Dr.SportsMedIN said:

The RDA is the wrong reference and it is worth understanding why.

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.

Worth separating that from mood and mental health, which this thread keeps folding into the same question. They behave differently and the advice does not transfer.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. For anyone reading later: the numbers in this thread are worth checking against a primary source before you act on them, including mine. Half the figures circulating in this community trace back to a secondary summary that dropped a qualifier.

labquiet_amy said:

I will push back on the powder-first advice.

Adding the part of the answer the thread has not reached. The mental-health dimension is under-measured in the trial literature and the reports here are consistent enough to take seriously. On the positive side: reduced anxiety around food, better self-image, more confidence. On the difficult side: grief for the years lost, identity disruption, relationships built around eating, and the loss of food as a coping mechanism with nothing put in its place. Rarer but real: anhedonia and emotional flatness. Regulators have started asking for validated patient-reported outcomes in this class; the existing data gap is not evidence of absence.

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

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

Reporting back.

Update: two thirds of the target before midday. Same total, same appetite, and I am hitting it most days now.