LipidDoc_ATL said:

On a suppressed appetite the winning strategy is protein density per unit of volume, not per calorie.

I will push back on the powder-first advice. It works and it also trains people out of eating food, and when the drug stops the habits are what remain. Getting protein from meals is slower and holds up better afterwards.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. Practical: whatever you change, write down the date and the reason. In three months the reason is what you will have forgotten, and the reason is what makes the record worth having.

anders_CPH said:

I will push back on the powder-first advice.

Coming at anders_CPH’s question from a different direction. Most of what circulates confidently in this community traces back to one summary of one study, and the qualifier was dropped somewhere in the third retelling.

Following on from InsuranceTom — and this may be the naive question:

Whether the RDA is the wrong reference entirely during rapid weight loss, and what the actual target should be?

OP back with an update, since a thread like this is useless without one.

Reporting back — setting the target on reference weight rather than current weight turned an impossible number into a boring one.