Teeggie's Huel for Weight Loss Journal

Weight loss
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Hi Everyone!

Since I had my first child just over 2 years ago I have struggled to lose the baby weight and have only continued to gain more. I’ve tried Weight Watchers, Slimming World, Calorie Counting and straight up not eating and nothing has worked. Last week whilst wracking my brains about why I can’t seem to stick to anything it hit me, I don’t have the time or the motivation to prepare and cook healthy meals so end up grabbing something quick, generally high calorie and not filling. I’m a single parent with no nearby family support and looking after myself has definitely taken a back seat over the last 2 years.

I came across Huel when actually looking into meal delivery services and straight away I knew I had to give it a go. The idea that for 2 of 3 meals a day I wouldn’t even need to think and I could be confident that I’m getting good nutrition and the right amount of calories was perfect for me.

So I’ve bitten the bullet and today is the start of my Huel journey. I weighed myself this morning and came in at a whopping 16st 11.75lbs. I’m 6ft tall so that gives me a BMI of 32! My overall goal is to get back into the healthy BMI range so 13st 2lbs would have me at a BMI of 25, meaning I’m looking to lose 51.75lbs. Yay maths!

I’m aiming to drop 1lb a week and having used the calculators here will be consuming between 1200 and 1400 calories a day. I’m going to do 2 Huel meals a day of 2 scoops each and then a healthy dinner or lunch depending what the day is looking like.

This morning’s breakfast Huel went down pretty well and I like the flavour and oaty-ness. Slight spanner in the works today as my office is going to a greasy spoon for a team lunch but I shall just try to make a sensible choice and then I shall have Huel for my evening meal.

I’m going to try to log on here and keep this thread updated in an effort to keep myself accountable. I’m an absolute bugger for cheating if I know no-one is looking so hopefully posting honestly here will keep me on track.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Here’s to a great first week.

3 Likes
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Welcome!! I’m using Huel to aid in weight loss too and have a daily log somewhere here :slight_smile: Major props to you juggling single parenting, I really hope Huel will finally be your light at the end of the dieting tunnel!

Just wondering, is this too little? Did you take into account your TDEE or didn’t you use the BMR number? I’m 5ft tall (a whole foot shorter than you!) and I’m losing about 1lb a week on ~1500kcal. You also have more body mass than me, which means you can probably lose a pound while eating more calories. Remember that it’s not “the lesser the better”! :slight_smile:

Will be following your journey with interest :smiley:

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Hi Chris! Thanks for stopping by. I have a pretty much sedentary lifestyle for the majority of the week. Typical sitting at an office desk 5 out of 7 days. I did use the TDEE calculator. You’re right though the recommendation from that was 1264 calories to lose 2lb per week so I’d obviously read that wrong! :woman_facepalming: For 1lb a week it’s actually 1764 so I might actually up my Huels to be 3 scoopers as opposed to 2 or chuck in an extra 2 scooper throughout the day.

Got to say though, I had my breakfast Huel at 8am this morning (took me about an hour to drink) and I’ve not felt hungry all morning! Amazing! I’ve managed to avoid snacking on the biccies in the office which is normally impossible for me.

I’ll head over and check out your log. I love reading about other people’s weight loss experiences as it always gives me a bit of motivation so I’ll definitely be following you along.

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Good luck with it. Sounds like it’s we’ll suited to you if you don’t like cooking.

In theory weight loss is easy eat less and mover more in reality not so much…

Another bit of advice if you’ve haven’t already us to get a calorie tracker app such as my fitness pal and some food weighing scales for measuring your Heul and other foods. MFP app is good as it a bar code reader feature.

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Hi Everyone!

Sorry I’ve not checked in since I started. Very naughty! The weekend was busy and work yesterday was hectic! Anyway onto the update.

Friday

Weigh in: 16st 12.25lbs - 0.5lbs gain booooooo!

First day of the weekend for me. Weighed in at 16st 12.25lbs so a 0.5 gain from my start day. Not surprising really since we did go to the greasy spoon and I could not resist the cooked breakfast! Managed to keep that as my only meal for the day though, having Huel for Breakfast and Dinner.

The weekends are always harder when it comes to food. I still need to prepare food for my son so there is always temptation. He eats fairly healthy though so I usually let myself get away with picking at his stuff by saying it’s all good stuff. Not today though! I was resolute. I had had my Huel for breakfast around 10am and was sticking to it. On Fridays my friend and her daughter come over for an early dinner around 4pm and we take turns cooking so I had decided I would have that for my main meal and then have my second Huel later on in the evening.

As it was my friends turn to cook I was out of control of what we were eating. We ended up having Spinach and Ricotta Tortellini with a Tomato sauce and dough balls :open_mouth: In total it clocked in at 744 cals. Add the 600 cals I had from my breakfast Huel and late evening Huel and I totalled out for the day at 1291 cals so well within my limits.

Saturday

Weigh in: 16st 10.25lbs - 2lbs lost from yesterday woooooo! 1.50lbs lost overall.

