I’ve been using Huel as an adhoc meal replacement for a few years.

I’ve ended up using it as a tool for lunches when I want to guarantee I don’t overeat, if I’ve eaten too much recently it helps shrink my stomach and appetite slightly too so ends up helping me maintain or loose a bit of excess weight.

It’s vegan, a complete nutritious meal replacement, quick and tasty.

Whilst on Lockdown due to the Coronavirus epedemic my workplace has become my kitchen and dining room, right next to all the wonderful snacks and distractions I could possibly hope for!

The lockdown highlighted just how routine and automated parts of my life were and it really threw me.

I comfort eat and for the first month, I forgave my comfort eating and signed up to deliveroo plus, definitely my favourite app of all time!

1 stone later and an increase of body fat percentage of around 3.5-4% I knew I had to get on top of my habits, eating routine and ultimately my health.

I decided to experiment and eat only Huel for the entirety of a week (except bang in the middle for Date night where I had a take away curry!)

As standard Men need 2500 calories per day, Huel recommend an intake of 2000 calories if you are trying to loose weight. As I exercise each day for at least an hour using around 600 – 700 calories I decided to eat 5 x 450 cal bottles a day totalling 2250 calories giving me a 250 cal deficit, or 850 – 950 cal deficit with exercise.

In my experience, unless I am doing a long endurance session I don’t need to overly consider upping my intake to cover my exercise calories so the 850 – 950 cal deficit doesn’t worry me.

Decide, then don’t decide

I’m an abstainer not a moderator, my personality can work with deciding on something and sticking to it. Once I decide something I then don’t need to re-decide which allows me to stop all the urges to go to the snack cupboard or order a take away, eat a banana or anything else. I know the answer is simple, “No, I’m eating Huel”

I spread the Huel over an 8 hour period as I also enjoy the intermittent fasting approach, 16 hour fast, 8 hour eat. I find this minimises the time I am hungry, I started at 11am and finished at 7pm eating at: 11am, 1pm, 3pm, 5pm & 7pm.

Once I start eating in any given day, my hunger is activated and it becomes something I have to actively manage, therefore under normal circumstances I generally skip breakfast and have a later lunch. At work I tend to eat at 1pm or as late as 3pm on occasion. I find I’m not hungry in the morning at all and can get on with my work.

I ordered some more Huel as I used the last bag, this gave me the opportunity to use the latest ‘Black’ edition as well as the new standard Huel V3 and V2 snack bars.

The latest Huel comes with a new scoop size which sets each Huel as 400 calories instead of 450. I kept with the 5 a day and added in a 200 calorie Huel bar to keep close to the 2250 (being 2200).

The new Huel black edition has less carbs as it isn’t based on oats and more protein. I’m not a fan of high protein diets but I know my body runs better on a fatty, lower carb diet, not to say that I am in anyway Keto. With that said I wanted to try this mix along side the traditional Huel.

Both the new Huel white and black editions are smoother. I really like the black edition and the chocolate version is really good for the last meal of the day, I treat it as a dessert.

The Huel bars are a massive improvement on their first V1 bars which basically made you need a bowel movement pretty soon after eating – so not great for running fuel, discovered the hard way.

We manage what we monitor – the results

I weigh myself every morning first thing on Garmin Smart Scales which link up via WiFi to Garmin Connect app. This allows me to see trends over weeks, months and years. We manage what we monitor and I find it useful dealing with facts rather than just gut feel when it comes to health and nutrition.

I enjoyed my week on Huel, even though there were a few times I missed snacking or the idea of a take away it felt good to be back in control of my food intake after a month of free fall. Whilst I know this is kind of extreme it has helped me reset my hunger and returned me to a more comfortable weight and body fat percentage.

You can see the effect of the take away curry on Thursday night for my date night. I believe my body over stocked any fat as a result of the 3.5 days of calorie deficit, normally it wouldn’t have this extreme effect. My experiences of monitoring my weight every day is that my body tends to try to maintain fat % until it feels safe to accept the new normal and lower the fat %, which it does quickly once it’s comfortable.

I plan to do a further week of using Huel for every lunch time and not starting until after midday.

Hope you found that interesting! Drop me a comment if you did.

You can find more information on Huel at their website: https://uk.huel.com/

If you order, get £10 off for me and you by using the following link: https://huel.mention-me.com/m/ol/xx4ws-sam-tampln