How Much Protein Do You Need Per Day?

Protein recommendations range from a bare-minimum government number to targets used by strength athletes, and the right answer depends on your body weight, your goals and your age. This guide walks through the evidence-based ranges and turns them into a concrete daily number in grams.

The RDA is a floor, not a target

The Recommended Dietary Allowance for protein is 0.8 g per kilogram of body weight per day. That number was set to prevent deficiency in nearly all healthy adults who are mostly sedentary. It is not designed to maximize muscle, strength, satiety or healthy aging. If you train, are dieting, or are over about 60, most sports nutrition researchers consider the RDA too low for your goals.

Evidence-based ranges by goal

A widely cited 2018 meta-analysis by Morton and colleagues found that muscle gains from resistance training plateaued at around 1.6 g/kg per day on average, with the upper end of the confidence interval near 2.2 g/kg. That is why 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg has become the standard recommendation for people trying to build muscle. Individual needs vary, so being anywhere inside that range is generally fine.

• Sedentary, generally healthy adult: 0.8 to 1.2 g/kg per day
• Recreationally active, want to stay lean and strong: 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg per day
• Building muscle with resistance training: 1.6 to 2.2 g/kg per day
• Dieting in a calorie deficit while keeping muscle: 1.6 to 2.4 g/kg per day
• Older adults (roughly 60+): at least 1.0 to 1.2 g/kg, more if training

Worked examples in real numbers

Take your body weight in kilograms and multiply by your chosen factor. A 60 kg (132 lb) woman building muscle at 1.8 g/kg needs about 108 g per day. An 80 kg (176 lb) man at 2.0 g/kg needs about 160 g. A 70 kg sedentary adult at 1.0 g/kg needs about 70 g. If you use pounds, divide your weight by 2.2 to get kilograms first, or use the shortcut of roughly 0.7 to 1.0 g per pound of body weight for muscle building.

Older adults and special cases

Muscle becomes harder to build and easier to lose with age, a process called anabolic resistance. Expert groups such as PROT-AGE recommend at least 1.0 to 1.2 g/kg per day for adults over 65, and more when combined with exercise or recovering from illness. On the other end, people with diagnosed kidney disease should talk to their doctor before increasing protein, because damaged kidneys may need a controlled intake. For healthy people, research has not shown harm from intakes within the ranges above.

Turning the number into a habit

Knowing your number only helps if you hit it most days. A simple approach is to log just protein and ignore everything else, which is exactly what Protein Tracker is built for: set your gram target once and fill the ring each day. For the food side of the equation, see our guide to the best high-protein foods.