Daily Protein Target: Grams Per Kg by Goal and Age

It's 9 p.m., the gym bag is by the door, and you're standing in the kitchen doing arithmetic on your phone. Chicken has 31 grams a portion, the yogurt says 17, and somewhere online a stranger insists you need your body weight in grams. Your daily protein target shouldn't take a spreadsheet. It takes one multiplication — and a rule for which number to multiply.

Table of Contents

• 1. Why 0.8 g/kg Is a Floor, Not a Target
• 2. Your Daily Protein Target by Goal, Age and Training
• 3. Splitting It Across the Day
• 4. What That Looks Like on a Plate
• 5. Older Adults Need More, Not Less
• 6. Cutting Weight Without Losing Muscle
• 7. Who Should Ignore the Higher Numbers
• 8. Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why 0.8 g/kg Is a Floor, Not a Target

Every protein argument starts with the same number — a minimum intake set to prevent deficiency in sedentary adults, and somehow the answer everyone quotes when they want to hear they're already eating enough.

Harvard's Nutrition Source states the baseline plainly: “The National Academy of Medicine recommends that adults get a minimum of 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram of body weight per day, or just over 7 grams for every 20 pounds of body weight.”

Run that through a real body and it looks thin: a 140-pound person lands near 50 g a day, a 200-pound person near 70 g. Two eggs, a chicken breast and a yogurt — a normal Tuesday, not a target.

The catch is what the number isn't for. It doesn't account for resistance training, for getting older, or for eating less on purpose to lose fat. Each of those raises the requirement, and the research behind the higher numbers is more recent than the floor is.

Contrarian note: most healthy adults in the US and UK clear 0.8 g/kg without thinking, mainly through meat, dairy and bread. If your diet is mixed, the interesting question isn't deficiency — it's whether you eat enough to build or keep muscle.

2. Your Daily Protein Target by Goal, Age and Training

Here's the whole thing in one table. Find the row that describes your week, multiply your weight in kilograms by the middle column, and if you think in pounds, divide by 2.2 first.

Two sanity checks before you pick a row. If you're carrying a lot of fat, calculate from your target weight rather than your current one. And the ranges overlap on purpose — consistency across the week beats hitting the top of the range on Monday and nothing by Thursday.

3. Splitting It Across the Day

Total still wins, but how you spread it matters more than the old “protein window” legend suggested. Muscle responds to each decent dose, so four moderate hits beat one enormous dinner.

The ISSN position stand puts the per-meal figure at about 0.25 g of high-quality protein per kg of body weight, or a flat 20–40 g — comfortably inside the daily ranges above.

For an 80 kg adult that's 20 g per meal at the floor and about 32 g as the working target — which is why 30 g keeps showing up in fitness writing. A convenient middle, not a magic threshold.

Here's what a day looks like when you build it around doses instead of vibes. Adjust the portions to your own body weight, and note that the training-day version simply tucks protein around the session.

1. 7:30 a.m. — breakfast, 30 g. Three eggs and a pot of Greek yogurt, or oats with milk and a scoop of whey if mornings are rushed. Getting 25–30 g in early makes the rest of the day easier to hit.
2. 12:30 p.m. — lunch, 30–35 g. A palm-sized portion of chicken, fish, tofu or lentils, plus whatever vegetables the day allows. This is usually the meal where people miss by 15 g without noticing.
3. 4:00 p.m. — the gap-filler, 15–20 g. Cottage cheese, a boiled egg, edamame, or a yogurt. This is the slot that turns a 90 g day into a 120 g day in two minutes.
4. 6:00 p.m. — train, then eat, 30–40 g. Lift before or after dinner, whichever sticks — the beginner strength plan starts at two sessions a week, and two is enough to raise your requirement.
5. 8:00 p.m. — dinner, 35–40 g. Salmon, lean beef, tempeh or a big lentil bowl. If the day is running short, this is the meal where an extra 10 g is easy to add.
6. Before bed — optional, 0–20 g. Some evidence supports a slow-digesting protein in the evening, but the PROT-AGE authors are explicit that timing evidence isn't strong enough yet to build rules on. If you're already at your number, skip it.

4. What That Looks Like on a Plate

Numbers on a page become meals in a kitchen, and the difference between two foods with identical protein can be enormous once you look at what arrives with them. Harvard calls this the protein "package", and it's the most useful idea in the whole debate.

Read the sodium column twice if you watch blood pressure. A ham steak and a salmon fillet differ by more than a gram of sodium and do the same job. That's the whole argument for building your day around fish, poultry, dairy, legumes and eggs rather than processed meat.

