Protein math for real kitchens.
"Eat more protein" is advice. A number you can still hit on a birthday-and-travel week is a plan. This is how you find yours.
On a GLP-1, the real danger is not eating too much. It's eating too little of the one thing that decides what kind of weight you lose. When appetite drops by half, protein drops with everything else. And in every week you spend under your floor, part of the weight leaving your body is muscle. That part was supposed to stay and keep the result.
Finding your number
The maintenance research lands near 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of goal body weight per day. A simple starting floor is your goal weight in pounds, in grams. Aiming for 150? Start around 150 grams and adjust from there. More if you train hard. A little less if the number is plainly out of reach at your current appetite. In the program, the Engine works this out from your lean mass and a person adjusts it to your actual life. The point is that it's your number, written down. Not a slogan.
Why breakfast decides the day
Appetite on a GLP-1 is a budget that shrinks as the day goes on. If breakfast spends its slot on toast, you now need a 40-gram dinner on an appetite that quits by 6pm. That is how people lose the day by 9am. Front-load instead. Get 30 to 40 grams in before noon, every day, no exceptions. Eggs and Greek yogurt. A shake in the car. Cold leftover chicken, standing at the counter. Real kitchens count.
The birthday-and-travel week
The floor is not for perfect weeks. Perfect weeks take care of themselves. It's for the other kind, so the plan decides the hard parts in advance. Two portable go-tos that survive an airport. Jerky and a shake cover most of the planet. A restaurant order you never have to think about: any protein, plus vegetables, ordered first so you're not negotiating with the menu. And one rule. A missed day is data, not a verdict. Three protein days in a birthday-and-travel week is a hold, not a slip.
Count it for two weeks, then relax
You don't have to weigh food forever. Log honestly for two weeks and your eyes get calibrated. You learn what 30 grams looks like on your plates, in your kitchen. After that the floor runs mostly on pattern: breakfast anchor, a palm of protein at lunch and dinner, and a spot-check week whenever the trend line does something you don't understand.