Skip to main content
BeHabitual

Protein intake calculator

How much protein a day, and roughly what that looks like on a plate.

Runs in your browser. Nothing is sent, saved, or shared.

kg

Spreading protein across meals is easier than one enormous dinner.

Protein a day

86 to 115 g

Aim near 101 g, which is about 25 g across 4 meals

Per meal
25 g

Across 4 meals

Midpoint target
101 g

A sensible number to aim at

What 101 g looks like

  • Chicken breast, 150 g46 g46%
  • Greek yoghurt, 170 g pot17 g17%
  • Three large eggs19 g19%
  • Tin of tuna, drained25 g25%
  • Cooked lentils, 200 g18 g18%
  • Scoop of whey powder24 g24%

Enough to support recovery from regular training without going out of your way.

High protein foods arranged on a board

The number depends on what you are doing

A sedentary adult needs far less than someone lifting four times a week, and someone in a calorie deficit needs more than either, because protein is what stops weight loss becoming muscle loss.

The official minimum of about 0.8 grams per kilogram is the amount that prevents deficiency, not the amount that supports building anything. Those are different questions and they get confused constantly.

Spreading it across the day

Roughly 25 to 40 grams per meal, three or four times a day, covers most targets without any single meal becoming enormous. The old idea that the body can only use 30 grams at a sitting is overstated, but spreading it out is still easier to eat and probably marginally better for muscle building.

The meal most people underdo is breakfast. A typical cereal or toast breakfast carries under ten grams, which means the rest of the day has to make up a deficit before it starts.

What it looks like as food

Numbers are abstract until you convert them. A chicken breast is around 30 grams of protein, a can of tuna about 25, three eggs about 18, a cup of Greek yoghurt around 20, and 100 grams of lentils about 9.

The honest cost: hitting 150 grams a day is real effort if you do not eat meat, and it usually needs deliberate planning rather than hoping the day adds up.

How to work out your protein needs

  1. 1

    Enter your body weight

    Protein targets scale with body mass rather than calories.

  2. 2

    Pick your situation

    Sedentary, active, building muscle, or in a deficit. Each shifts the grams per kilogram.

  3. 3

    Check the per-meal figure

    Divide across three or four meals so no single one has to carry it all.

  4. 4

    Compare against real food

    The examples convert the target into portions you can actually plan.

Questions people ask

How much protein do I need per day?
Around 0.8 grams per kilogram is the minimum to avoid deficiency. Active people generally do better between 1.4 and 2.0, and anyone in a calorie deficit or building muscle should sit at the upper end.
Can you eat too much protein?
For healthy adults, intakes well above the usual targets have not been shown to cause harm. It does displace other food from your calorie budget, so very high intakes have an opportunity cost rather than a danger.
How much protein per meal?
Roughly 25 to 40 grams across three or four meals suits most targets. The meal most people underdo is breakfast, which often carries under ten grams.
Do I need more protein when losing weight?
Yes. In a calorie deficit, higher protein preserves muscle so more of the weight you lose is fat. It is also the most filling macro per calorie, which makes the deficit easier to hold.

Other tools

Read next

Numbers are easy. Doing it every day is the hard part.

A calculator tells you where you are once. If the thing you actually want is to keep something up, that takes a record rather than a result.

Start trackingSee how it works