I’m honestly confused. I’ve been drinking Huel for going on 3 months now and I’ve been in the gym 3-4 days a week. I drink 2 3-scoop meals a day with a normal, light meal at the end of the day. I’m shooting for around 1600 calories a day to lose weight, but it’s not happening.
Is the booklet accurate saying that 3 scoops is 450 calories? Is there something else I’m not getting? It’s pretty discouraging because by this point I thought I would’ve saw a major difference.
If you’re not losing weight for several months the sad truth is most likely that you’re not on a calorie deficit. Either you eat more than you think (snacks?) or you use less energy than you think. The solution is pretty straightforward: Lower your calorie intake and/or raise your activity level.
It’s a bummer, but not much else to do.
A scoop is 38g
3 scoops are 114g
two x 3 scoops is 228g
1g is about 4 calories.
4x114 = 456 calories
4x228 = 912 calories
As Andeem has said. It is likely that you are either over-estimating your calorie expenditure or under-estimating your calorie intake.
Out of interest, what’s your height, age, weight, body fat percentage? What’s your normal non-gym activity and when you go to the gym what are you actually doing?
Are you really counting your “light meal” correctly? for example, are you using cooking oil or butter? just 10g of it in the frying pan is an extra 100 kcal, and are you gaining strength and muscle? and are you having any cheatmeals on the weekends? are you a beer drinker? 1L of beer is around 450 kcal (guinness way more) so if you are at a 400kcal deficit (assuming a 2000kcal metabolic rate) you will fuck it all up if you drink 13 50CL beers a week (just an example). or lets pretend that the butter is the issue thats 700 kcals extra a week and your deficit is 2800 to begin with, a pound of fat is around 3500 kcal, so assuming you fuck up by just 100kcal (10g of butter) a day, that nets you a deficit of 2100 kcal which is almost half a pound of BF (1750), lets pretend you also drink 2 beers thats another 450 and you are down to 1650kcal deficit a week which is half a pound, THIS is assuming that your diet is 100% perfect all week and you are only fucking up by the butter and beer, if you however eat a pizza on a saturday your whole week is ruined.
I appreciate the replies, guys.
I’m about 5’10", 26 years old, 165 lbs, and I’m not sure about body percentage…I haven’t gotten that officially measured. I have a desk job, which is what I’m doing if I’m not at the gym. I lift weights and have started doing HIIT running for 15-20min each time I go to the gym. I have definitely gained visible muscle but my belly/waist fat has gone nowhere.
It’s very possible I’m snacking too much, even as little as I do. I don’t have the time to raise my activity level so MAYBE lowering the scoops to 2 each meal would be sufficient. The crazy thing is I’m very hungry by dinner time with my current 3 scoop meals.
Jesus, you aint losing weight because you are eating too much, you are way to skinny or lean to even consider cutting on a 1600 kcal diet, How long have you been working out? muscle consumes calories so one case could be that you are “skinnyfat” and just dont have enough muscle to burn any more kcals, my tip for you is to keep the huel meals as is, because they are atleast measured correctly and my second tip is to buy a scale or buy meat that is already weighted and measured so you can count of off that, cutting weight is a total nightmare because you will be in a state of hunger for like half of the time you are awake, it is no easy task being on a deficit.
My training advice is skip the HIIT on training days, stick to deadlifts and squats on leg/back days and bench +OHP on upperbody days, and for the love of god no matter how much you hate legdays dont skip squats + deadlifts, atleast do 5 sets of them even if you hate it and do them heavy.
if possible take the bike to work and crank the speed, that can work as another fatburner just on the way to work, if this isnt possible try to do your hiit on your days off or end the workout with a 20 min jog/rowing machine 
I’m obviously no expert on nutrition so please spell it out for me. You’re telling me to continue eating the way I am but increase my exercise? Unfortunately biking to work is a no go.
I’d agree somewhat with Ostmackaa. For your age and height I reckon you’d be much better off at around 180lbs or so (That’s assuming a bodyfat percentage of around 12% and in reasonably good shape.
Your basal metabolic rate would be about 1900 calories a day at that weight. It’s probably somewhere about 1800 calories right now.
It would be good if I knew your waist measurement as that would give a rough estimate of your body fat percentage but personally I think you definitely need to be eating alot more than you currently are.
That’s what’s confusing to me. Eat more to lose weight? How would that help me get to my goal?
No, what i meant was keep the shakes as is because you KNOW how many kcal those are, and the meal you eat yourself should be meat and vegetables, something like 2 chicken breasts and a tonne of vegetables.
It depends on your goal really. I’m suggesting you are actually underweight and under-eating.
I’ll give the chicken and veggies a try.
Huh, that’s interesting to me. I never thought I could be underweight and have excess, visible fat.
I appreciate your guys’ input!
You arent necessarily underweight, but technically you could be “underweight” in terms of base metabolic rate (the rate at which you burn kcal) if in your case you weigh 165 pounds but dont have much muscle your BMR will be really low and you could technically use the term underweight, my philosophy is to stick around 10-15% BF and whatever weight is whatever.
However iam gonna add some numbers of 165 pound powerlifters just as a reference as what the elite at that weight does, because some people (might not be you) are really delusional as to how muscle they have.
The 163 pound (74kg) world records in squat, bench and deadlifts are the following:
810 pounds.
540 pounds.
722,5 pounds
Now these are the elite of the elite, at a decent level at your weight a deadlift should be around 300, squat should be around perhaps 270 and a bench around 220, now these are just speculative numbers and hugely depends on the style of training, but these are atleast some benchmarks for you.