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Eating Less Without Going Short
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In one pass When you cut back on food, you cut only one thing: fuel.
Educational content, not medical advice — consult a clinician.
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Chapter 1
Calories drop, nutrient needs don't
When you cut back on food, you cut only one thing: fuel. Vitamins and minerals are not fuel. They are tools: the small part set into an enzyme, the iron atom in a red blood cell that holds on to oxygen. How many sets of tools you need depends on how many cells you have and how often they are replaced. It has nothing to do with how much you ate today.
So dieting opens a gap like the blades of a pair of scissors: calories go down, but nutrient needs barely do.
Cutting from 2000 kcal to 1400 kcal a day shrinks the basket that carries your nutrients by 30%The need has not moved at all, so every bite has to be denser than before to carry the same nutritionIf the basket is still filled with empty-calorie foods, you fall short of micronutrients in proportion
The trouble is that you cannot feel it. Hunger has its own alarm; a vitamin shortfall does not. The gap is paid out of the body's stores first, and only when the stores run low do you notice anything.
So dieting opens a gap like the blades of a pair of scissors: calories go down, but nutrient needs barely do.
Cutting from 2000 kcal to 1400 kcal a day shrinks the basket that carries your nutrients by 30%The need has not moved at all, so every bite has to be denser than before to carry the same nutritionIf the basket is still filled with empty-calorie foods, you fall short of micronutrients in proportion
The trouble is that you cannot feel it. Hunger has its own alarm; a vitamin shortfall does not. The gap is paid out of the body's stores first, and only when the stores run low do you notice anything.
Mechanism · Needs follow your cells, not your fuel
Calling vitamins and minerals tools is not a figure of speech. Enzymes are the body's processing machines, and in many of them a metal atom sits right at the jaw: zinc, iron, magnesium, copper. Without that atom the machine is still there, but it cannot grip anything.And how many of those posts there are has nothing to do with how much you eat today:
Red blood cells retire every day, and new ones are made every day. The hemoglobin in each new red cell needs iron. Most of the iron from old red cells is recycled, but a small amount is still lost every day in shed cells and bleeding, and that has to be replaced from food. Dieting does not make the bone marrow produce fewer red cells, so the iron bill still arrives every dayBone is always being taken apart and rebuilt. The side that takes it apart and the side that rebuilds work at the same time, and rebuilding uses calcium. If you eat less, the taking-apart side does not stop and wait for youThe gut lining and the skin are among the fastest-renewing tissues in the body. Replacing a batch of cells means copying DNA and assembling a new set of proteins, and both jobs need zinc and B vitamins on hand
So what actually sets your needs is how many cells you have and how often they are replaced; calories set how much fuel you have. Dieting moves only the second, and the first stays exactly where it was. That is where the gap comes from.
It works the other way too. When someone goes from sitting still to training three times a week, sweat carries away more minerals and muscle repair needs raw material, so the need goes up. And that is usually just when they are dieting. The two lines move in opposite directions, and the gap opens wider.
Numbers · Why a full diet plan still falls short
Calton 2010 took four diet plans that were popular at the time and, using the US Department of Agriculture's food-composition data, worked out one by one how many essential micronutrients the plans' sample menus could supply. The benchmark was the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) used on US food labels, a single line for everyone. The result: even eating the menus in full, the plans met on average only about 12 of 27 micronutrients. And these menus were not especially low in calories; they averaged about 1750 kcal.The words that matter most in that sentence are in full:
The gap did not come from poor execution. It was not a skipped meal or a sneaked snackIt came from those nutrients not being on the plan's food list in the first place. The more faithfully you follow it, the more faithfully you fall shortIn other words, a plan can count calories perfectly and still not have a complete nutrient list. These are two separate ledgers, and many fat-loss plans keep only the first
The limits of this analysis should be stated too. It worked out menus on paper; it did not measure whether real people who ate them ended up short. But it is enough to show that when you judge a fat-loss plan, besides asking how many calories a day, you should ask one more question: do these foods add up to what I need? And the answer depends on whether the food list includes the nutrients that hide in only a few foods.
Mechanism · Why a shortfall gives no warning
Why does a vitamin shortfall give no warning? Because the body has put a layer of stores between you and the gap.Iron is held in in the liver and bone marrow; when the blood runs short, it is drawn from there firstThe calcium store is simply bone itself: when blood calcium dips a little, the body scrapes a thin layer off the bone to top it upSeveral vitamins are stored in the liver, enough to last a long time
The job of the stores is to hold the level in your blood steady. That is good for the moment, but it hides the overdraft completely. It is also why a lab report that looks normal does not mean you have been eating enough: that normal number may have been propped up by calcium or vitamins moved out of bone or liver.
