I want to know about strawberries adding

U I’m trying to lose weight… Is it OK to put frozen strawberries in Huel Or will that counteract the weight-loss properties of it?i

Adding fruit to your huel will add calories. Just take into account the added calories (there are only about 4 calories in one medium sized strawberry) and you’ll be fine. There is no such thing as weight loss properties. Huel just makes it easier to count calories. Adding anything to it just means that you have to add the calories of the additional ingredients to your day’s intake. You’ll lose weight as long as you consume less than you burn.

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I can’t express enough that if you’re attempting a weight loss to use some sort of app to track everything you eat by weight. Get a food scale and weigh everything, unless it’s prepackaged. I don’t bother with prepackaged stuff, I just scan the barcode and make sure the info lines up correct.

I personally use My Fitness Pal - I don’t bother with the pro version, I watch my intake and try to hit my macros within 3%. That last bit will make sense if you use MFP.

Meal prep and water will be your friends for sure. I prep everything for the week on Sunday night, that way there’s no excuse for me to mess up and not eat right.

Cheers!

Liz

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Add. Add. Add. In my opinion, it’s probably the only way I’m going to be able to do it over the long term. It puts a new spin on it and makes me feel like I’m actually preparing something. I’m not a hardcore calorie counter, but it obviously adds some. I counteract by cutting some powder. With the added juice and thickness of the blended fruit, it honestly makes it smoother and less grainy. Also, I really like blueberries in the vanilla. Pack a serious flavor punch and make a more balanced drink. Plus blueberries are awesome in general. Blend long and well, whatever you do.

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Calories in, calories out. It doesn’t matter what you eat as long as there is the positive or negative balance you are looking for.

Liz has a great point about using an app. I found one with the bar code reader that has thousands of pre-populated food items in it. It really helps reel in serving sizes and help me focus on what I am actually consuming.

I am a 2/300 Huel user; 2, 300 calorie Huels a day and one evening meal. I supliment the product with various fruits to make the sucrose free version more interesting…I don’t count the added calories.

I allow myself all the fruits and veggies I want and don’t count them, kind of a Weight Watchers spin. Great fillers, great flavors, and great nutrition.

And yes, I have been admonished by the purists that items such as corn and orange juice a have high sugar contents, but my diet is well rounded so I ignore the “advice”.

The thing is you have to make it work for you. Huel is a great meal replacement, but like any other option it has to be tolerable if you wish to maintain. 12 calories in strawberries per mix won’t throw your whole diet off balance…use the stairs and your back to even!

Actually, this is not entirely true. This paradigm is outdated and not supported by the science and research. In Gary Taubes book, “Why we get fat and what to do about it”, he goes over the evidence of why this “calories in verses calories out” paradigm is false.

Body fat is regulated like all other tissue in our body: hormones. Many hormones affect fat deposition and fat release. Hydrocortisone, Estrogen, Testosterone, Glucagon-like Peptide, Thyroid hormone, and some others. And the most potent of all these hormones affecting fat and glucose metabolism is insulin. Insulin trumps other hormones. If insulin levels are high: 1) The body’s cells will primarily burn carbohydrates instead of fats, 2) Glucose will get stored in liver as Glycogen, 3) Excess glucose will get converted into free fatty acids in the liver, 4) Adipose tissue will store fat and not release it. This science is not controversial and we’ve known this for over a half century.

Most of our body’s cells can use either carbohydrates or fat to make ATP. only our neurons and a few specialized cells need carbs. Our liver can only store a rather small amount of Glycogen. Our body can store a lot of fat, even in people are are not overweight. Also, fat is basically twice as energy dense as carbs. It is apparent that our bodies are suppose to use fat as primary energy source.

In essence, if we lower our insulin levels, the body will do several things: 1) Fat will be free to come out of adipose tisue, 2) Our body’s cells will begin to burn fatty acids to make ATP instead of only carbohydrates.

