I have been using Huel for nearly 2 years. I use it pretty much everyday (either lunch or dinner, sometimes both).
Lately I have been trying switch my diet to a lower carb and more “keto” version (not fully Keto since thats a bit extreme) and I am feeling GREAT, with way more energy than ever and zero cravings (how is this possible?!) for sugar, chocolate or unhealthy mid afternoon snacks. I workout 4 times a week and do yoga twice. I am pretty active.
However, despite this new variety of my diet, I am 100% supportive towards the huel project and love how simple it makes to eat healthy.
I have been reducing my Huel intake in order to reduce my carbs: instead of 3 or 4 scoops, I have been using 2. In addition I have been including higher fats as: avocado, plenty of coconut oil, MCT oil, organic and Grass fed (clean) protein when closer to my workouts.
I wonder if anyone is in the same situation? how have you been upgrading your huel?
I have been on Ketosis but without consuming huel. It is not possible to be on ketosis while consuming huel due to carbs on it.
Ketosis is not for everyone but it is incredible for a short/medium period of time - either to reverse diabetes (controversial, I know), sugar tolerance and tons of other benefits.
Everyone will react differently to it (keto flu, tiredness) and in my opinion like any other “diet” is not sustainable on a long time. You will end up eating carbs here and there, drinking alcohol and so on.
But if you don’t have any medial condition, are not go on holidays soon and are willing to cook and spend a bit more money on good quality veggies, meat and time cooking you should try and see and do you feel.
I feel like being in a mild ketosis works incredibly well for me.
I am just trying to bring most of the benefits and incorporating it in a lower carb. extremely high fat diet!
Unfortunatelly, it is practically impossible to use Huel for keto. Even if you just use 50g of Huel powder per day, you would use almost all of your 20g of daily allowed carbs (strict ketogenic diet) and would still have to get 90% of all the required nutrients from other sources (i.e. you would just turn Huel into a dessert ;)). I am not just talking about protein here. Minerals, vitamins, controlling your n-6 to n-3 ratio (100% Huel gives you a perfect 1:1). It really does not make much sense to use Huel for keto. Since LCHF is finally becoming more mainstream, let us hope Huel will eventually offer a ketogenic (vegan, please!) product.
Well, it’s almost impossible to use any food for ketogenic diet. It seems as if ketogenesis should happen only during fasting. The body is very unwilling to go into this “preferred” state of ketosis, don’t you think?
Just for the fun, i’ve to admit. And maybe I’ll learn something interesting?
“Not eating will eventually cause muscle loss” is not an interesting find…
EDIT: GTIPuG, to be honest, i think most of the health benefits of low carb, we should get them via fasting. I think it’s a legitimate topic of debate. It’s not just pure polemic.
2nd EDIT: My goal is never to win arguments. My goal is always to learn and to teach. If people don’t want to learn (or to teach), I’ve nothing to “debate” with them.
Well, fasting is very good, but in order to maintain ketosis for longer periods of time (e.g. your whole life ) and not go into starvation mode (unless you are extremely obese, but even then you would eventually (the longest described medical case is AFAIR 382 days) get lean and need food ), one needs a ketogenic diet. Plenty of food to choose from. Just not Huel (sadly)… as I explained above
I think nature doesn’t want us to be in a fasting state our whole life. That’s my point actually. On top of that, a diet made almost entirely of oil, butter, cheese and fatty cuts is just boring.
Anyway, if you’ve some links on the long term effects (at least 6 months) of ketogenic diet, I would like to review them. Based on my limited understanding of biochemistry and human evolution, I would expect that the only way to get some passable results is to eat a lot of (animal?) protein. Please enlighten me…
P.S: From what I’ve understood, some people go out of ketosis when they eat plenty of protein. I think if these people do attempt to cut protein to stay in ketosis, then they’ll run into serious troubles.
P.S: Take a look at Dr. Bernstein website/books. He recommends plenty of protein. I’m not sure if he recommends ketosis or not. I think he is probably the most credible “low carb” advocate…
Well, you have arrived at a very reasonable conclusion and I would be surprised to see anyone argue otherwise.
I see. Why would you ever limit your diet like that?
I would love to help but, sadly, I cannot afford the time. I you are really interested then I would probably advise heading to https://scholar.google.co.uk and starting your research there. I have no idea what your circumstances are, of course, and thus what particular goal or goals you would like to achieve by changing your diet or lifestyle, but in order to make it easy for you to start your journey, I quickly found the following papers that I thought might interest you:
It is true that ingesting too much protein can put you out of ketosis (most of the 20 amino acids can be used as substrates in gluconeogenesis) but it is not a problem since any well-composed ketogenic diet does include adequate levels of protein. I can see no “serious trouble” related to that unless you are talking about improperly designed diets but then it is not really relevant to our topic as it is not specific to LCHF (e.g. one could be on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet deficient in protein). In general, malnutrition is rare in the developed world. Protein is rarely a problem irrespective of one’s diet and activity level.
One more thought before we finish discussing the subject of long-term effects… There is always a trade-off between being adventurous and adopting a more conservative approach to innovation. The theory of diffusion of innovation comes to mind (the vast majority of people are not innovators or early adopters - innovators are quite rare). Ultimately, everyone has to do their own research, weight pros and cons, and make their own decision. Over the years, I stumbled upon quite a lot of animal studies (including long-term) and short-term studies in humans that show many potential benefits of both fasting and ketogenic / LCHF diet (e.g. anti-carcinogenic, neuroprotective, cardioprotective, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory). We often wrongly assume that deferring a decision whether we should introduce something new into our lives (i.e. our decision to maintain the status quo) is a safer choice. To “wait and see” does not necessarily mean to “play it safe”. Imagine that you are a smoker living in the 1920s Germany and you read that doctor Fritz Lickint claims smoking causes cancer. Not only many doctors you know are smokers and consider smoking safe, but some even say that smoking actually improves health and you (and many other smokers you know) agree with them. You love smoking and decide you do not want to quit till there is a scientific consensus (if ever) that smoking really not only does not improve health but actually causes cancer. Decades pass. To escape the war you emigrate to America ;). In the 1960s, the United States Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health is published and you finally have your consensus: smoking tobacco does cause cancer and many other diseases. You have been killing yourself for the last forty years! Alternative ending: Or maybe you are already dead when the report comes out
I’ve been mixing Huel using the two low-carb hack recipes on the website. Tastes great, and I feel more alert etc than unmixed. I’ve made this available for people to try through eBay, though don’t want to shamelessly market it without a few peoples feedback hahaha.
Please message me if you’re interested and keen to try out keto Huel - I’ll send out the link
) and not go into starvation mode (unless you are extremely obese, but even then you would eventually (the longest described medical case is AFAIR 382 days) get lean and need food 
