How much protein do you actually need?
The government minimum exists to prevent deficiency, not to support training. For someone lifting several times a week, a widely cited meta-analysis and meta-regression found gains from protein intake plateauing at around 1.6 g per kg per day, with the confidence interval reaching higher for some individuals.
| Body weight | Daily protein target | Per meal across four meals |
|---|---|---|
| 60 kg | About 96 g | About 24 g |
| 75 kg | About 120 g | About 30 g |
| 90 kg | About 144 g | About 36 g |
| 105 kg | About 168 g | About 42 g |
If you are well above a healthy body weight, calculating from a goal weight rather than current weight gives a more sensible target. If you are unsure, ask a coach rather than guessing.
Why the spread matters more than the timing
Meta-analyses of protein timing suggest that once total daily intake is matched, the exact hour you eat matters surprisingly little. What does help is not leaving it all to dinner. Three or four meals each carrying a real serving is both more effective and, frankly, more pleasant to eat.
The practical failure point is almost always breakfast. Toast and coffee is perhaps ten grams. If you need thirty, that is a twenty gram hole you spend the rest of the day trying to fill.
- Three eggs and Greek yoghurt: roughly 30 g at breakfast.
- A tin of tuna or a chicken breast at lunch: roughly 30 to 40 g.
- A normal dinner with meat, fish, tofu or legumes: 30 to 50 g.
- That is most people's target met, without a shaker in sight.
Do you need a supplement?
Need, no. Useful, sometimes. Whey and other protein powders are food in a convenient format. They are worth having when your schedule regularly puts four or five hours between eating opportunities, or when appetite is the limiting factor rather than access.
A note for athletes over 50
The muscle-building response to a given dose of protein appears to blunt with age, which means older adults generally need a larger serving per meal to get the same signal, not a smaller one. This is the opposite of how most people eat as they get older.
We write about this at length in the strength-after-50 work, including strength training after 60, and it is a standing conversation in our Living Legends sessions.
