Hi guys,
I am a prediabetic person starting on huel next month. I’m using huel for weightloss.
I’m not a full-on diabetic so I don’t have to track my sugar intake or use injected insulin, but I’m wondering if anyone has relevant experiences going on huel and being a diabetic or prediabetic.
Every other diet I’ve tried had been a flop for me because limiting my sugar intake to almost nothing has a really negative impact on my blood sugars and I find myself having hypoglycemic episodes multiple times a day.
Would love to hear anyone’s experiences on huel as a pre/diabetic and what effect it has on your body and blood sugars.
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I’ve been diagnosed with T2 diabetes for ten years and have been eating Huel daily since mid-October last year, with my last “plate meal” in November: except for snacks (nuts and bombay mix) I live on Huel and the fruit juice I use to flavour it.
Before anything else, discuss your health with your GP and consider asking for a referral to a dietitian. The reason I say this is that I’m worried about your saying that limiting your sugar intake leads to hypos. While someone diagnosed as being at risk of developing diabetes could well mind their sugar intake, it’s practically impossible to exclude sugar from the diet altogether, and if you’re having hypos, the first aid remedy for it is, you guessed it, sugar in an quickly and easily digestible form. Most people with diabetes manage their condition without the aid of insulin, and many manage their diabetes through diet and exercise alone.
The thing that people with diabetes have to be careful of is not pure sugar, but carbohydrates. As part of the digestive process carbs are broken down, disassembled if you like, into sugar. Obviously pure sugar will affect blood glucose fastest which is why people prone to hypos will often carry a few jelly babies or similar with them in case. We need carbohydrates as they’re the basic fuel that keeps the muscles in the body working. Huel works well for people with diabetes because the carbohydrates in Huel has a low glycaemic index (it takes longer to break down into sugar), so provides a slow release of sugar into the bloodstream rather than the sudden spike you’d get from a can of sugared pop.
I’d suggest when you see your GP you take a printout of the nutritional breakdown of Huel with you: pound to a penny your GP won’t have heard of it (I’ve yet to encounter a doctor who has, I’m afraid). But you must see your GP before starting any weightloss diet, both to assess your fasting blood glucose and from that to assess what sort of diet is going to be best for you.
For the record, my diabetes ran away with itself a while ago; I have a number of other medical problems which may have had some bearing on this, but my cheating on my diet certainly didn’t help. With medication and sticking to my Huel/fruit juice and nuts diet, I’ve gone from BGs of 15 to 20 (old numbers) to averaging around the 6 mark.
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It turns out that for diabetes type 2, dietary fat is the cause, and glucose in the blood the symptom. So you should NOT be surprised that lowcarb makes things worse. Don’t fall for “fad diets” and pseudoscience. If you want some real science, listen to Michael Greger, John McDougall, Neal Bernard.
You should somehow determine if indeed low fat diets do tend to heal your problem. If this is the case, then you should probably not use powder food, because powder food usually has ~30% fat (as you can see by looking at these charts: https://www.blendrunner.com/?sort-by=fats-percentage). The few offers that don’t have ~30% fat probably have quickly absorbed carb (because it’s powder food) that aren’t right for you either.
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