By the time you feel something (fatigue, hair loss, frequent colds, low mood, irregular periods), the stores have often been empty for a while. And those signs are all too easy to put down to dieting is just tiring, so nobody thinks about nutrients. When these signs keep showing up, it is worth getting checked at a clinic rather than guessing on your own which nutrient is missing.
There is a backlash too. Short on iron, your blood carries less oxygen, you get winded after a few steps, and your training drops off on its own. Short on magnesium, you may sleep less soundly (the evidence for this link in the general population is not strong), and the next day you do not want to move. The more you fall short, the less you can train; the less you train, the harder the weight comes off. A nutrient gap is not only a side effect of dieting. It can turn around and stall the diet itself.
Chapter 2
What runs short first
If you are going to fall short, which nutrients go first? No need to guess; there are two ready-made lists.
The six that were consistently low across all four plans in Calton 2010: vitamin B7 (biotin), vitamin D, vitamin E, chromium, iodine, and molybdenum.
The ones the US Dietary Guidelines (DGA 2020) name as commonly under-eaten in the US population: calcium, potassium, dietary fiber, and vitamin D.
The overlap is no accident. People on a diet delete foods from the highest calories down, and nuts, egg yolks, fatty fish, dairy, and whole grains happen to be both calorie-rich and packed with the most vitamins and minerals. Delete by calories, and what goes is exactly the most nutrient-dense batch.
So the way to use this list is not to buy ten supplements. It is to look back and check whether this week's diet meals include foods that cover them.
The six that were consistently low across all four plans in Calton 2010: vitamin B7 (biotin), vitamin D, vitamin E, chromium, iodine, and molybdenum.
The ones the US Dietary Guidelines (DGA 2020) name as commonly under-eaten in the US population: calcium, potassium, dietary fiber, and vitamin D.
The overlap is no accident. People on a diet delete foods from the highest calories down, and nuts, egg yolks, fatty fish, dairy, and whole grains happen to be both calorie-rich and packed with the most vitamins and minerals. Delete by calories, and what goes is exactly the most nutrient-dense batch.
So the way to use this list is not to buy ten supplements. It is to look back and check whether this week's diet meals include foods that cover them.
Mechanism · Why these six go missing together
They share one weakness: each of them hides in only a few foods. When those few foods leave the plan, the whole group is cut off together.Iodine comes mainly from iodized salt, seafood, and dairy. Diet meals often use less salt and drop milk, so two of iodine's main sources shrink at onceBiotin is concentrated in egg yolk, liver, and nuts. These are among the most calorie-dense foods, which is exactly the batch that gets crossed out first on a dietVitamin E lives mostly in nuts, seeds, and vegetable oils. A single rule of "use less oil" can empty most of its sourcesChromium and molybdenum hide in whole grains, legumes, and nuts, and in grains they sit toward the outer layers of the kernel. Refining is the step that grinds those layers off, so little is left in white rice and white flourVitamin D is a special case: it does not come mainly from eating. Its main source is what the skin makes after sun exposure. Only fatty fish, egg yolk, and fortified foods contain much of it, so adjusting the menu alone rarely covers it, which is also why it appears on both lists
The pattern is clear: the first few are sources that are too narrow, and the last is a case where food was never the main source. Two kinds of gap call for two kinds of fix: the first by putting those foods back on the plate, the last by looking at sunlight and supplements.
Mechanism · Other nutrients to keep an eye on
Beyond the two lists, people who are cutting have a few more nutrients to keep an eye on. Here the chain of what a shortfall does is followed all the way down, so you can judge for yourself whether a sign in your body might be it.Iron (watch it especially if you menstruate or eat little red meat). Iron sits at the center of hemoglobin, where it grips oxygen in the lungs and lets go of it in the muscles. With too little iron, each red cell carries less oxygen, and the same heartbeat delivers less oxygen to the muscles. So endurance drops first, stairs leave you winded first, and your hands and feet tend to feel coldMagnesium (whole grains, nuts, leafy greens, which are often cut together on a diet). The energy molecule a cell can actually use is the form in which magnesium and are bound together; without magnesium in between, enzymes cannot hold ATP steady. By that mechanism, a magnesium shortfall should blunt every energy-using process. Cramps and poor sleep are often blamed on it, but in the general population the evidence linking either one to magnesium is not strongZinc (meat, shellfish, seeds). Zinc sits inside many of the enzymes that build new cells. So the tissues that tend to have problems first are the fastest-renewing ones: immune cells, skin at the edge of a wound, taste buds. Those match the three classic signs of zinc deficiency: frequent infections, slow wound healing, and a dulled sense of tasteB vitamins (B12 in particular if you cut back on animal foods). They are the hand-off workers on the line that turns food into energy, and B12 also helps maintain the insulating coat around nerves (the myelin sheath)Omega-3 (fatty fish). Diets often cut all fat in one stroke and hit the good fats along with the rest
Put these side by side and a rough pattern appears: the faster a tissue renews and the more energy it uses, the earlier it sounds the alarm. Taste buds, immune cells, muscle, and nerves come first; bone, a slow construction project, comes last, which is why by the time bone shows a problem, the debt has often been building for a long time. Next time you meet a nutrient not on this list, you can use the same pattern to reason it through yourself.
Chapter 3
Don't cut protein while losing fat
In a fat-loss phase there is one thing you cannot skimp on: protein.
In a calorie deficit, muscle gets whittled from two sides. On one side, the signal for building muscle is turned down, so it is taken apart faster than it is built. On the other side is sugar. The brain and red blood cells need glucose every day. When you eat little carbohydrate and the deficit is large, the small store of sugar in the liver runs low fast, and fatty acids have no path back to glucose. So the body takes apart the largest pile of protein it has, which is muscle, and sends it to the liver to be rebuilt into glucose.
So part of what leaves the scale is muscle.
Eating enough protein delivers ready-made raw material to the liver's door, so it does not have to take apart yours. And when amino acids in the blood rise, the switch for building muscle is pressed too. Add strength training, and what you lose comes as close as possible to being fat only.
Two practical rules:
1.6–2.4 g per kilogram of body weight per day; the larger the deficit and the more you want to keep muscle, the higher you go (for where those two numbers come from, see Protein During a Deficit)25–40 g per meal, split across three meals; eggs, lean meat, fish, dairy, and soy foods first
In a calorie deficit, muscle gets whittled from two sides. On one side, the signal for building muscle is turned down, so it is taken apart faster than it is built. On the other side is sugar. The brain and red blood cells need glucose every day. When you eat little carbohydrate and the deficit is large, the small store of sugar in the liver runs low fast, and fatty acids have no path back to glucose. So the body takes apart the largest pile of protein it has, which is muscle, and sends it to the liver to be rebuilt into glucose.
So part of what leaves the scale is muscle.
Eating enough protein delivers ready-made raw material to the liver's door, so it does not have to take apart yours. And when amino acids in the blood rise, the switch for building muscle is pressed too. Add strength training, and what you lose comes as close as possible to being fat only.
Two practical rules:
1.6–2.4 g per kilogram of body weight per day; the larger the deficit and the more you want to keep muscle, the higher you go (for where those two numbers come from, see Protein During a Deficit)25–40 g per meal, split across three meals; eggs, lean meat, fish, dairy, and soy foods first
Mechanism · Why the body takes muscle apart
When calories drop, why does the body touch more than fat? One reason is that what it runs short of is not only the vague thing called energy but also a specific molecule: glucose.Some cells run only on glucose. Red blood cells have no mitochondria at all, so they cannot burn fat. The brain can partly switch to other fuels, but not completely; its baseline share has to be sugarThe sugar store is small. The liver keeps a supply of sugar it can release at any time, meant to bridge nights and the gaps between meals. It cannot cover a long shortfallFat cannot fill this gap. A fat molecule looks like a three-pronged fork: three fatty acids hanging from a glycerol backbone. The glycerol can be turned into sugar, but it is only a short piece; fatty acids themselves have no path back to glucoseSo protein's turn comes. The largest pile of protein in the body is skeletal muscle. It is broken into amino acids, which travel in the blood to the liver and are rebuilt into glucose there. That step is called gluconeogenesis
Once you see this chain, a lot of what follows falls into place:
By this chain, the larger the deficit, the less carbohydrate, and the tighter the sugar supply, the harder muscle gets taken apart; this is also why many people worry that crash diets lose a higher share of muscleStrength training hands the body a do not take this piece apart signal: tissue that is being worked hard again and again is tissue the body tends to keepEating enough protein sends replacement material straight to the liver's door. The liver wants amino acids. It does not care whether they were taken off your leg or came from the two eggs you ate this morning
One aside: this is also why, in the first few days back on normal eating, your weight bounces back a notch even though you have not overeaten. As the liver and muscles store sugar again, every unit of sugar they store brings several units of water with it. That is water coming back, not fat.
