How Much Protein Do You Actually Need?

Ask five people and you'll get five answers, most of them from someone selling a tub of something. So let's do this properly, starting with the number you've probably already seen.

The official number isn't for you

The UK reference intake for protein is 0.75g per kilo of bodyweight per day. For someone weighing 80kg that's 60g - roughly two chicken breasts, and you're done.

Here's the thing people miss. That figure exists to stop you becoming deficient. It's the amount that keeps a sedentary adult from developing a problem. It was never designed to answer the question "how much protein will help me build muscle while losing fat", because that's a completely different question.

Treating it as a target is like treating the minimum wage as a salary goal.

What the research says if you're training

The most useful piece of work here pooled 49 randomised controlled trials of people doing resistance training. It found that gains in lean mass kept improving as protein went up, and then flattened out at around 1.6g per kilo per day. Past that point, more protein didn't produce more muscle.

That number is a ceiling for muscle building, not a magic threshold. Getting to 1.4 is not a failure. But if you're training hard and eating 70g a day, you're leaving results on the table, and no amount of extra gym time will make up for it.

What changes when you're dieting

When you eat less, some of the weight you lose is fat and some is muscle. How that splits isn't fixed - and protein is one of the biggest levers you have over it.

In one controlled trial, two groups ate in a steep calorie deficit and trained hard six days a week. The only meaningful difference was protein: one group ate roughly double the other. The higher-protein group gained lean mass while losing more fat. The other group didn't.

So the practical answer is: if you're in a deficit, aim higher rather than lower. Somewhere between 1.6 and 2.2g per kilo is a sensible working range for most people who are training and dieting at the same time.

Protein is the one macronutrient where being a bit over is fine and being under has an actual cost.

What that looks like on a plate

Numbers are useless until you can see them as food. Rough figures for common things:

• Chicken breast, 100g cooked - about 31g
• Tin of tuna, drained - about 30g
• Greek yoghurt, a 170g pot - about 17g
• Two eggs - about 12g
• Scoop of whey, 30g - about 24g
• Cooked lentils, 100g - about 9g
• Firm tofu, 100g - about 8g

An 80kg person needing 130g doesn't need to do anything exotic. Yoghurt and eggs at breakfast, a tin of tuna at lunch, chicken at dinner, and you're most of the way there before you've thought about a shake.

The mistake almost everybody makes

Not the total. The distribution.

Most people eat almost no protein until the evening, then have an enormous plate of it at dinner and call it a day. Toast for breakfast, a sandwich at lunch, then 60g of protein at eight o'clock.

Spreading it across the day works better - roughly a quarter of your daily target in each main meal. It's also the single easiest fix for the four o'clock biscuit raid, because protein is the most filling thing you can eat and you've had none of it since you woke up.

If you take one thing away

Work out 1.6g per kilo of your bodyweight. Split it across three or four meals. Start with breakfast, because that's almost certainly where the gap is.

That single change does more for most people than any supplement they've ever bought.

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