Health Nutrition

Protein calculator

Last reviewed 23 Aug 2026 ·Method: grams per kilogram of bodyweight from ISSN position stand ranges.
Bodyweight
kg
Training and goal
Meals per day
Daily calories
To show protein as a share of intake
Protein per day 120 g
75 kg × 1.6 g/kg
Per meal 30 g
Grams per kg 1.6
Calories from protein 480 kcal
Share of daily intake 20 %
Minimum for health 60 g
Upper end of useful 165 g
≈0.4 g/kg per meal · spread across the day

Muscle protein synthesis responds to a dose of roughly 0.4 grams per kilogram of bodyweight, and the response plateaus above that. For a 75 kg person that is around 30 grams a meal — so four meals of 30 grams does more than one meal of 120. It is the most practical finding in the whole protein literature and the one most often ignored.

General guidance for healthy adults. Anyone with kidney disease should take protein advice from a doctor, not from a calculator.

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Protein needs scale with bodyweight and training. The health minimum is 0.8 g per kg; strength training warrants about 1.6 g per kg, and up to 2.2 g per kg when cutting. A 75 kg lifter therefore wants around 120 grams a day.

How much protein to eat

1 Enter your bodyweight.
2 Pick the row matching your training and goal.
3 Divide across your meals — the per-meal figure is the practically useful one.
4 Aim for roughly 0.4 g per kg in each meal rather than one large hit.

The 0.8 g per kg figure that appears on nutrition labels is a minimum to prevent deficiency, not an optimum for anyone training. Position stands from the sports nutrition societies land at 1.4 to 2.0 g per kg for people doing resistance work, and the upper end applies during a calorie deficit, when protein protects lean mass that would otherwise be lost alongside fat. Beyond about 2.2 g per kg there is no measurable further benefit for body composition, and the extra calories are better spent elsewhere.

Questions

0.8 g per kg is the health minimum; 1.6 g per kg for strength training; up to 2.2 g per kg while cutting.

ISSN position stand — protein and exerciseMorton RW et al. — protein supplementation and resistance training
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