I’ve made some really great progress I’m really proud of, and I wanted to share it. I hope that this post serves as extra evidence that using Huel as part of a healthy lifestyle can make a huge difference to your life.
For the last 5 weeks I have been combining 60% Huel diet, with the Insanity programme from Shaun T.
Rapid fat loss
Weight loss (this wasn’t a primary goal)
Increased energy levels
reduction in food bills
more spare time
Additional changes I’ve made in lifestyle (details not covered here - I’m considering putting together a full detailed programme in future) have resulted in additional benefits of:
less need for sleep
clearer head space
an increase in productivity
Whilst undergoing my changes, I have been able to maintain a relatively relaxed diet too. On Monday I was at a wedding, and despite eating a lot of cake, cheese, hog roast and BBQ (seriously, it was shameful) I have still continued to loose weight and improve fitness!
My typical week day is:
wake up around 6:45
espresso, water
Insanity as directed by the programme
get to work for 9am.
9am - first meal, Huel - 2 scoops
11am - second meal, Huel - 2 scoops
1pmish, when the weather is good enough, 6000 step walk
2pm - 3pm - third meal, Huel - 2 scoops
4pm - 5pm - forth meal, Huel - 2 scoops
6pm - 7pm - dinner - ‘normal’ food, generally healthy but pasta, rice, potatoes have remained on the allowed list.
Typical weekends are hard to define. Insanity Saturday morning, usually Huel for breakfasts, but I tend to eat out, and eat chaotically.
I am now increasing my Huel intake to add an additional 2 scoops throughout the day (I’m adding at meal 1 and 3) as I do not want to loose any more weight.
Below you can see 3 pictures, one showing before and after pictures, and 2 others showing both fat and weight loss as measured twice a day (except where I’ve forgotten/been away).
Really awesome progress. Have you hit your fat loss target or have you got further to go?
Naturally when you lose fat you are going to lose weight and this will be because of the high intensity workouts as much as using Huel to improve your diet. Combining Insanity with a rigorous weight training programme could prevent you from losing the weight or just regaining it, if that’s what you wanted, I wasn’t too sure.
The app I’m using is Withings app - I have a pair of WS-50 scales. A great purchase in my opinion!
@TimOfficeHuel
I’ve not hit a target as such, because I don’t have one! My reason for adding in 300 extra cals is mostly to see the effect it has over my progress. I’m mostly experimenting to what happens when I tweak certain things. I’m a little concerned that I dropped below 66kg; which is pretty low for someone that’s 5’11". I hoped increasing daily intake a small amount (actually, that’s between 10-15%) I’d perhaps gain a little muscle mass from the body weight exercises, specifically around the chest.
This is completely anecdotal, however I’m sure if I dug I could find some research to back it up (such is the nature of confirmation bias!). I find it difficult to gain muscle mass from body weight exercises beyond a certain point.
I.e. There is a threshold for me between the amount of push ups I can do and the amount of muscle I gain around my chest.
I think this is based around muscular endurance, because to have muscle that can keep going for a long time you don’t really need the fibres to be bigger and bigger (although they will gain in size at the beginning), but rather just need increased capillarisation and a high lactate threshold.
So including weights will certainly help you gain weight more so than the bodyweight work in your Insanity.
You’re right, I’ve no doubt about it - I’ve also struggled to put on muscle mass before. The best way to do this is high weight low reps from my understanding - focusing on time under tension. I agree that I’m unlikely to achieve much though pushups/body weight in terms of muscle growth.
Having said that, I’m quitting my gym because I’ve come to the conclusion that Huel and home workouts keep me ‘fit enough’. Finding that healthy line and not crossing over to obsession is a little trick. Although - I suspect many people might already put me into the obsessed route
While you’ll definitely hit a muscle mass wall with bodyweight exercises, the commonly held idea that endurance range reps are less conducive to hypertrophy is (sort of) wrong: http://strengtheory.com/hypertrophy-range-fact-fiction/
I thought I’d give people an update - as I’m now 2 weeks further than my last post.
First, you can see that my fat levels seem to be continuing in a downwards direction. Visibly, there’s not as much progress in the last 2 weeks, but the stats show positive things so I’m not too worried about that:
Despite the progress, I had hit a wall, and was really struggling, however I made a change this morning that seems to have made a huge difference.
Here’s one of the workouts pre-change (Fri 10th June):
And post-change (same workout, same time of day, Tuesday 14th June):
What’s clear is that I was able to push myself much harder - an almost 10% increase in calories burnt. Additionally, my body post-workout for the next 30-60 minutes was like a furnace, I had to put the air-con on in the car 2 degrees lower than usual!
The change I’ve made is following in line with a suggestion from The 4-Hour Body (a great book by the way!). The change is simply to have 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up. For me, that’s 100g of Huel as soon as I’m up, then 30 minutes to hydrate and have a coffee before kicking off the exercise!
This is great. A few years ago I became totally obsessed with fitness and healthy living. Didn’t do me much good as I ended up with cancer unfortunately !! All is fine now and I’m back on the health drive but being very cautious not to become too obsessed again
Obsession is what I’m trying to avoid. I’m trying to find the quickest and easiest way to achieve ‘good enough’ health. At the moment, I’m going beyond ‘good enough’ because I’m trying to get beech ready for an upcoming holiday
Collecting data lets me figure out what works and what doesn’t. Currently, it would appear that Huel is pretty much just as good as ‘clean eating’ when it comes to fat loss; I did an 8 week mega-strict experiment into that a year ago. The time I’ve saved by not cooking is being invested into exercise, so I’m considering this body transformation to be’ time neutral’.
The workout graphs are from MYZONE - using the mz-3 belt which allows bluetooth. I have the MYZONE app open on my phone whilst I work out, and I can see my percentage, MZ points and heart rate at all times. Wrist based sensors as ‘ok’ - but are fairly inaccurate. I’ve recently read an article that suggested they can be as much as 20% out, that’s a huge difference!
While I’m giving an update, today I’m the lightest I’ve been in my recorded history - body fat and body weight are continuing their drop, despite relaxing the diet significantly at weekends.
On the back of @pookey’s advice I bought the WS-50 scales and they give a much better level of confidence when weighing myself as against our other scales plus they appeal to my tech geek side
I was hoping someone could double check my figures and help me interpret them.
May 2st: 68.6 KG, 14.6% BF, therefore 10.02 KG of fat
July 17th: 65.7 KG, 7.82% BF, therefore 7.82 KG of fab
This means I’ve lost 2.2 KG of fat, which is great news! However, the total weight loss has been 2.9 KG, and therefore I’ve lost 0.7 KG of lean mass. Given the fact I’m working out hard, would this indicate I’m not eating enough? Perhaps not doing enough resistance work as @TimOfficeHuel suggested adding.
Visually, definition is vastly improving, but I’m concerned about that loss of lean mass. Perhaps this is normal?
Cheers, pookey, I have the new withings body cardio scale so I recognised the app:) myzone looks good, but I cannot imagine wearing a belt, so will stay with my wrist based gadget!
It feels horrible when you wear it the first time, it genuinely feels like it’s stopping you breathing.
However, a small bit of elastic around your mid-chest won’t really affect you - women have to have that anyway to stop themselves getting black eyes! After a few sessions, you stop noticing it. I do push ups without even noticing it even - so it’s not as bad as you might think, or even might have experienced if you’ve already tried it without persisting.
