Four lifting days a week and a 180g protein target used to be mildly annoying but routine. Two real meals and a shake, wrapped up by 8pm.
These days I can get through maybe two-thirds of a normal portion before I'm just done — nothing sounds good, chewing feels like a task. I meal-prepped a pound and a half of chicken thighs on Sunday, which normally disappears by Tuesday, and I was still picking at it Thursday night.
So now I'm chugging a shake at 10am on purpose, because if I wait until after training I know I won't hit the number. That's not a hack, it's just scheduling around a stomach that stopped sending invitations.
The annoying part is it feels like the whole thing is quietly working against the one piece I actually care about: keeping the muscle I spent years building while the fat comes off.
I'm not mad about the appetite change, I signed up for it. Just didn't expect the tradeoff to show up in my food log instead of my waistline. For the people lifting through this: do you stack protein earlier in the day, or drop the target and let the scale and the bar sort it out?