Come play... with Huel (Week 1)

2 weeks ago I saw a sponsored AD on Facebook for what appeared to be another dietary supplement drink. This is not something unheard of to me as I have seen many of my colleagues and friends buy in to such fads. A few girls I know tried the Juice Plus diet and swore by it, however I couldn't see how it could be sustainable long term and I figured all that sugar must make you crash eventually, whether it's pure or not. And your body needs things other than vitamins, like protein and calcium for example. Not things I'm aware of strawberries and grapes comprising much of. So I was sceptical initially. However I saw in the AD that it was supposedly a fully nutritionally balanced formula, as well as being made up of natural, sustainable ingredients. It caught my curiosity, so I clicked the link.

(Back story coming up, if you just want to know what I thought of the drink then skip the next 4 paragraphs)

I have had problems regarding my weight for a while now, fluctuating significantly from year to year, and between 2013 to 2015, I had gained nearly three stone (or 18 kg for European readers). I was 68 kg at my heaviest in May last year, potentially due to daily consumption of alcohol and lots of meat and bread whilst touring Poland. I also suffered from pretty bad constipation, likely due to my diet and lack of exercise (which I used to do a lot of cycling 8/9 miles a day to and from work in Manchester (2013-2014)). And with the pressures of Uni and work alongside, since late 2014 I've not really had time to work out, and I lived too far from campus to cycle in to uni every day, so I got the bus, and got fat in the process.

Once I moved closer to Uni I started to cycle in everyday, however I was still spending my weekends working in an office and my evenings doing coursework/revision. So I still lead a predominantly sedentary life. I also live with my boyfriend who is 6ft 4". Whilst I'm only 5ft 2", I still consumed (roughly) the same amount of food as him, and would genuinely get annoyed when he even suggested the idea of me getting a smaller portion. Only child syndrome and all that.

So though I did manage to shift some of that weight, I couldn't seem to get past the 10st mark. I'd always fluctuate between 10st 2 and 10st 4. And I didn't really know how to cook at all (still don't) and due to mostly living off alcohol, sandwiches and Weatherspoons dinners; I constantly felt lethargic and Senekot became my only friend on my days off often going several days without a number 2.

So at the start of this year I decided to try to reduce my dependency on alcohol by doing the Dry January thing. The last post I wrote on here talks about how that went. And basically I decided to keep it up after January due to the significant amount of money I managed to save and how better I slept/felt generally (4 months sober next Friday woo!). However I barely lost any weight despite the fact I used to consume either a bottle of wine or several tins of high % alcohol beer every day. I basically went from fluctuating between 10st 2 to 10st 4 to 10st - 10st 2. So within the entire exercise, I lost an average of 2 pounds. If I stopped drinking solely to try to lose weight, I'd be drinking again.

So, digression aside (Jesus), I clicked the link, and read up on it, and read reviews on what other people thought about it. And it sounded perfect for my demographic. "Lazy twenty-something who can't adult". They were also giving away a free shaker thingy and a t shirt on your first order. So how could I resist?! After reading up on it honestly I wanted to go ahead and buy a months supply but my boyfriend told me to hold back and check to see if it doesn't taste like how curry mile smells on a Sunday morning.

So I bought it on the Sunday and it arrived last Tuesday. The first time I used it I just mixed it with water and used the shaker thing that it came with, and it was all lumpy and tasted weird (I got the Vanilla one). NOT unbearable, just weird. So I then checked out Instagram to see if other people were using it and what they mixed it with (since they say on the site you can mix it with other things to make it more appatising). I saw a girl mix it with Hazelnut Almond milk and I thought that sounded nice so I got some, mixed the almond milk with water at a ratio of 5:3 for 100 grams of Huel. And blended the shit out of it. And not only did it become MORE bearable, but its actually really yummy!

I've not gone cold turkey like I thought I would I must admit, I have had the odd solid meal here and there, but most days I'll have Huel for breakfast, lunch and dinner and have a fruit bar or something in between. I'm also trying to only consume 1200 calories a day and if I go over, I'll work off the difference. I'm really trying to get down to 57kg or 9st at the moment. Honestly after that I'll probably try to get down to 8st (50kg), unless I happen to amass some Hulk-like muscle, though I doubt that since I mostly just do cardio (Just Dance Sweat). 

BTW something to note if you haven't noticed already, I have a LOT more energy now than I used to, and I've been exercising every day (bar 1, uncle popped round) since I started using Huel. 