Today was a bad day. I had the worst headache I have ever encountered. No amount of paracetamol or water drinking was shifting it. I supped down my breakfast Huel at 9am and still felt awful.

My son also decided that the only thing he wanted to do today was to bake cakes. No problem I thought, we’ll bake some cakes and I’ll keep a few out for him to have throughout the week and I will freeze the rest. Easier said than done. I think the combo of awful headache and the sweet smell of chocolate cake was too much and I succumbed.

This theme was set to continue through the day it seems. My son wanted veggie bacon sandwiches for lunch. I made him some… then made myself some :woman_facepalming:

Saturday night is always Pizza night at our house. My son and I usually share a frozen margherita pizza. I’d planned to stick with this as it would be well within my calorie allowance in combo with my Huel. After the bacon sandwiches and cake I thought about ditching it and just having Huel but then thought about the 1/2 a pizza just sitting around and again I was weak! So I had the pizza and didn’t have a second Huel for the day.

Even worse news… my headache never went away!

Calories for the day:
Huel = 300
Cake = 300
Bacon sandwiches = 884
Pizza = 428
Total = 1916

So over my allowance of 1764 but actually by no means a binge compared to what I would normally eat on a weekend day stuck at home not feeling 100%

Sunday

Weigh In: 16st 9lbs - 1.25lbs lost from yesterday wooooooo! 2.75lbs lost overall.

You can imagine my relief when I looked at the scale this morning. Remind myself that weight can fluctuate so I may still have some repercussions headed my way from my mini binge.

Today was going to be busy. Rugby training at 9am quickly followed by heading out for the day for Open Farm Sunday. A day exploring some local farms, meeting the animals and farmers and having some tractor rides.

In true Teeggie fashion I made sure to prepare a packed lunch for my son and completely forgot to do anything for myself. So I had no morning Huel and no pack up! We weren’t going to be home until about 2pm so I was at the mercy of whatever the farmers had decided to put on for the day. Must remember to be more organised!!

Luckily (I guess) the only offerings were a BBQ and as I’m a vegetarian there wasn’t anything for me to eat. It was at this point my son spotted the ladies selling ice cream. So I guess you can see where this is going. I asked them for a small ice cream, as small as possible, as I know my son will likely take about 10 licks then get bored and I’ll be left holding it and inevitable eat the rest. Of course they gave him a massive waffle cone filled with about 4 scoops of super creamy chocolate ice cream and of course he ate about 1/8th of it and handed it off to me. Now I did have a few licks and a couple of nibbles on the cone but I ended up giving the rest away to my friend and was feeling pretty smug.

After a couple more tractor rides and a few more goat strokes we headed home. My boy still has a nap in the day and usually it’s the time I end up snacking and eating poorly the most. Not today though! I am super woman! Not really, but I did decided to make myself a nice healthy portion of cous cous with some veggies.

For dinner I was going to have Huel but I had already made the plan to cook on sunday night so that I could batch cook a meal so I would have dinners to quickly grab during the week. The thought of cooking and then not actually eating anything was too much so I cooked as planned and made a lovely Creamy quinoa, mushroom and courgette concoction and potioned it up for the week and ate one of the portions then and there.

Calories for the day:

Choco Ice Cream = 100 cals (estimated)
Veggie Cous Cous = 404 cals
Creamy Quinoa thing = 424 cals
Total calories = 828 cals

Ok this is way too low I know. I would never aim to do this and am putting it down to my lack of organisation. I probably should have made a Huel to have as well but after I had eaten in the evening I was knackered and just wanted to head off to bed.

Monday

Weigh In: 16st 9.25lbs - 0.25lbs gain from yesterday booooo! 2.5lbs lost overall.

Little blip on the scale but lets be honest I’ve had a couple of slip ups over the weekend and I’m still in a great postion overall loss wise.

Monday’s mean work. Which for me is great for weight loss. I find it much easier to structure my food around my work day than around hectic weekends. I’ve been making my Huel in the evening ready for the morning as I like it nice and cold.

After yesterday’s far too low calories I’ve decided to up my Huel to 3 scoopers to make sure I’m more likely to be where I need to be.

Breakfast Huel goes down a treat and actually by lunchtime I’m not massively hungry but decided to have the quinoa I’ve brought with me so that I don’t end up stopping into a shop and buying a pasty when I’m out on site later in the day.

Pick up the boy from the childminder, get home and mix up Huel to put in the fridge to cool, cook the boy’s tea, get him in the bath, and off to bed. Finally put my feet up and enjoy a nice cool Huel whilst binge watching Prime Suspect on Netflix.

Calories for the day:

Breakfast Huel - 456 cals
Creamy Quinoa = 424 cals
Dinner Huel = 456 cals
Total Calories = 1336 cals

So that’s the round up. Congrats if you’ve managed to read this far! Today is going well so far, breakfast Huel and quinoa for lunch again will do a proper round up tomorrow. :kiss: