I’m sure there’s a million threads like this as people try to learn to eat Huel but here is mine!
I’m using Huel Essentials vanilla which I selected for the macro ratio and price. (Also I’m really off on how the daily greens version uses spirulina since spirulina gave me a B12 deficiency many years ago.)
I find the Huel every delicious and easy to get down and something I actively want to eat even when I have junkier options around. That’s the best part so far. I thought that might be a problem but it’s absolutely not a problem, love it. My original plan was to have Huel once or twice a week but it’s been much more often.
One problem that was a problem but I solved it is how it compresses the day. Like normally a meal isn’t a complete fifth of RDI (not that I normally eat exactly 2000 kcal either, as a low-activity woman), so I’d get some aminos and minerals one meal and some others another meal and with some of the meals replaced by Huel, that leaves me less room to combine things healthily.
My solution has been a li’l bit multi-pronged but for stuff I get through food normally, I’ll just have to vary it across the week rather than across every single day, and for things I get especially… B12 (I get through pills), selenium (brazil nuts) and calcium (unhulled sesames) I cut down severely. DHA and vitamin D I didn’t cut down as much. I calculated out that for every twelve meals of Huel I can skip one vitamin D pill since each pill has 2000 IU. (Which I need according to blood work.) DHA I normally take two capsules and if I eat a lot of huel I can take one instead or none. I haven’t gotten that far yet.
The three problems I haven’t solved yet are, and now we might veer into TMI territory here:
Satiety. I’m only gaining weight with Huel since every day I have a Huel meal, that’s 400 kcal on top of all other meals that day. It might make me eat 200 kcal less, total, that day, but that ends up as net gain of 400 kcal. When I started Huel, I was 30 pounds up, I wouldn’t mind losing some or all of that weight or at least staying still but I’ve only been gaining.
Keeping it down. There’s so much air in it that I have a hard time keeping it down. Letting it sit for longer or using it as an ingredient in smoothies (i.e. immersion mixer + frozen fruits&berries) or stirring it instead of using that dumb shaker helps a little bit.
Digestion. Have not gotten used to it yet. I’ve stuck to once per day (which makes the “satiety” problem above worse) except I’ve been doing it almost every day and one day I tried twice that day and that was a disaster and that was after doing once a day for weeks. Before Huel I had an amazing microbiome and I at tons of veggies and whole grains. Yeah, yeah, flax seeds specifically have always been challenging. Not sure 4% fibre is too little or too much but eating raw flour is also a kinda weird thing to do. This is the worst my gut has been in my entire life outside of when I’ve had outright illnesses.
So the biggest bit of advice I can give you is, if you are having a big dip in calories to what your body is used to there will be an element of your body adjusting to having that amount. Are you consuming a good substantial amount of water alongside this? The only reason why I ask is some people tend to ease off this when starting to use Huel. Water helps us feel full as sometimes the same hormone for hunger can trick us when actually we could just be thirsty!
When you mean keeping it down, you don’t mean you are throwing up do you? That’s what I thought when I first read it but wanted to make sure we are on the same page.
I’ve asked some questions internally on this point as I want to make sure we are getting you the best advice and direction. Once I get some further information on this, I’ll be in touch with you to confirm.
I haven’t really tried cutting yet so there’s no dip in calories. That’s part of the problem. If I normally have two or three meals in a day, having one shaker of Huel (two scoops + 500 ml water) in (almost) no way makes me disinclined to have any less of thone other non-Huel meals. Like if I have 400 kcal of sandwiches or 600 kcal of whole grains and veg, that is gonna make me less hungry at my other meals. (Which is normal.) But that happens to a much lesser extent with Huel.
Yeah, I’ve been drinking a lot of water on top of the Hueand other mealsl. I’m not looking forward to keeping that up if I ever am able to increase how much Huel I have in a day. Because five meals of Huel is already 2.5 litres of water! A fev cups on top of that should be enough. Too much water isn’t good either.
TMI warning:
Yes, I’ve come to close to doing that a bunch of times. Mostly it’s more like burping.
I just came home from a long walk and the stench in my home (from side effects after eating the Huel) is awful. Time to open all the windows.
Both fiber and variety are important to dietary intake, so keep up the great work with the veggies and whole grains!! It may not necessarily be the fiber content that is contributing to your experience, it might be that there is an ingredient or combination of ingredient that isn’t agreeing with you. Are there any other foods/ingredients historically you don’t tolerate well?
Never had a problem with oat or wheat or rye; eating the amount
of legumes I eat now took a lot of adapting but now I handle them
just fine (but even at their worst I never had this severity of
problems). Undiagnostically but just anecdotally I have had a
difficult time with pearled barley a couple of times.
