One month of Huel - pros and cons

Experiences
1

It’s been exactly one month since I introduced Huel into my diet so I thought I’d summarise my own personalise experience for this first month.

I have been consuming, on average, 3 scoops per day, sometimes as one meal (usually breakfast), sometimes spread over the day as snacks. I sometimes have an additional 2 scoops later in the day if I’ve been super busy and am so hungry I’m shaking and too hungry to have the concentration to cook!

Pros:

  • Cravings for sweet snacks has pretty much disappeared completely. This is great! I used to crave chocolate and / or sweets ALL the time regardless of how good or bad my diet was. I now never seem to fancy it. I do still enjoy a dessert if I’m having a meal out but no longer eat sweet snacks at home at all, and this has taken no will-power whatsoever. This is a massive pro! There must’ve been a nutrient lacking in my diet that I’m now getting through the Huel.

  • No longer need a whole cupboard of various vitamins and minerals

  • I didn’t get any of my usual negative reactions to artificial sweeteners (namely headaches and insatiable hunger and stomach aches). Apparently sucralose is fine.

  • The convenience is fantastic. As a cealiac, it’s so difficult to have fast convenient portable food. It’s not easy to find anything remotely healthy when you’re out, and it’s time consuming preparing meals to take out with you. Huel is perfect when you just need food!

  • I now have so much more time, energy and motivation to really cook properly. I now only feel it’s necessary to cook a hot meal once a day, and therefore I can really put something very nice together. I tend to crave fresh vegetables and something hot and healthy, as opppsed to craving snacky fatty foods that I did before.

  • Cooked food now tastes extra awesome! Due to the simple and bland flavour and nature of Huel, which is really just fulfilling the function of nutrients and not at all about eating for pleasure, real whole cooked food suddenly tastes absolutely delicious! Well I mean it always has. I love food. But I seem to appreciate it even more now. I really enjoy it. I no longer have to eat food purely to fuel me, I have Huel for that. I eat food for the taste and pleasure and experience.

  • I didn’t get any digestive issues at all introducing Huel into my diet. I don’t know if this is because I started slow with only 2 scoops a day. Or because I’m already someone that has a lot of oats, rice and pea protein plus multi vitamins in my diet. Either way, no problems here whatsoever.

Cons:

  • None of the pre-bagged flavours are quite to my taste. Not really a massive con, I just mix it up to my own preference. My favourite is one scoop unflavoured, one scoop original and one scoop vanilla - this gives a very subtle flavour and subtle sweetness. It means I have to have 3 bags open at once. It’s fine. Not really a problem.

  • I have a full bag of berry flavour that is so disgusting I can’t drink it no matter what I mix it with. I can’t seem to give it away! All my friends also hate it! I don’t like wasting food.

  • I haven’t lost any weight. But to be fair, I haven’t actually tried very hard. This wasn’t my main reason for trying Huel (it was for the convenience) and I never did intend to go straight in with 100% Huel or with cutting calories as I wanted to introduce it without drastically changing anything else in my diet, to see how my body reacted to the change.
    I think I might now make a more serious effort on this front.
    Update in a month!

Edit: I wanted to add one more massive pro… only cooking once a day = less washing up!

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2

Good balanced review there.

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Interesting you should say you now crave fresh veg instead of ‘snacky fatty foods’. I am the same. In fact, apart from eggs which I love, I am more vegan than vegetarian much of the time now.

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Do you like honey?

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Bzzzzzz…yes but it doesn’t always agree with me :laughing::honeybee:

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I got stung by a bee once…15 quid for a jar of Manuka honey.

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It’s weird but I’ve heard this soooo many times on the forum. I wonder what the science is?

Edit: just to say I also experienced this, I very rarely snack now

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I think it stops sweet cravings cos it’s low GI & helps stabilise blood sugar & avoid the peaks & troughs that cause cravings… Combined with the fact Huel is very filling cos of the high fibre content… It works like a dream to stop me snacking on sweet stuff too, just doesn’t appeal anymore, it’s my fave thing about being a Hueler!! :smiley:

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I agree. I also think it’s because it has everything you need in it though. Its not often a meal has the right proportions of carbs, protein, fats, fibre, vitamins and minerals and I think a lack of any of these things can cause cravings that we attempt to satisfy with sugar or salt or fat.
I also have the personal experience of finding Huel really sweet, and this means that I really don’t want more sweet stuff, I just want fresh fruit and veg!

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Interesting review - I’m experiencing very similar - although its only been 2 weeks so far for me.
I did get some headaches initially but I think that was because I cut out sugar, rather than a reaction to the sweeteners.

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what sort of numb nut (hope no snowflakes are reading) flagged the post above? Poor old Mandy.

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'tweren’t me! I was wondering the same myself :thinking:

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Ah that’ll be the big sugar corporations.
Annoyed she’s cut sugar.
Or possibly Big Pharma because she didn’t buy a box of nurofen for the headaches.

Maybe someone hit the flag by accident?

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Trigger happy some of them. I’ve been getting more flags than badges recently, and I don’t know why. S’oright I can tell @Tim_Huel tomorrow that they were probably mistakes, not real flags.

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Yes it most likely was accidental.

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Maybe there should be a flags of the world badge - one more you could add to your collection.

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Surely must be an accident, I read the post and nothing in it calls for a flag. Unless a snowflake thinks it’s wrong to cut out sugar… :flushed::flushed: :sneezing_face: But I got man flu so what do I know

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Fully justified.

Lack of self awareness?

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:blush: and some words

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@MandyMo This was an automatic flag by discourse. A new user created a topic, and another new user at the same IP address replied. I’ll DM you.