Diet
Protein first, because it decides what the weight you lose is made of
Most diet argument is about which pattern wins. That argument is mostly unresolvable and mostly beside the point, because the trials that held calories equal keep finding far smaller differences between patterns than the people arguing about them expect. The variable that reliably changes the outcome is protein, and it is the one most often got wrong in the direction that costs you muscle.
The Archive’s position
This is opinion, not a finding. Everything else on this page is the evidence.
Eat one gram of protein per pound of your goal bodyweight, every day, and treat it as the floor rather than the target. If you want to weigh 200 pounds, you eat 200 grams, whether you currently weigh 175 or 260.
Why we hold it
- The RDA is a deficiency floor, not an optimum. It was derived from nitrogen balance in sedentary adults and answers the question of when you stop losing body nitrogen. Almost nobody reading this is trying to merely not waste away.
- The authors of the paper most often used to argue against this recommended the number themselves. The 2018 meta-analysis that produced the 1.62 g/kg plateau says in its own discussion that given the confidence interval reached 2.20, it may be prudent to recommend about 2.2 g/kg/day for people seeking to maximise training-induced gains in fat-free mass. That is one gram per pound, from the source usually quoted against it.
- A second, independent method lands on the same upper figure. Indicator amino acid oxidation, which measures a labelled tracer in breath rather than counting nitrogen, gave an upper 95% bound of 2.2 g/kg/day in trained lifters. Two methods with nothing in common converging on the same ceiling is worth more than either alone.
- Nearly everyone who cares about this is in an energy deficit, and the deficit changes the answer. In the two controlled trials that tested it directly, roughly 2.3 to 2.4 g/kg beat 1.0 to 1.2 g/kg on lean mass by a wide margin, and in one of them the higher protein group gained muscle while losing fat.
- Goal weight is a usable proxy for lean mass. The sports nutrition literature scales protein to fat-free mass, which nobody knows without a scan. Goal weight approximates it, and it stops a person at 300 pounds calculating a target their lean tissue does not justify.
- The cost of being wrong is asymmetric. In healthy people with normal kidneys, four months at 2.6 to 3.3 g/kg changed no marker of renal, hepatic or lipid health. Under-eating protein in a deficit reliably costs lean tissue you then have to rebuild.
- It is a rule a person can actually follow. A number you can compute in your head and hit without a spreadsheet gets followed, and a more precise number that requires a body composition scan does not.
Where this goes beyond the evidence
The central estimate is 1.6 g/kg, not 2.2, and no synthesis has ever identified a plateau at 2.2. The 2.2 figure is the top of a confidence interval on a model that did not reach statistical significance, which is a reason to doubt the ceiling rather than proof of a higher one. The sharper problem is a trial that tested this directly: 39 adults at a 40% deficit were given 0.8, 1.6 or 2.4 g/kg for three weeks, and while both higher arms beat the RDA on preserving fat-free mass, 1.6 and 2.4 could not be told apart. That is the closest thing to a head-to-head test of this rule, and it found no advantage to the higher number. The honest summary is that the gap between 1.6 and one gram per pound is roughly 40 to 60 grams a day at an intake where no harm has been measured in healthy kidneys. Choosing the top of the interval buys insurance against real uncertainty. It does not buy a measured additional effect, because in the one trial designed to detect one, there was not one to detect.
Who this is not for
Anyone with reduced kidney function or chronic kidney disease. The meta-analysis clearing high protein on kidney function enrolled only adults without kidney disease and its authors limit the conclusion to them, so it does not transfer. The rule also breaks at the edges of its own arithmetic: someone at 150 pounds aiming for 200 would be eating close to 3 g/kg of what they currently weigh, past every measured plateau, and someone very heavy aiming far down lands below the range the deficit literature recommends. It ignores height entirely. And 200 grams is 800 calories, which crowds a smaller person's deficit hard. It is a good default, not a law of physics.
What is here
How much protein
The RDA and why its own authors called it a maintenance floor, the 1.6 g/kg plateau and the two caveats that get dropped when it is quoted, and the deficit trials where the answer changes. Six measured intakes, each with the population it came from.
OpenGLP-1s, muscle and hair
Appetite suppression works, and then people stop eating rather than eat differently. What the body composition scans measured, why the lean mass ratio is the same on placebo, and where the hair loss reports actually sit.
OpenKeto, carnivore, vegan and the rest
The trials that held calories equal, reported separately from the ones where people ate freely. That single distinction explains most of the apparent disagreement in nutrition, and almost nobody separates them.
OpenNothing appears on this site until every citation on the page has been checked against the source, which is why the individual pattern pages are still marked as unwritten rather than shipped thin.
How this section is written
Every diet result here is reported with one thing attached: whether the trial controlled how much people ate. A trial that matched calories between arms is measuring the composition of the diet. A trial where both groups ate freely is measuring the diet and its effect on appetite and adherence together. Both are real questions and they have different answers, and blending them is how the same literature gets used to prove opposite things.
Where the owner of this site holds a position, it appears in a block like the one above, labelled as opinion, carrying the part where it goes beyond what has been measured. That field is required. A position that cannot name its own weak point is marketing, and this site is not that.