220g Protein, 4 Lifts/Week: Why Is Appetite Gone?

The part people forget when they compare options: protein targets scale with bodyweight, and 220g at 178 is a whole lot of chewing. Common surprise at the next weight up — at 190, 170g is what tends to keep you full for hours.

Same, protein is the main switch for me. Once I pass 1g/lb I can't finish meals.

Carbs get blamed, but squats kill my appetite more.

High-volume squats leave me ravenous. Intervals do the opposite.

That interval point is real. Two hard conditioning sessions can mute my hunger all evening.

The protein vs training debate might be missing fiber. Worth knowing before you start stacking grams: when a food log shows fiber creeping toward 40g a day, appetite can just vanish — and that's usually the sign it's tipped too far.

40g fiber would wreck me. 25g is my ceiling unless I want bloat all day.

Common surprise: when appetite goes quiet, liquid calories are the workaround people forget about. A shake with oats and PB goes down a lot easier than a plate of chicken.

Shakes land heavier than solid food, which feels backwards. Whey mixed in water sits like a brick.

Your fastin gglucose 89 is close to my 91 then. Tracking weekly intake helped me more than chasing one lab.

Agree on tracking. I dropped protein to 160g and added rice; appetite came back and lifts held.

I ran almost the same setup last spring: 180 lb, 4 lift,s two intervals, 210g protein. Appetite was lowest on interval days, not lifting days. When I cut protein to 170g and added 60g carbs around training, hunger returned but body weight stayed steady for three weeks. My fasting glucose was 91 then, so nothing wild.

The protein target mattered, but the conditioning seemed to be the bigger lever. I'd log hunger 1-5 after meals for a week before changing much. Sleep was also rough that month, which probably didn't help either.

i’m in the empty-nester reset too—daily walks, learning to cook for two again. When I ran 200g+ protein, dinner was the hardest meal because I’d saved most of it for evening

For me, appetite was more about meal distribution than the 220g number. When I front-loaded protein at breakfast, I’d be stuffed till mid-afternoon and then dread dinner.

Shifting more of my protein to lunch/dinner—same daily total—made hunger cues feel normal again. Also, my hardest days were lift + intervals days; that combo seemed to blunt appetite for hours. Are you forcing dinner only on training days, or is it every night?

If it’s training-specific, it may be timing and volume more than the protein target.

Hi, I’m new here and only on week one, so I’m mostly following along. Your protein number jumped out at me: is most of it shakes, or whole food?

When I tried ~180g, two shakes made me weirdly uninterested in dinner, but the same protein from chicken/cottage cheese left me hungry by evening. Also, do you spread it evenly or backload it after your lifts? I’m trying to learn what actually blunts appetite vs. what just makes meals feel like a chore.

220 g at 178 lb is ~2.7 g/kg, so yeah, that’s a satiety sledgehammer. But source matters: 220 g from chicken, egg whites, and Greek yogurt brings huge volume plus PYY/GLP-1 stimulation; 220 g mostly from shakes is a different animal. Are you blunted only on lifting days or all seven?

If it’s every day, I’d log fiber and total food volume before blaming the four lifts. If it’s post-lift only, that’s more likely acute exercise-related appetite suppression.

Track hunger 1–10 pre/post meals for a week; the pattern usually answers it.

I am following this closely. For me, the bigger appetite suppressant was cumulative weekly training load plus sleep, not the protein grams.

When my seven-day lifting volume crept up and sleep slid under seven hours, dinner felt like a chore even with calories steady. I now log weekly averages for calories, protein, steps, and sleep; appetite tracks those trends more than any single day.

Do you notice the flat appetite on rest days too, or mostly after your four lifting sessions and bike intervals? That pattern might tell you whether it is volume and fatigue rather than the 220 g target. Rooting for you.

at 2,250 kcal, 220 g protein is ~39% of intake—satiety-heavy. What’s your weekly rate of loss? If it’s >1.5 lb/wk at 178 lb, the deficit is probably the bigger driver than the protein target.

I’ve run similar macros; appetite only vanished when I also let fat drop under ~55 g. Training volume alone rarely suppresses appetite for six straight weeks. If there’s a GLP-1 in the mix, that’s a separate variable. Check rate of loss and fat grams before blaming the 220 g.

I lift 4x and run similar protein. What fixed my dinner appetite wasn’t lowering protein—it was sleep and caffeine. Sub-7h nights plus two big coffees before noon made me weirdly not