I’ve a secret. I like trying random things out to see what happens
Some background - I’m 32 year old male (feeling old) over the past few years I’ve had to give up playing football and moved onto distance running - done 10 marathons. Sadly in the past 6 months I’ve developed patellar tendonitis which has really impacted my running (any tips on getting over tendonitis would also be appreciated!)
In that time I’ve put on about 2 stone (I’m 6ft1 and weigh 13 stone 10 when I should be about 11st 8 or so). Problem was I couldn’t run but I really didn’t change by high carb, high sugar diet. Other forms of exercise just didn’t give me the same calorie burn as running 20miles - who’d have thought!
Anyway. In a bid to try and lose a few pounds to help my recovery I’m giving Huel ago which will hopefully help the diet…
I’m planning on running my experiment for 3 months initially starting this week. I’m calling this week my intro week so aiming to replace breakfast and a few lunches with couple of scopes of Huel and then eat a normal dinner. Seeing how that goes next week I’ll look to move to about 90% Huel and just have a few meals a week.
As my goal is some weight loss I’ll be trying to keep under 2000 kCal so will be tracking my weight and maybe a few other measurements.
First thoughts from my start (got the GF vanilla Huel):
Taste - not unpleasant. Bit like a standard protein shake - the colder it is the better it tastes. Some clumping but I don’t really mind the odd lump.
Hunger - I find that I have my breakfast shake about 9am and can usually get to 1pm without any more hunger. I’d then have the next shake between 1-2pm. I seem to get through to 6pm-ish and not too hungry. I do find that I crave some sugar in the evenings but no mid-afternoon slump which is good.
Wind - unlike some others I haven’t had this issue yet but we will see how it progresses!
Anyway, thanks for reading my post - I plan to probably update this on a weekly basis to try and not bore you but here’s hoping Y = success
I guess it isn’t necessarily the best weight for my height but I’ve found my fastest times have come with weight around that figure so somewhere near there is a good indicator and somewhere to aim for.
Ah right. Seemed a bit on the skinny side for your height, but I did just check out the BMI for that height and weight and it was 21.3, so still healthy.
I think Huel will definitely work out for you, though beware the day 3 crash if you’ve been a sugar junkie recently
WRT your tendonitis…this might sound a little odd, and won’t burn as many calories, but look at a strength training regime built around whole body exercises (especially squat, lunges, deadlift, bench press etc.).
Context: the British Army is currently doing a lot of work looking at human optimisation in training (improving physicality but reducing injury and wastage rates) by focussing on the muscles that we use for running from a strength perspective. It seems that they are producing some pretty good results, with far less time in training spent actually running, more on strength but producing faster run times with reduced injury rates. Still very much in the trial phase, but perhaps an option with your injury issue?
It’s a good idea. I’ve spend a good part of the last 6 months doing some general strngthening too. I think some of my increased weight is muscle rather than fat.
My struggle has been that lunges in particular agitate the knee and swells up straightaway. MRI scan showed it was alignment issues so been doing VMO exercises like mad.
