I'm not a nutritionist or broscientist, but of what I do know, what you are doing now is correct, and probably qualifies as a muscle-sparing fast. You can eat

I'm not a nutritionist or broscientist, but of what I do know, what you are doing now is correct, and probably qualifies as a muscle-sparing fast. You can eat more protein--likely in drinkable form due to your sleeve--to try to gain more muscle, or you could stay the course to lose the fat first. Since lean muscle mass increases your base metabolism, which increases your fat-burning rate, that's a complex equation that may require calculus to optimize, and your body can always just arbitrarily veto the mathematical results.