Plant-based eaters can hit these ranges too — it takes deliberate layering, and mixing sources across the day settles the amino-acid question on its own.

5. Older Adults Need More, Not Less

This is the one group where the guideline is unambiguous and almost nobody follows it. Age changes how the body handles protein: digestion is less efficient, the muscle-building response to a meal is blunted, and low-grade inflammation nudges the whole system toward breakdown.

The PROT-AGE group put a number on the fix: “To help older people (>65 years) maintain and regain lean body mass and function, the PROT-AGE study group recommends average daily intake at least in the range of 1.0 to 1.2 g protein per kilogram of body weight per day.”

Beside the 0.8 g/kg floor the gap is obvious: an 80 kg person eating the standard minimum gets 64 g a day, while the PROT-AGE range calls for 80–96 g. Training pushes past 1.2 g/kg; illness pushes it to 1.2–1.5.

Why it matters beyond muscle: the same paper warns that losses in physical function predict loss of independence, falls and even mortality. Breakfast is the practical sticking point — most over-65s eat almost no protein in the morning and stack it all at dinner, the opposite of what the per-meal dose suggests.

6. Cutting Weight Without Losing Muscle

Dieting creates a problem protein can partly solve. In a calorie deficit the body borrows from muscle, and the leaner you are, the more it prefers to. Raising protein is one of the few levers that protects what you built.

The ISSN position stand puts the top of that range at 2.3–3.1 g/kg specifically to hold onto lean mass while calories are low.

That's a narrow audience: people who already lift and are deliberately eating less. Starting out, jumping to 2.5 g/kg means evenings spent eating chicken instead of learning to train. Keep the lifting and a modest bump; the aggressive numbers can wait.

Two other things belong in the same conversation. Creatine is the most-studied supplement in this space and sits alongside protein rather than replacing it — our guide to creatine for women covers what the evidence does and doesn't show. And fiber, not protein, is what most diets on a deficit are actually missing; a high-protein day with no vegetables is a constipation plan with good macros.

7. Who Should Ignore the Higher Numbers

Protein has one clear medical exception. In advanced kidney disease a high-protein diet can add strain, and the guidance flips entirely.

PROT-AGE spells out the exception: “Older people with severe kidney disease (ie, estimated GFR <30 mL/min/1.73 m(2)), but who are not on dialysis, are an exception to this rule; these individuals may need to limit protein intake.”

If that's your situation, your renal team's number is the one that counts, not a blog table — and the NHS guidance on kidney disease is a good place to see why diet is managed so carefully in it. The same caution applies to anyone with a diagnosed kidney condition, a single kidney, or a liver condition where protein has been professionally restricted.

Now the honest limits, because this topic collects more certainty than the evidence supports. The PROT-AGE authors are direct that protein quality, dose timing and supplements are areas where evidence isn't yet strong enough for specific rules. The daily range, the per-meal dose and whole foods over powder are what hold up. The rest can wait a year.

8. Frequently Asked Questions

How do I convert my weight to kilos for this?

Divide your pounds by 2.2. A 165-pound person is 75 kg, so the 1.4–2.0 g/kg training range lands at 105–150 g a day.

Is 150 g of protein a day too much?

For most healthy adults it's fine if it mostly comes from food — that's inside the training range for someone around 75–100 kg. The exceptions are the kidney and liver conditions above.

Do I need protein immediately after training?

No. The old 30-minute window was overstated. Get a decent dose within a couple of hours of your session and hit your daily total, and you've captured nearly everything the timing research actually supports.

Can I hit these numbers as a vegetarian?

Yes. Lentils, tofu, tempeh, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, milk, eggs and edamame all deliver 15–30 g per serving. You'll eat more volume to get there, and mixing sources across the day covers the amino acids without any extra planning.

Does protein powder count toward my target?

It counts, and it's convenient, but it's the least interesting part of the package — no fiber, no micronutrients, and easy to over-rely on. Use it to fill a gap, not to build the day.

Why does my protein need go up as I get older?

Older bodies extract and use protein less efficiently and respond less strongly to each meal, so you need more of it to get the same muscle-building signal. That's the whole reason the 1.0–1.2 g/kg range exists for over-65s.

How we checked: every figure here was read in the original paper or government page before publication, and the page was edited by our editorial team rather than auto-published.

Read next: How Much Protein You Really Need Each Day · Strength Training for Beginners: A Safe, Simple Guide