LarryQC_SD 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.

One concrete data point for the thread. The boring version of this is the one that works, and the boring version is: measure a baseline, change one variable, wait, measure again under the same conditions. Nobody wants that answer and it is still the answer.

DanielChem_CHI said:

I will push back on the powder-first advice.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then measure again under the same conditions.

One thing that is still open after amsterdam_pete’s answer:

How people are hitting a protein target on a genuinely suppressed appetite, because volume is the binding constraint rather than willingness?

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.