Collecting this in one place because it comes up every few weeks and the answer is always assembled from scratch. It is about protein intake, and it is deliberately narrow — everything I am not confident about is marked as such.
What is actually established
Distribution matters less than total but it is not nothing. Roughly 25 to 40g per sitting with enough leucine to trigger synthesis, three or four times a day, is more effective than the same total in one enormous evening meal — and on a suppressed appetite the enormous evening meal is the one you will not finish anyway.
The condition it depends on
The caveat that reference weight and current weight are different numbers. Using current weight at the start of a large loss produces a target that is both unachievable and unnecessary.
The practical version
The arithmetic that makes it tractable: reference weight in kg times 1.6 gives the target; divide by four for a per-sitting figure; then find four foods that hit that figure in a volume you can actually finish. Most people need two of the four to be liquid or semi-liquid early on.
What I am not sure about
The question I want answered is whether the RDA is the wrong reference entirely during rapid weight loss, and what the actual target should be. Tell me what I have not thought of.
ChrisMacros said:Distribution matters less than total but it is not nothing.
ChrisMacros has the substance of this right. The condition it depends on is worth stating. On a suppressed appetite the winning strategy is protein density per unit of volume, not per calorie. Isolate powders, Greek yoghurt and cottage cheese, egg whites, lean fish, and tinned tuna all deliver a lot of protein in a small physical volume. Front-load it: appetite is usually least suppressed in the first hours after waking and worst on the day or two after dosing, so get the majority in early in the day and early in the week.
ChrisMacros said:Distribution matters less than total but it is not nothing.
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.
Sigma-Aldrich — Research-Grade Standards
Certified reference materials, analytical reagents, and research-grade standards for peptide verification. Trusted by laboratories worldwide.
Shop Reference StandardsShort answer first, then the reasoning. The RDA is the wrong reference and it is worth understanding why. 0.8 g/kg is the intake at which nitrogen balance is not negative in healthy weight-stable adults — a floor for deficiency prevention, not an optimum, and derived in a population that is not in a deficit. In a substantial energy deficit, protein requirement rises because amino acids are being oxidised for energy and because muscle protein synthesis is blunted. The literature on preserving lean mass during weight loss lands around 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg of reference body weight, which is roughly two to two and a half times the RDA.
Dr.PainCLE said:On a suppressed appetite the winning strategy is protein density per unit of volume, not per calorie.
Right, and protein targets should be set on a reference weight rather than current weight. Setting 1.6 g/kg on a starting weight of 130kg produces a target nobody hits on a suppressed appetite.