Protein is the macro people most often get wrong in both directions. Some are eating half of what they need and wondering why recovery feels rough. Others are drinking four shakes a day and treating the excess as insurance.
Here's a practical way to land on a number you can actually hit.
Start with bodyweight
The research clusters around 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day (roughly 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound) for people training regularly with the goal of building or holding muscle.
That's a wide range, so here's how to pick a point inside it:
- 1.6 g/kg — you train two or three times a week and your weight is stable.
- 1.8 g/kg — you train four or five times a week and you're eating at maintenance or a slight surplus.
- 2.2 g/kg — you're in a calorie deficit, training hard, and want to protect muscle while you lose fat.
For an 80 kg person, that's somewhere between 128 g and 176 g a day.
The deficit case is the one people miss. When calories go down, protein should go up — it's the macro doing the most to keep muscle on you while you lose weight.
Use lean bodyweight if you have a lot to lose
Bodyweight-based targets get distorted at higher body-fat percentages, because fat mass doesn't have the same protein requirement. If you're carrying significant fat, calculate against your target weight rather than your current weight. The number gets more achievable and no less effective.
Spread it across the day
Total daily intake matters most, but distribution helps at the margins. Aim for three or four servings of 30–40 g rather than 20 g at breakfast and 90 g at dinner.
A rough template:
- Breakfast — eggs, Greek yoghurt, or a shake (30 g)
- Lunch — chicken, fish, tofu, or legumes with a grain (40 g)
- Post-training — whatever's convenient; the "anabolic window" is much wider than it was once sold as (30 g)
- Dinner — your largest whole-food serving (40 g)
What 30 grams actually looks like
Portion intuition is worth more than a calculator you stop opening after a week.
| Food | Serving | Protein |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | 120 g cooked | 36 g |
| Greek yoghurt (0%) | 300 g | 30 g |
| Whey isolate | 1 scoop | 25 g |
| Eggs | 4 large | 24 g |
| Lentils, cooked | 300 g | 27 g |
| Tinned tuna | 1 tin (120 g) | 28 g |
| Firm tofu | 200 g | 32 g |
| Cottage cheese | 250 g | 28 g |
If you're plant-based
You can hit any of these targets without animal products, but you'll need more volume and more variety. Soy, seitan, lentils, and legumes do the heavy lifting; aim toward the upper end of the range since plant proteins are generally less efficiently used.
Is more ever a problem?
For healthy adults with normal kidney function, higher intakes have consistently been shown to be safe. The real cost of overshooting isn't harm — it's opportunity. Protein is filling and often expensive, so calories spent well past your target are calories not spent on the carbohydrate that fuels your training.
The part that actually matters
Pick a number. Write it down. Track it honestly for two weeks and see how close you get.
Almost everyone discovers they're eating less protein than they assumed — and that closing that gap does more for recovery and body composition than any supplement they were considering.
Aventi calculates your target from your bodyweight and goal, then tracks every meal against it. See how it works.