Evidence · Same deficit, different losses
Longland 2016 (AJCN, a ) measured this directly. 40 young men, 4 weeks, a calorie deficit of about 40%, and high-intensity training 6 days a week; the only difference between the two groups was how much protein they ate:The high-protein group (2.4 g per kilogram of body weight) lost more fat (-4.8 kg vs -3.5 kg) and gained 1.2 kg of lean massThe control group (1.2 g per kilogram) kept lean mass essentially unchanged (+0.1 kg)
The deficit was the same in both groups. In this trial, the deficit decided whether weight came off, and protein (together with training) shaped which tissue came off. The authors call it a proof-of-principle trial; it was done in young men with a very high training load, not in ordinary people trying to lose weight.
A scale reports only one total, and it cannot tell these two things apart. That is where "thinner but softer" comes from: the number on the scale looks good, but mixed into what you lost is the part you most wanted to keep. For the same reason, what to watch during a fat-loss phase is not only how much the scale has dropped, but also whether your strength has dropped with it. If strength holds, that is one sign you have probably not lost much muscle.
Mechanism · Why every meal needs enough
Enough at every meal, split across three meals is not about tidy numbers. There is a switch behind it.Muscle building does not run all the time. It is more like a device with a trigger line: the level of amino acids in the blood, especially leucine (one of the essential amino acids), has to cross a line before building switches on. Below the line, the protein is simply used up as ordinary raw material, and it does not set off that wave of new tissue being assembled.
So the same daily total, split differently, gives different results:
All of the day's protein piled into dinner: the line is crossed once, and both daytime meals stay below itSplit across three meals, each over the line: three triggers in a day
That is also why clearing the threshold at each meal is stressed more often than hitting the daily total. The total decides whether there is enough raw material; each meal decides whether the switch gets pressed. Both have to hold.
A side benefit: protein is the most filling of the three macronutrients. When it reaches the small intestine, the gut releases a batch of signal molecules that say you have eaten enough (PYY, ), and at the same time it holds down ghrelin, the signal that drives hunger. So eating enough protein is not only about keeping muscle. It also makes the whole deficit easier to carry, one of the few things that helps your body and your willpower at the same time.
Mechanism · What happens after muscle is lost
Why is losing muscle such a hard no? Because it turns around and makes fat loss harder.Muscle is a steady share of your resting metabolism. Even when you lie still, it keeps taking old protein apart and putting new protein in, and that back-and-forth itself burns energy. Lose some muscle and that always-on fire burns a notch lower, so the same amount of food is now more likely to be left over (the fuller account of metabolism slowing down is in Adaptive Thermogenesis)Muscle also supplies strength and posture, and it is the large place that takes up blood sugar after a meal: skeletal muscle is the main destination for glucose after eating. When it shrinks, the same bowl of rice stays in the blood longerLater in life, muscle is the capital that protects you from falls
Put these together and it becomes clear why weight comes back so easily. A common path goes like this: a crash diet costs muscle, resting metabolism ends up lower than before the diet, and going back to the old portions now means eating too much. The weight that returns is often mostly fat, so the next diet starts from a worse place than the last one.
So in a fat-loss phase you can save on calories, but do not save on protein. It guards muscle, metabolism, and fullness at the same time. (For the deeper story, see Protein During a Deficit.)
Chapter 4
Choosing nutrient-dense foods
Two days of meals can look alike, yet one packs in plenty of nutrition while the other is nearly empty. The difference has a name: nutrient density, meaning how much nutrition each calorie brings.
Think of it as a fraction: nutrition on top, calories on the bottom. Dieting does only one thing: it shrinks the bottom number, while the top has not moved. So your menu as a whole has to become denser to keep up.
Dense: leafy greens, colorful vegetables, berries, eggs, fish, legumes, and dairy, which are not high in calories and are full of vitamins, minerals, and fiberEmpty: sugary drinks, candy, refined snacks, and alcohol, which are high in calories with almost no nutrition. They add to the bottom and nothing to the top; for every can you drink, the rest of your food has to be denser to make up for it
The US Dietary Guidelines (DGA 2020) state exactly this principle: within your energy needs, choose nutrient-dense foods first. In a calorie deficit, this rule matters most.
