I'm not trying to recommend against the Warrior Diet. I just noticed that I took it far too extreme and my personality isn't fit for it. I found myself being afraid to eat and that's not sustainable.
I have been a WD follower for probably 15 years now, and I have never felt like it's a diet prescription but rather a diet attitude. The idea of it, and of getting used to it, is that it shouldn't feel extreme, it should feel good. It's not more complicated than that.
Speaking for myself, I don't follow any eating schedule religiously, and when I was first getting used to the WD, I would have days of my old way of eating at least twice a week.
@Marcus Aurelius, it sounds like, much as one can overtrain, you over-WD-ed when you started, doing too much too soon.
Isn't lack of appetite a known issue with older people? Maybe that's their body trying to preserve itself?
I was born in 1955 and the loss of appetite in older people seems perfectly reasonable to me. One's appetite, if everything is working properly, ought to reflect one's needs. I remember my father's last years quite clearly - he had congestive heart failure, and his gradual weight loss made, in my admittedly non-medical opinion, sense to me. Being smaller meant less work for his failing heart to do.
So I think I personally will try to keep as much of my muscles as possible as I grow older. That means adequate eating. But I think it's also worth a thought that hypertrophy is much easier to come by when younger. From that I conclude that it's also very important to try to eat well and increase muscle mass when young so I have the muscle to keep when I grow older.
I will be the first to say that carrying around a lot of muscle is a choice, and if one chooses this path, then by all means, eat a lot. For me, it's not the right choice. My choice is to make the most of what I've got rather than try to add more, and also to have a training style that fits with the rest of my life. Having spent the years to acquire a certain level of skill at a fews lifts, I enjoy not having to practice them a lot, and minimalist training feels like the reward I get every day for the time I spent, and continue to spend, trying to lift better.
My approach is, I think, based on the model of PTTP. I love the fact that I can find a free half-hour in my day, and in that time warm up a little, do an exercise or two, take a shower, and return to the rest of my life. There have been days when I've got 10 minutes, so I'll do goblet-style squat to warmup, a half-dozen or so heavy deadlifts and that'll be my exercise for the day. And I do make a concerted effort to walk regularly - being fortunate enough to live in a small town with a nice downtown area, I walk to the library, the grocery store, the bank, the post office, and the like, almost every day. It's my main form of conditioning, and I like that I get the chores of life taken care of in a way that's healthy for me.
Or perhaps I can summarize my entire point of view in three words - form follows function. Or "form should follow function" but that would be four words.
I find no reason to make a concerted attempt to add muscle to my frame. Neither, mind you, do I make any attempt to be thinner, either.
JMO, YMMV.
-S-