How much protein you actually need

Aim for somewhere around 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight a day, and spread it across your meals rather than getting most of it at dinner. For a 70kg adult that’s roughly 85–110g a day — noticeably more than the official minimum, well short of what fitness marketing often implies you need.

Why this works

The official reference intake most countries use, including the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, is built around preventing deficiency in a mostly sedentary population — it’s a floor, not a target for anyone trying to build or maintain muscle, stay full, or train regularly. Research on people who strength train, walk regularly, or are simply trying to manage weight consistently finds better outcomes in the 1.2–1.6g/kg range: more muscle retained during weight loss, better strength gains from the same training, and more stable hunger through the day. Above roughly 1.6g/kg, most of the research shows diminishing returns for anyone who isn’t a competitive strength or physique athlete — more isn’t harmful in a healthy adult, it’s just not doing much extra.

The distribution across the day matters almost as much as the total, and this is the part most people get wrong. Muscle protein synthesis — the process that actually uses the protein you eat to build or repair tissue — responds to protein intake in a threshold way, roughly 25–40g per meal for most adults, and then plateaus until the next meal. A day built around a protein-light breakfast, a moderate lunch, and most of the day’s protein at dinner leaves two of three meals under that threshold, wasting some of the day’s total even if the sum looks adequate on paper.

How to do it

1. Work out your rough target: bodyweight in kg × 1.2 to 1.6. Round it, don’t obsess over the decimal.
2. Split it across three or four meals rather than one large dinner — aim for at least 25–30g at each main meal.
3. Breakfast is usually the easiest place to improve. Eggs, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, or a protein-forward smoothie close most of the gap that a typical carb-heavy breakfast leaves.
4. Don’t over-engineer it. Consistent, roughly-right meals beat a precisely tracked day you can’t sustain.
5. If you’re strength training, having protein somewhere within a few hours of a session matters more than the old advice about a narrow post-workout window — total daily intake and distribution outweigh precise timing for most people.

Common mistakes

• Basing your target on the official minimum. That figure is built for deficiency prevention, not for someone training or trying to lose fat while keeping muscle.
• Loading almost all of it into dinner. A 100g-protein day that’s 10g, 15g, and 75g across three meals gets less benefit than the same 100g spread more evenly.
• Assuming more is always better. Past roughly 1.6g/kg, extra protein mostly just adds calories without much additional benefit for a non-competitive athlete.
• Ignoring plant sources because they “don’t count.” Legumes, tofu, tempeh, and grains together easily meet the target — it just takes slightly more attention to variety than animal sources do.
• Judging it after a few days. Fullness and energy effects show up within one to two weeks; strength and body-composition effects take longer and are a separate, slower signal.

What should change

Expect steadier fullness between meals and less of a mid-afternoon energy dip within one to two weeks, since protein is the macronutrient most reliably linked to satiety. If you’re also strength training, expect better recovery and more consistent strength progress over several weeks — a slower, secondary signal that shouldn’t be the thing you check daily.

Your next step

If strength training is part of the plan, pairing adequate protein with the two-sessions-a-week approach is where the two changes compound — protein without training, or training without adequate protein, both leave a meaningful amount of benefit on the table.