep losing weight. I personally need the normal evening meal to look forward to, I think 100% Huel wouldn’t work for me, especially as I cook a home cooked meal for the family every evening, but I bet it’s an effective way to control calories!
