HPLC_Greg 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.

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.

Happy to go further on any of that.

KevinCompounds said:

I will push back on the powder-first advice.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The honest answer is that the effect is real, the magnitude is contested, and the individual variation is larger than either. Those three things can all be true at once, and most arguments here are two people holding different parts of that.

One thing that is still open after Dr.ReproEndo’s answer:

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

Closing the loop on my own question.

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