Hi,
I would like to know if any of you guys have tried intermittent fasting whilst using huel? I’m planning a fasting diet to try to lose some bodyfat. To me, huel sounds like it would be perfect for ensuring I my nutritions by body needs.
Thanks
I’m planning on using huel to support IF too so I will look for responses to your question with interest.
I’ve never used Huel as part of a fast but I have done 3 fasts in the past and while the first one was quite good, the second and third were much harder and the benefits from it were much less.
What I have come to learn is, IMHO, you should not “diet”, fast, or do anything short term. What you should do is find a lifestyle which works for you and achieves your goals. Lifestyles are maintainable for the rest of your life, a fast, a diet etc are not. IMO this is where a lot of people go wrong. They do something unsustainable for a short period of time expecting great results. If it has not already failed during, when it comes to “getting back to normal”, this is often where it derails.
You do not need to fast to lose body fat. Have a net deficit (net meaning after exercise) of 500 calories per day and you’ll lose around 1lb of body fat per week.
My reasons for fasting are more to do with cognitive health gains rather than weight loss. My family history of dementia has led me to research interventions to delay or prevent dementia and the only method with any scientific research to back it up is fasting. Research so far is mainly in mice but human trials are being done and so far appear to replicate the beneficial findings from animal studies.
I agree life changes for a healthy diet should be sustainable rather than a quick fix - I am hoping to maintain fasting as a regular part of a healthy eating plan and will try to use huel as a substitute for meals either on fast days if I settle on a 5:2 model or as a way of managing a 16:8, 18:6, or 20:4 fasting pattern.
I’m interested to learn about the experience of others.
My initial trial is with 18:6, today being my first day. I had a 3 scoop huel shake at lunchtime and over the day 500 calories below maintenance. So whilst my main focus is ‘when’ I eat i am also restricting calories. The one thing I am happy not to have to think about is ‘what’ I’m going to eat for lunch.
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I’ve been doing various forms of intermittent fasting over the last couple of years or so and also trying to fit Huel into the formula. My current IF plan is spend as little time possible eating and still getting enough calories in for my needs. At the moment this is either 20/4, OMAD or ADF. I’m not overweight and I am quite active, performing weightlifting and endurance sports, so IF in my case is also not for losing weight but for other benefits.
The thing I have found hard with Huel with IF is that it’s extremely filling (which I expect is partly what it’s designed to be). This means that it’s virtually impossible for me to drink around 2000 calories of Huel in anything less than 6 hours. It leaves me incredibly bloated, and very thirsty (and not physically possible to drink due to being already so full). With normal food (generally Keto, & lowish carb), I have no problem consuming 2000 calories in less than 30 mins and feel full, but fine after. Current experimentation shows that 200g of Huel is about the max I can eat in one go (around 900kcal I think). Then after that I make up the rest with other food (cheese, nuts, fats) to reach my goal for the day.
I’m concerned that they keep making Huel thicker. Lots of forum posts recently have noticed that the new version of Huel (2.2) is much thicker. This would probably mean that it would be more filling for less calories. If that’s the case then I might have to stop eating Huel altogether. I’ve only got the previous version (2.1) so I can’t say for sure yet. My perfect scenario would be to able to drink 2000kcal of Huel in 30 mins, then be totally done with food for 23.5 hours 
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