So I have been using huel for roughly a month and can’t decide exactly what the best schedule is for me. I am replacing breakfast and lunch. My work schedule varies, but i usually eat breakfast around 6 am and get off work around 5pm, workout 3-4 days a week after work, and eat a “real” dinner around 7 pm. I would like to consume no more than 1000-1200ish calories of huel (~150 cal/scoop), which in addition to 700 or so calories for dinner puts me between the 1750-2000 mark for the day. I’ve tried just straight replacing breakfast and lunch with full “meals”, meaning 3 scoops of huel at each meal (900 calories). This works okay for the morning, but I seem to start getting hungry again around 3-4. It seems impossible for me to go all the way from noon-7pm on three scoops. so i started doing a “snack” amount in the afternoon. 1 scoop honestly made no difference to me. 2 scoops seemed to help, but this put me right at my 1200 calorie/8 scoop mark. This most recent week I tried doing 2 scoops each at 6, 9, noon, and 3. This seemed to work well in that it was well spaced and i was never super hungry. But i was also never “full” and was still at my 8 scoop limit.
TLDR - anyone have any suggestions for a schedule or are you doing something that works well for you that i should try? Thanks!
I’ve been doing 16/8 intermittent fasting (only eating within an 8 hour window a day), and it has worked really well for me. I usually eat from about 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but I’ll probably change that to 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. soon. Maybe the first couple days of intermittent fasting I felt hungry in the morning before eating, but I adjusted quite quickly. Now, sometimes I’ll get a little hungry within a couple hours of my first meal or within a couple hours of going to bed, but it’s very minor compared to what hunger used to be like, so it’s easy to overcome with just a little self-discipline. I usually workout first thing in the morning, and on weight-training days I consume a scoop of (calorie-free) BCAA’s before and after working out.
I will say, though, that I’m only relying on Huel for about half my calories. I have almonds and Huel around 9 a.m., then almonds and Huel around 12:30 p.m., and then a can of black beans around 3:30 p.m. I haven’t tried consuming only Huel for even one day, but I still think that intermittent fasting might help regulate hunger once you get used to the new schedule. It probably really varies by person in terms of how helpful intermittent fasting is, so if you don’t want to try it or you try it and don’t find it useful, that’s cool, too!
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@huell.babineaux thanks for the info! i dont think i could do only huel either. i really enjoy eating, lol. but doing two meals a day hasnt been too bad! slight transition at first for sure. and i think for now im going to try my four smaller doses throughout the day and see how that works for me. Are you doing the fasting to lose weight, maintain weight, just personal health, etc.? Just curious
I’ve seen it said online that being in a fasted state (having not eaten for 12+ hours) promotes weight loss and muscle building. Right now I am in the process of losing weight and have about 15 pounds more to go, but even when I’m down to my goal weight, I’ll still probably keep doing intermittent fasting unless some sort of scheduling conflict makes it way more inconvenient. I adjust my caloric intake as a means of regulating my weight, and I don’t know for sure whether the intermittent fasting is having an effect on my body composition.
More importantly for me, I’m not sure that if I ate what I’m currently eating but at a more traditional meal schedule that I wouldn’t be hungrier more often. I’m pretty sure I’d get hungry mid-morning, and I might even get hungry mid-afternoon and/or after supper. By keeping my current eating schedule, I’ve been able to train my body to limit its hunger outside of my feeding window. Basically, outside the feeding window, I just don’t get hungry enough for it to be a distraction. It probably helps that I was never the sort of person to feel like having a big breakfast first thing in the morning. I would usually feel like skipping breakfast, but then I’d get hungry mid-morning. In that sense, my intermittent fasting works with my natural eating habits.
But hey, if four smaller meals works for you, that’s great! We all have different bodies that have their digestive quirks. I’m not diabetic, but I know from experience that my blood glucose levels are sensitive to what and when I eat (eating simple carbohydrates early in the day is just asking for trouble). So, by only eating later in the day, limiting my eating window, and eating foods high in fiber, protein, and healthy fats, I’m able to keep my caloric intake at a healthy level while still avoiding getting ravenously hungry.