PharmD_Rodriguez 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.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.

One concrete data point for the thread. Say what you would expect to see if you were wrong, before you look. It is a small discipline and it changes what you notice.

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.

anders_CPH 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.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

Following on from NauseaFreeNow — 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.

Front-loading was the answer. Same total intake, same drug, but two thirds of the protein before midday and I am hitting the target most days now.