(The constipation issue has also been resolved, probably why I lost so much weight so quickly (as you'll see below), people always tell me I'm full of shit but I didn't actually believe them!)

Below are a few tables showing what I've been eating in conjunction with Huel and how many calories each meal contains. Along with this the amount of calories I've been burning through exercise. 

(Note that I'm meeting all of my nutritional requirements by the amount of Huel I'm consuming alone)

Tuesday (22/03/16)
Breakfast	Cornflakes, Milk & Coffee	183Kcal
Lunch	Huel Vanilla 100g	410Kcal
Dinner	1 third of a Pizza	271Kcal
Snacks	Crisps 10g, 2 Flapjack bites (FJB) & Winegums	504Kcal
Exercise	Just Dance Aerobics In Space (55min) + Walking (22min)	231Kcal
Goal-Food+Exer (Kcal)	1200 - 1368 + 231 = 63
Wednesday (23/03/16)
Breakfast	Huel Vanilla 100g	410Kcal
Lunch	/	0 Kcal
Dinner	Huel Vanilla 100g + Orange & Mango Juice (500ml)	640Kcal
Snacks	Crisps 5g, 2 FJB, Coffee & Granola Slice	478Kcal
Exercise	Just Dance Aerobics In Space (42min)	117Kcal
Goal-Food+Exer (Kcal)	1200 - 1528 + 117 = -211
Thursday (24/03/16)
Breakfast	Huel Vanilla 100g + Orange Juice (400ml)	578Kcal
Lunch	Huel Vanilla 100g + Orange & Mango Juice (200ml) + 2FJB	676 Kcal
Dinner	/	0Kcal
Snacks	Coffee	2Kcal
Exercise	/	0Kcal
Goal-Food+Exer (Kcal)	1200 - 1256 + 0 = -56
Friday (25/03/16)
Breakfast	Huel Vanilla 100g + Orange & Mango Juice (200ml) + 2FJB	676 Kcal
Lunch	/	0Kcal
Dinner	Huel Vanilla 100g + Orange & Mango Juice (200ml)	502Kcal
Snacks	Paluszki solone (26g)	97Kcal
Exercise	Just Dance Aerobics In Space (58min)	157Kcal
Goal-Food+Exer (Kcal)	1200 - 1275 + 156 = 82
Saturday (26/03/16)
Breakfast	Huel Vanilla 100g + Orange & Mango Juice (200ml)	502Kcal
Lunch	Pasta, Soup & 2 FJB	658Kcal
Dinner	Bagel w. Low fat soft cheese	254Kcal
Snacks	/	0Kcal
Exercise	Gym - Cardio + Walking	216Kcal
Goal-Food+Exer (Kcal)	1200 - 1414 + 216 = 2
Sunday (27/03/16)
Breakfast	Huel Vanilla 100g + Alpro Hazelnut Almond Milk  (200ml)	515Kcal
Lunch	/	0Kcal
Dinner	Huel Vanilla 114g + Alpro Hazelnut Almond Milk  (250ml)	527Kcal
Snacks	Coffee & Green Tea	3Kcal
Exercise	Just Dance Aerobics In Space (38min)	102Kcal
Goal-Food+Exer (Kcal)	1200 - 1045 + 102 = 257
Monday (28/03/16)
Breakfast	Huel Vanilla 100g + Alpro Hazelnut Almond Milk  (200ml)	515Kcal
Lunch	Huel Vanilla 50g + Alpro Hazelnut Almond Milk  (100ml)	258Kcal
Dinner	Huel Vanilla 50g + Alpro Hazelnut Almond Milk  (100ml)	258Kcal
Snacks	Granola Slice	275Kcal
Exercise	Just Dance Aerobics In Space (1hr 19min) + Walking	225Kcal
Goal-Food+Exer (Kcal)	1200 - 1306 + 225 = 119

My weight on the 22/03/16 was 63.5 kg. My weight this morning on the 29/03/2016 is 61.4 kg.

I've lost 2.1 kg or 4.63 pounds in 1 week. And I feel pretty good in general.

I'll keep you updated with how I get on over the next few weeks (hopefully not essay-like like this one, felt like I missed a lot of points out but nobody's probably reading this anyway)

Tra for now xx

Come play... During my Dry January experience

Once the clock hits 12 tonight I will be 1 month sober! Funnily enough, I never thought of myself as an alcoholic, but I'd never stretch so far as to say I was only a moderate drinker. Especially over the month of December last year, when I ended up taking on more shifts at work at the pub and consequently, supplied myself with plenty of free booze (all legit of course).

