Hi fellow Hueligans, here comes my very first post. I love Huel and everything about it. Which is why I want to enjoy more of it while taking in not too much more calories.
This was most likely asked a million times before, but what are your best hacks to thicken or extend Huel meals?
I’m blending them and leaving them in the fridge over night, and that works already great. I also tried using Konjac Root, which helped but ultimately hurt the experience for me.
Banana is obvious, though I’d like to avoid the extra calories.
Powdered peanut butter would add flavor but also calories, similar to banana.
I used food-grade DE (diatomaceous earth) for the sake of silica supplement and for whatever other gut health benefit [too many words to explain here, research if interested] I noticed that it does increase the thickness of my already thick shakes (400ml for 400cal of powder)
I would say in general that you don’t want less calories(in Huel). If you are on Huel alone you will drop weight, look at that guy that lost like 130 pounds, I’ve already lost 8 and I weight less than 200 pounds as a male. For example if you were to take in 2k calories a day of Huel, that’s 10 scoops a day! Quite a lot, plus it’s nutritiously balanced so it will cover the calories you do need to function.
People generally know that bananas are very nutritious, but many wonder how many calories and carbs they actually contain.
A medium-sized banana contains 105 calories, on average.
However, different sizes of bananas contain varying amounts of calories.
Here are the calorie contents of standard banana sizes (1):
Extra small (less than 6 inches, 81 grams): 72 calories.
Small (6–7 inches, 101 grams): 90 calories.
Medium (7–8 inches, 118 grams): 105 calories.
Large (8–9 inches, 136 grams): 121 calories.
Extra large (9 inches or longer, 152 grams): 135 calories.
Sliced (1 cup, 150 grams): 134 calories.
Mashed (1 cup, 225 grams): 200 calories.
In my [ntbh] opinion, the nutritional benefits of bananas far out weight the minimal calories they would add to your Huel. If you’d like to check out the rest of this information, Click here.
All of that sounds amazingly delicious and giving it a yummy texture, but for me it’s really about extending the huly goodness without adding calories or messing with its nutricianal balance.
Thanks Wilma, will reconsider this. My thinking was just that I liked the idea of Huel being exactly what I need, without actual other food added. and I’m easily finding myself on a slippery slope once I broke my own rules. So sticking to only Huel at a controlled amount seems an ideal fit to both my weight goals and health goals. And once I have bananas even at home, I know I.will get weak on some midnight and plow throw them
@macrobano Thanks, you of course got a point. It’s just hard for mw to stick to daily calories limit to reach me weight goals, because I’m usually ending up still being hungry. And I would have to double or triple my dosis of Huel in order to feel full.
So I’m rather aiming at adding water and whatever else is calorie free while trying to retain as much taste and thickness as possible. So stick to a fixed amount of Huel while getting the most feeling of being full out of it.
So far leaving it in thw fridge for the night plus the konjuc root helped kind of.
No need to thank me, it’s just food for thought (pun intended). But read back to yourself what you just wrote. It’s THAT very thinking that is causing you to climb the slippery slope. If you can tell yourself to stick to ONLY Huel in controlled amounts, then you can also tell yourself ONLY 2 BANANAS today. YOU made the rules and YOU can amend them.
You don’t have someone keeping the bags of Huel hidden away from you until you need them do you? You could, theoretically, have as much as you want, should you decide you want an extra “meal” or 2, correct? You see where I’m going I hope.
If you really want to get nitpicky, add a banana and take out a teaspoon of Huel. That’s close enough to a 100 calorie exchange isn’t it? If you’re that hell-bent on sticking to YOUR rules, then fine. You just stuck to them, more or less. Same amount of calories, why not? Shall I get more absurd, or do you get my point now??
There are plenty of fun ways to burn off a couple hundred extra calories ya know!! I’ll leave the details to your imagination…
It sounds like your rules are very rigid. I know it can be really frustrating when the body (which is hungry) doesn’t comply with what the mind wants (which is to lose weight). If you are plowing through whatever else you have in your home, it means your eating is too restrictive. If you stay hungry on whatever Huel portion you’re giving yourself, it means your eating is too restrictive. It sounds a lot like your body is trying to refeed, which is what it needs to do after any short or long term restricting. This is true regardless of your weight or body composition. Bodies like to be nourished, not controlled.
If you have a history of the restrict/binge cycle (which I imagine many of us know well) and have a hard time coming out of it on your own, I recommend getting a dietician to help, one that knows how to help people with restrictive eating. I hope that’s not where you’re at, because it can be such a bitch to get out of.
That sounds all very reasonable, you are probably right. It l’s a permanent struggle for me, and I just figured out that the simpler the rule and the less extra things like apples or bananas are around me and have to be eaten before expiring, the easier it is for me to stick to it.
I’m in pretty good shape by now, indulging myself with other foods here and there and have the freezer full of awesome healthy cooked food.
And then again, once I’m on a low calorie spree, I can stick to it pretty well a while. But once I eat that one more thing that breaks the streak, it’s falling apart again.
Yeah, first world problems. It really more curiosity and not an actual problem how I can as much fullness and joy out each scoop of Huel as possible.
