I literally cannot eat more than 500 calories a day - is this okay?? — anyone have experience?

pat_auckland said:

The RDA is the wrong reference and it is worth understanding why.

Thank you for spelling out the reasoning rather than just the conclusion. Taking it to my next appointment.

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. Most of what circulates confidently in this community traces back to one summary of one study, and the qualifier was dropped somewhere in the third retelling.

Dr.RheumBOS said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

I do not accept the framing. The question has been narrowed to the version that has a tidy answer, and the part that was dropped is the part the OP actually asked about.

The figures, for anyone assembling their own picture. Worth stating the units and the reference range whenever you post a number here. A large fraction of the apparent disagreement in these threads is two people using different units and both being right.

Moderator note: the sourcing question belongs in the vendor section and has been split out. Thread quality here is what the rules are for. Keep it up.