Huel inhibiting weight loss for Type 1 diabetic?

Experiences
1

Hey there, I was wondering if any other Type 1 diabetics had my current experience. Back in early January, I decided to give Huel a try after researching it and deciding to lose some weight I had put on over the last couple of years. I’m a type 1 diabetic for 22 years, now 26 years old male trying to lose about 20 pounds or so - currently at 175lbs, and wishing to be back into 150lbs.

Originally I was taking about 40-50 units (fast-acting Humalog, on an insulin pump) and what appealed to me was that I could have a full meal of Huel Black and only take 2.5u of insulin. After starting Huel, once a day and moving into a significant low carb eating approach I have managed to reduce my daily insulin intake to less than 30 units a day, usually about 25-27 units daily. The strange thing is, I have not lost any weight - if any at all in the last month. This is shocking to me because a low carb diet and insulin reduction are an extremely successful way for type 1 diabetes to lose weight - even in my own experience.

So my question is: does anyone, or any type 1 diabetics know of a reason/cause why Huel might be inhibiting weight loss for a diabetic who has significantly reduced insulin intake? I really want to love Huel, but I may stop using it and attempt to lose weight without it.

2

Have you been tracking your caloric intake?

Low carb diets and Huel are tools that can help in weight loss but ultimately you’ll need to be in a caloric deficit in order to loose weight.

You can read more about Huel and weight loss here.

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3

Hey Carlos, I think you posted this on Reddit so I will copy my reply from there.

Even though you are a type 1 diabetic calories still matter. You need to reduce your calorie intake, whatever your diet might be to enable you to lose weight.

These articles I found are easy to read on the topic: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diet/low-carb-and-weight-loss-type1.html and https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diet/mistakes-on-a-low-carb-diet.html

Let me know if you need anything else.

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4

You don’t mention calories in your post. Are you tracking this with an app such as My Fitness Pal? It’s easy to overeat when not counting calories.

5

Hello, thanks for the input! For diabetics, especially type 1 diabetics, caloric reduction will almost always be proportional with insulin reduction to begin with any diet while maintaining good blood glucose control - especially in my case. I certainly consume much less calories that needed in the foods that allowed me to reduce my insulin intake by 40-50%. Based on that metric, you could probably estimate I have reduced my caloric intake by about half given I’m taken almost half my usual insulin. 90% of my food consists of veggies and meats. For diabetics, less insulin taken = less fat stored… but there seems to be something that is affecting that process.

After some digging around, in the article sent by Dan (above), I think the issue might be that Huel is providing too much protein in the end along side with my low carb, high protein eating habits which can stall fat loss. So I think I may return to Huel as once I reach a goal weight.

If you’re interested in learning about something interesting, Google ‘diabulimia’, it’s a very bad thing diabetics can do to SHED weight while consuming many calories and skipping insulin. It shows that calories in diabetics type 1 isn’t really the principal method for fat loss.