Iron & Oven

How much protein you actually need

October 15, 2026 · 5 min read

The number, the reasoning, and how to hit it without drinking a shake at every meal.

Protein advice tends to come in two flavours. One says the official allowance covers everyone and the rest is marketing. The other says you need a chicken breast every two hours or your biceps will fall off. Both are wrong in useful ways.

The short answer

If you lift weights and want to build or keep muscle, aim for 1.6 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, and go up to about 2.2 g/kg if you're dieting or simply like a margin. In pounds, that's roughly 0.7 to 1 g per pound.

For an 80 kg (176 lb) person, that's about 130 to 175 g a day. Not heroic. Four meals of 30 to 45 g each gets you there.

Where that number comes from

The Recommended Dietary Allowance is 0.8 g/kg. That figure is real, but it was set to prevent deficiency in the average sedentary adult, not to get the most out of training. It's the floor, not the target.

The best single answer for lifters comes from a 2018 meta-analysis by Morton and colleagues, which pooled 49 trials with nearly 1,900 people doing resistance training. Extra protein helped muscle and strength gains, and the benefit levelled off at around 1.6 g/kg/day. The statistical upper bound of that estimate was about 2.2 g/kg, which is why 2.2 is a sensible ceiling if you want to be sure you've covered it.

The International Society of Sports Nutrition lands in the same place: 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg/day for most people who exercise, with higher intakes useful during a calorie deficit.

When to go higher

When you're in a deficit. Losing fat means your body is short on energy, and it will happily take some of that from muscle. Higher protein, combined with lifting, is the most reliable way to keep the muscle while the fat goes. Reviews of lean, trained people dieting hard suggest intakes of around 2.3 to 3.1 g per kg of lean mass. For most people that works out close to the 2.2 g/kg of total body weight above.

When you're older. Muscle gets less responsive to protein with age. Older adults seem to need a bit more per meal to get the same effect, so landing at the upper end of the range and spreading it evenly is a good idea past 60 or so.

If you carry a lot of body fat

Per-kilogram targets get silly when body weight is high. A 140 kg person doesn't need 300 g of protein. Use your goal weight, or a reasonable weight for your height, and multiply that instead. You'll land on something you can actually eat.

Does timing matter?

Less than the daily total, but a little.

Is high protein bad for your kidneys?

In healthy people, the evidence so far says no. Trials and reviews of intakes well above 2 g/kg haven't found harm to kidney function in people whose kidneys were healthy to start with.

If you have kidney disease, or diabetes with any kidney involvement, that's a different conversation, and it's one to have with your doctor before you change anything.

What 150 g a day looks like

Here's a plain day, no supplements:

That's around 150 to 165 g, and nobody had to open a tub of powder.

Good sources, roughly per 30 g of protein

Plant-based?

You can absolutely hit these numbers without meat. Two things help. First, eat a bit more total protein than the target, since some plant proteins are digested slightly less well and have less leucine, the amino acid that does most of the signalling for muscle growth. Second, mix sources over the day: soy, legumes, grains, seitan. Tofu, tempeh, edamame and soy or pea protein powder do most of the heavy lifting.

Do you need powder?

No. Powder is food in a convenient shape. It's useful when you're short at the end of the day or don't feel like cooking another chicken breast. It isn't better than food, and it isn't worse. If you buy it, look for a brand with third-party testing (Informed Sport or NSF Certified for Sport) so you know what's in the tub.

The point

Get your daily total in the right range, spread it over a few meals, and lift something heavy. That's 90% of it. The other 10% is arguing on the internet about the last 10%.

Sources

General information, not medical advice. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or take medication that affects appetite or blood sugar, check with your doctor before changing how you eat or train.

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