However, I noticed that my drinking was starting to take it's toll when I'd find myself going through a bottle of wine at least a night. I had this issue where I could say no to a glass, however once a single one was consumed, the bottle could not be left unfinished. When considering the term of the glass being half full or half empty, in my case, the BOTTLE, should be neither, it should always, be completely, FULL, and then, EMPTY, and then another sourced to be devoured without delay!

This was all fine and well, I suppose, in my teens and early twenties, however now I have reached the year that I should (hopefully!) hit my 25th year of existence on this planet, and with my life not having turned out entirely as planned, still juggling bar jobs with my studies at university, whilst most of my peers had graduated a long time ago and are getting well and truly stuck in to their careers, I found a sober moment to contemplate my life choices and deliberate them in detail.

I thought about all the key points in my life that had lead me down then path that I find myself on. Why didn't I reach my predicted grade in school or college? Why didn't I pass my first year in university first time around? And why did I choose to work in customer service for 3 years instead of push myself to get a job I had any remote interest in?

Then I noticed a running theme, I started drinking 3 months before I was due to take my GCSE's, spending the majority of my free time down the beach with my friends getting wasted on Bella or Glen's vodka. Instead of attempting to revise for my exams. How I managed to pass them all (though some just barely) I'll never know.

This trend followed suit through college, especially once I moved out from home. Most of my 16th and 17th years of life are a blur, with only photographs on MySpace and Facebook to remind me that I got off with the majority of my friendship group and was lucky that I never ended up getting smacked by anyone since my actions were similar to that of an infant child pouring drinks over myself and just about anyone within a 5 meter radius of me.

Subsequently I failed my A Levels, no surprise there.

Then I gave myself 4 months to think long and hard about what I wanted to do with my life, and I stumbled across the Aerospace Engineering Btec at Newcastle College. It looked and turned out to be, pretty awesome, well, for the 43% of the time that I attended, the remaining 57% of the time I was either inebriated, or hungover. Due to the high quality of my level of work when I did bother to attend, I was predicted a DM (Distinction Merit) however, due to the course being mostly being put on the back burner behind my budding social life, I only ended up with a MP (Merit Pass). Which is barely acceptable for most universities and required me to do a foundation year where ever I decided to go. I can only assume that it was due to "positive discrimination" that I got into Manchester, because I didn't even hit their very lenient conditional offer target of a MM.

In my defence, I screwed up in Manchester predominantly due to financial issues, I didn't receive a single payment from Student Finance until March the following year after my course started, and I relied entirely on handouts from my fairly cash strapped estranged (according to the law at least, but not so much in real life) father. Most of this money ended up in my local bar, and I only decided to pull my finger out and do some real work one my payment came through, far too late, being unable to pick up the marks squandered from the first semester.

Once I received my confirmation from Manchester University that I'd not be allowed to resit the year, as they didn't consider financial difficulty to be a mitigating circumstance, I found myself at a real low point, and did what I always did when I was down in the dumps. I got drunk,

From that point I scowered the internet to find any job I could, and ended up doing the only job that those with wasted talent end up doing... I went into customer service.

I then spent as I said 3 years of my life getting up, going to work, hating work, finding kindred spirits in the form of my colleagues who also hated the work, finished, went out and got mind numbingly drunk with said colleagues and woke up hungover and miserable at the thought of going through the whole charade all over again.

But I persevered, I needed the money to pay for the booze, and after rent, that's what 90% of my salary went on.

After this time I eventually got fed up and decided to go back to university again. Which I have done, and completed my first year of last summer. The first real achievement that I have been able to put under my belt in 5 years. But the road ahead is still long, and as I grow older I find that now not just my body, but also my mind was being affected by my relationship with alcohol.

I constantly found myself stressed and uneasy, breakdowns in my job and at university were a frequent occurrence as I struggled to complete tasks or assignments with a hangover. And as I had my last breakdown at work in the middle of last month...

I decided enough was enough.

I needed to stop drinking. And not just cut down, I mean completely stop due to my entire lack of self control.

So I did. For 31 days for the month of January 2016.

And what did I find?

That drinking yourself into oblivion is fucking stupid.

I also saved 65 quid.