Ideally we are suppose to eat a low glycemic index meal which invokes a moderate insulin response. Our adipose tissue slightly fattens for a few hours after a meal and our body goes into carbohydrate-burning mode for a few hours. Then as insulin levels fall, the reverse happens and our adipose releases fat. Adipose is suppose to be a temporary storage buffer which provides energy for the several hours inbetween meals after our food has been digested. Ideally, we are suppose to be in “carbohydrate burning and fat storage mode” for only a short portion of the day and in “fat burning, fat-release” mode for most of the day.

To get back to point of the original post: Berries have a lower glycemic index than most fruits. Adding berries to Huel is probably a good idea if someone is trying to lose body fat.

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In essence, we do not get fat because we eat too much. Instead, we have to eat too much BECAUSE we are getting fatter.

Eating excess sugars and high glycemic index starches —> Insulin levels rise —> Body stores fat and goes into carb burning mode for too long —> since our carb storage is limited, we run out of carbs quickly and feel hungry. Even though we have excess fat, since insulin levels are still high (since we ate too much sugars and starches at the last meal), fat will not come out of the adipose tissue. Even if it did, high levels of insulin also tell body’s cells to burn carbs instead of fat to make ATP. And, as stated, since our carbohydrate stores are limited, we run out of fuel and our cells begin to starve. We feel hungry only a few hours after we ate our last meal. So we have to eat sooner than we otherwise would, had we eaten a lower glycemic index meal. Or we have to eat more food at each meal to compensate.

High insulin converts our bodies info carb-burning mode instead of fat burning mode. We fatten. And because we are fattening and not releasing the fatty acids from adipose tissue, we must eat more. Thus, we eat more because we are fat. Not the other way around.

It appears at first as if excess calories are the culprit. Rather, it is excess carbs. And yes a high calorie intake often includes high carbs. So it can be deceptive. But it is not the calories that make us fat, per se. Rather, the carbs.

If a person were to change their intake from a high glycemic diet to a low glycemic diet, their insulin levels will fall. The fatty acids will come out of adipose. The body will then be able to go longer before needing more food. We would naturally eat less as a result. No need to count calories. Your brain will no longer be hijacked by a sense that you need to eat more starches.

Again, this is what the science has told us for many decades. There is nothing controversial about this. This is exactly how insulin works. Insulin is the chief hormone affecting carb and fat metabolism and storage (these two macro-nutrients are interdependent), so it makes sense to look at insulin as the primary source of obesity.

Insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes, and mid-section (belly) obesity are all the same disease state.

It’s not the fat we eat. Fat eludes no insulin response.

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Insulin resistance makes the situation worse. When we develop insulin resistance slowly over time, not all cells become resistant to insulin at the same rate. The liver and muscle cells are primarily the ones that become resistant and down-regulate their insulin receptors. The adipose cells remain relatively sensitive to insulin. It is this mismatch that makes us fat when we develop insulin resistance.

This is how it works in a resistant patient:

The person eats a meal that contains carbs. Blood sugar rises as a result. Since high blood sugar levels are toxic, the body must deal with this. The pancreas Beta cells releases insulin in response. The liver and muscle cells are activated by insulin to burn carbs, store carbs into the form of glycogen, and (the liver) converts excess carbs into fatty acids. But in an insulin resistant patient, the insulin receptors are downregulated (due to years of excess sugar consumption). So the pancreas must release more insulin than it previously did years ago in order to make the liver and muscle cells do what’s necessary to control the rising blood glucose. They have less insulin receptors, so the pancreas compensates by releasing more insulin.

But since the fat cells do not downregulate their insulin receptors, this excess insulin secretion has a big effect on them. And, as discussed above, insulin signals fat cells to store fat.

This disporportionate insulin resistance between liver and fat cells means we get fat as we become insulin resistant (type 2 diabetes). So we get fat and develop diabetes at the same time. If the insulin resistance was equal between liver and fat cells (which it is NOT), we’d only get diabetes but not become overweight.

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Banannas are good too!

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