Think of it as a fraction: nutrition on top, calories on the bottom. Dieting does only one thing: it shrinks the bottom number, while the top has not moved. So your menu as a whole has to become denser to keep up.
Dense: leafy greens, colorful vegetables, berries, eggs, fish, legumes, and dairy, which are not high in calories and are full of vitamins, minerals, and fiberEmpty: sugary drinks, candy, refined snacks, and alcohol, which are high in calories with almost no nutrition. They add to the bottom and nothing to the top; for every can you drink, the rest of your food has to be denser to make up for it
The US Dietary Guidelines (DGA 2020) state exactly this principle: within your energy needs, choose nutrient-dense foods first. In a calorie deficit, this rule matters most.
In practice · Four moves on the plate
Density is a concept. On the plate, it comes down to four moves.Load nutrition first, fill calories second. At each meal, put in vegetables, protein, and a little healthy fat first, then spend the rest of the calorie budget on staples and snacks. Do it the other way round, staples and snacks first with vegetables squeezed into whatever space is left, and usually there is no space leftThe plate method: half the plate vegetables, a quarter protein, a quarter whole grains. It works because that ratio naturally puts high-volume, low-calorie foods first, so they take up your stomach first; the stretching of the stomach wall itself sends a fullness signal upwardChoose whole foods first. The closer a food is to how it came out of the ground or the water, the denser it usually is. Each step of processing mostly removes fiber and the outer layers and mostly leaves sugar and oil: the top of the fraction is taken away, the bottom is left behindCut empty calories first. Sugary drinks, alcohol, and refined snacks are the lowest-value calories in a fat-loss phase. The beauty of cutting them is that calories fall while nutrition does not drop at all. It is the only cut in this whole story that is all benefit and no cost, so it should be the first thing you change
Notice that none of these four is eating less. Each is a change in the order and in what you load. When a diet plate fails, it is often not a lack of willpower. It is that the calorie budget went to the bottom of the fraction first, and by the time the nutrition should have gone in, there was no budget left.
Mechanism · An orange and its juice, compared
An orange and a glass of orange juice with the same calories are not the same. Where exactly do they differ? It is worth taking apart, because the same rule applies to many foods.The sugar in an orange is not loose. It is locked inside the walls of its cells. You have to chew them open first, and the rest has to be broken down slowly by the gut, so the sugar enters the blood a little at a time. Juicing does all that wall-breaking in advance for your teeth and gut: the same amount of sugar now rushes in at once.
Two more things go missing:
Most of the fiber stays in the pulp. Its job was to take up space in the gut and slow absorptionThe work of chewing is gone. Chewing and the stretching of the stomach are part of the fullness signal itself; drinking it down in one go skips that stretch
So with the same calories, one keeps you full for a while and the other leaves you feeling a few minutes later as if you had eaten nothing.
Push the rule further and it still holds: blended into a puree, milled into a powder, pressed into a juice, all of these move in the same direction. Every step that processing does for you takes a little off how full you feel. That is why, at the same calories, the forms that take more work to eat are the better deal in a fat-loss phase.
Chapter 5
Do you need a multivitamin?
One last common question: should you take a multivitamin while losing weight? The answer depends on your situation, but the logic for deciding is clear.
Start on the side of food. The nutrients in whole foods arrive as a set: vitamins, minerals, fiber, and plant compounds reach the same stretch of gut at the same time, and they often help each other get absorbed. The fat-soluble vitamins, for example, have to be dissolved in fat from the same meal to be carried across the gut wall. A pill splits them into separate, unrelated doses and cannot copy that teamwork.
Then look at when a supplement does make sense:
When calories are very low: the sample menus Calton 2010 analyzed were not especially low in calories, and eating them in full still left gaps; push calories lower (say, below 1200–1500 kcal a day) and food alone only gets harderWhen the diet is restricted: strict vegan eating (B12, iron, zinc, omega-3), whole food groups cut out, or foods avoided for allergiesSpecific groups: women who menstruate (iron), pregnancy (folate), older adults (B12, vitamin D)
Food plays the lead; supplements play defense. The order cannot be reversed.
Start on the side of food. The nutrients in whole foods arrive as a set: vitamins, minerals, fiber, and plant compounds reach the same stretch of gut at the same time, and they often help each other get absorbed. The fat-soluble vitamins, for example, have to be dissolved in fat from the same meal to be carried across the gut wall. A pill splits them into separate, unrelated doses and cannot copy that teamwork.
