Accepted answer
Start with what 1,000 kcal a day leaves you room for, because at that intake the deficit is a live competing explanation rather than a footnote. Protein is 4 kcal per gram, so 100 g costs 400 kcal — 40 per cent of the entire day's energy — and everything else has to come out of the remaining 600. A day that misses protein at 1,000 kcal has missed it by a wide margin, and reflux that tracks those days is a nutrition signal. Then separate the two by timing: a dose effect is periodic and phase-locked to the injection or to an increase, and a deficit effect is monotonic and gets worse the longer the intake stays at 1,000. Log intake, protein and reflux on the same daily row for a fortnight and the two patterns separate without any further cleverness. Nothing here is medical advice.
The honest answer is that this is usually fixable by eating more, which is unwelcome advice in this context.
A deficit beyond about a thousand kilocalories a day reliably produces fatigue, reduced training performance and reduced spontaneous movement. With appetite suppressed, deficits of that size arrive by accident rather than by plan.
Local reaction versus infection
| Feature | Local reaction | Sterile abscess | Cellulitis |
|---|
| Onset | Hours to 2 days | Days | 1–4 days, progressive |
| Warmth | Absent or minimal | Mild | Marked |
| Expansion | Static or shrinking | Slow | Expanding |
| Texture | Firm, flat or raised | Fluctuant | Diffuse, indurated |
| Systemic features | None | None | Fever, malaise possible |
| Action | Observe, rotate site | Clinical review | Same-day clinical review |
Hypothyroidism, sleep apnoea, depression and anaemia all present as fatigue and all become more likely rather than less in this population, so attribution to the compound should be a diagnosis of exclusion.
Energy deficits above roughly a thousand kilocalories a day are associated with measurable reductions in resting metabolic rate, spontaneous activity and subjective energy in controlled studies.
Weigh three days of intake honestly. That answers this most of the time.
6This is the first explanation of the timing pattern that has actually made sense to me. – Dr_Bram_Verhoeven 5 months ago add a comment