You may be right. I just think that control with rather rigid rules is what works best for me in my experience. Too often I’m breaking those rules anyways. I’m in pretty good shape as well, so no need to consult a professional. It’s more the challenge to get the most out of each meal of Huel and to reach certain weight goals, getting rid of that extra bit of subcutaneous belly fat.
And there you have it. You’ve convinced yourself of something that you don’t seem to want to convince yourself otherwise. It’s that inner dialogue that is doing it. Yet you make it sound like you have no control over that dialogue, but you do! Sighhhhh😞
I guess I’m just going to leave you and her to figure it out for yourselves. There’s only so much I can do in a text box.
Oh, by the way, the I have to eat it before it goes bad excuse is a cop out. I buy 20-25 lbs of bananas at a time and they NEVER go bad. And no, I don’t eat them all before they do, I slice and freeze most of them when they are at peak ripeness to preserve the nutrients!! Yeah, duhh!! Then I use them to thicken my Huel smoothies! “Oh gee, I never thought of that,” she says.
That’s right, bananas and ice make smoothies thicker. I wonder what would happen if I…aha!!
If you think you can, or you think you can’t, YOU’RE RIGHT!!
I don’t think you’re going to be able to this without adding SOME calories. Adding streamed veggies will thicken it and add fiber with minimal added calories. Also consider white beans. I have added 1/4 cup without being able to taste any difference.
Obviously you’ll need to use a blender for these additions.
Worst case scenario eat an extra scoop or two of huel. Just don’t eat late night. Your rules are arbitrary as well. There is this thing called basal metabolic rate and it’s different for everyone, but it’s the amount of calories you burn through in a day without doing anything. Generally the more fit and more muscle you have the higher that rate is. Now, if you add exercise on top of that, your calorie demand is going to be much higher than the basal rate. It will also cause you to be hungrier. So you shouldn’t have a rigid calorie intake, it’s the wrong way to look at it. Huel is so low calorie you can basically dump the stuff into your system all day and still lose weight. Granted, you want to be working in a regular exercise regiment to keep it going. Building muscle will cause your basal metabolic rate to go up which will eat through more body fat as time goes on. That’s why some athletes need a ridiculous calorie intake just to maintain their current level of musculature. Take Michael Phelps or a College/NFL Lineman or Sumo wrestler. Their caloric intake is obscene, but they have to intake at a constant or their muscles will eat themselves(not literally). So if you are worried about a 200-400 calorie difference. Don’t. Load up another scoop or two. If you want to get really technical you can do what I do which is to split it up between 6 to (currently) 8 meals a day. Your metabolism will function most efficiently on smaller meals. Hope this helps. (Correct)Diet and exercise works, most people just don’t have the mental tenacity to make it work for them.
Yeah, surely a lot of it is happening in my head and could be changed, thanks for the food for thoughts. But frankly, it’s also based on experience with the way my mind works. It’s not only my worries about expiration, but more a combination of eating what’s available when a craving comes up, and a weird sense of having to clear out what’s left. So I could either try to change thia by going to therapy, or I figured just streamline my diet by not buying certain things in the first place. And as sad as it might sound, removing item after item from the shopping cart and banning them strictly from my diet completely is the only strategy that worked, and also removed the unrest from my mind that things can/have to be eaten.
It probably sounds more dramatic than it is, but for example I’m not buying any butter or fruit spread anymore, and finally removed the bread. Because eating just a little bit of it one time od the day just didn’t work, even before I Hueled. Otherwise I couldn’t help myself plowing through half a bag of orowheat at midnight. After which I was both still hungry and unhappy because I basically had rendered all my dieting efforts of the day useless by within 5 minutes. My brain just has a hard time to stop enjoying food or to become bored of it once I start eating. Same with cereals - I just don’t by them, because one bowl becomes 5. Or 10…
Back to the bananas: buying them and eating just one for breakfast worked pretty well, and I may go back to this routine, maybe just blend them with Huel. Of course I so blend Huel with ice sometimes, all great ideas. But leaving the stuff in the fridge after blending still gave the best results for me so far.
Thanks @macrobano, that’s probably a good approach. I do of course factor my workouts in and uae myfitnesspal to compute my daily calorie goal. I always thought to rather add some Huel to fight cravings, even if that messes up the numbers. Still better than eating just carbs.
And by the way, I’m pretty satisfied with my weight, just want to loose a bit more, and most importantly not gain any. While maxxing out the Huel joy at the same time:)
About the timing and sizing of portions: I know the science that tells us to eat many small portions rather than large and late ones. I’m doing the exact opposite for the most part
The reason being that I’m under the impression that small portions frustrate me, and leave me unsatisfied. Plus that the sense of getting a low blood sugar level before lunch and dinner actually takes me into a state of better focus at work. Plus that I have again a strict rule to go by, not having to wonder all the time whether I should throw in a quick indulgement. Which interrupts work, is often acting as an excuse to get away from an unpleasant task, still leaves me hungry, and simply disrupts the routine. And I also feel that the additional nutrition affects my focus. One final aspect is that it’s what’s unconsciously motivating me to make it through the day and exercise to work towards the reward of a larger meal.
So far so stupid probably, because it makes me drink two larger Huel meals twice a day, one very late at night.
Thanks @Desert_Way , I’m already blending Huel. Beans have actually a lot of calories, so I’m wondering if that gives any benefits over just adding more Huel?