Then look at when a supplement does make sense:
When calories are very low: the sample menus Calton 2010 analyzed were not especially low in calories, and eating them in full still left gaps; push calories lower (say, below 1200–1500 kcal a day) and food alone only gets harderWhen the diet is restricted: strict vegan eating (B12, iron, zinc, omega-3), whole food groups cut out, or foods avoided for allergiesSpecific groups: women who menstruate (iron), pregnancy (folate), older adults (B12, vitamin D)
Food plays the lead; supplements play defense. The order cannot be reversed.
Safety · Using supplements without overdoing it
Supplements themselves are not hard to use. The hard part is that it is easy to go wrong at either end: at one end, being afraid to use them; at the other, treating them as meals.Fill a gap; more is not better. Extra water-soluble vitamins (the B vitamins, vitamin C) are flushed out by the kidneys in urine, so there is relatively more room, though still an upper limit. The fat-soluble ones (vitamins A, D, and E) have no such exit: they dissolve into fat and are stored in the liver, so a long-running excess builds up little by little and turns a top-up into harm. Some minerals behave the same wayOne broad basic multivitamin usually beats a pile of single products. Single products often carry doses far above a basic one, and when several are stacked, you cannot really say how much you are taking in a day. Unless you have a clearly diagnosed deficiency, a basic one is usually enoughDo not use supplements to atone for a poor diet. A pill can supply only the few dozen known nutrients on its list. The fiber and plant compounds that come with whole food, and volume and chewing, the two things tied directly to feeling full, a pill provides none of. So it can fill in one gap, but it cannot fix a menu made of empty calories
In a fat-loss phase, first fill up on nutrition as fully as you can with nutrient-dense whole foods. When calories are very low or the diet is restricted, add one basic multivitamin to cover the gaps.
Background · How the five parts connect
This story covered five things. They are not five separate tips; they are one chain running from upstream to downstream. Walk it once and you will not need to memorize anything:Calories are fuel; nutrients are tools. Dieting cuts only the fuel. The need for tools is set by how many cells you have and how fast they renew, and it does not fall along with the fuel, so a gap appearsThe gap is not spread evenly. What gets cut off first is whatever hides in only a few foods and also happens to be high in calories, because people on a diet delete foods by calories, which means deleting the most nutrient-dense batch firstOne thing you cannot go short on: in a deficit, muscle gets whittled down, and when carbohydrate is low the body also takes muscle apart to make sugar. If you do not eat enough protein, it is your muscle that pays the billThe fix runs in only one direction: the bottom of the fraction was cut, so the top has to go up. That is nutrient density. Load nutrition first and fill calories second; cut empty calories firstSupplements come last, and they only cover the stretch food cannot fill
So what really has to change is not how much you eat but what the same calorie budget is spent on. People who find dieting miserable are often stuck at the fourth step: the budget went first to things that add only to the bottom of the fraction, and by the time nutrition should have gone in, there was nothing left.
References · 3
- Calton, J. B. (2010). Prevalence of micronutrient deficiency in popular diet plans. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 7, 24. Four popular diet plans, on average, were sufficient in only ~11.75 of 27 essential micronutrients; vitamin B7 (biotin), vitamin D, vitamin E, chromium, iodine, and molybdenum were consistently low across all four. The sample menus averaged 1748 +/- 210 kcal a day, were RDI-sufficient in 11.75 of 27 micronutrients, and would need about 27,575 kcal a day to cover all 27 (3,475 kcal once the six consistently low ones were dropped). Menus were analysed on paper against FDA RDI values, not eaten by people (abstract, PMID 20537171). 10.1186/1550-2783-7-24
- U.S. Department of Agriculture & U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2020). Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025 (9th ed.). www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/Dietary_Guidelines_for_Americans_2020-2025.pdf
- Longland, T. M., Oikawa, S. Y., Mitchell, C. J., Devries, M. C., & Phillips, S. M. (2016). Higher compared with lower dietary protein during an energy deficit combined with intense exercise promotes greater lean mass gain and fat mass loss: A randomized trial. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 103(3), 738–746. 40 young men (20 per group), 4 weeks at a ~40% energy deficit with resistance training plus high-intensity intervals 6 days a week; 2.4 vs 1.2 g protein/kg/day. Lean body mass +1.2 ± 1.0 kg vs +0.1 ± 1.0 kg; fat mass -4.8 vs -3.5 kg; exercise performance improved similarly in both groups. The authors call it a proof-of-principle trial (abstract, PMID 26817506). 10.3945/ajcn.115.119339