Loading Protein Target Calculator…
Optional. Shows what share of the day this protein would take.
Enough for a positive muscle protein balance in most exercising people.
105 g – 150 g
1.4–2 g per kg of body weight.
An estimate for training purposes and not medical advice. These bands were written for healthy adults who train, and they are not safe to generalise: reduced kidney function, liver disease, pregnancy and some metabolic conditions all change what a sensible protein intake is, in directions a calculator cannot guess. Anyone in those groups should take a figure from a clinician instead of from this page.
Every band above is a range in its own source and stays one here. The 0.25 g per kilogram per meal, the absolute 20–40 g dose and the spacing of roughly 3 to 4 hours all come from the International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand of 2017. The share of energy is checked against the Institute of Medicine range for protein, 10 to 35% of calories, which is why a high target on a small calorie allowance gets flagged. Totals above roughly 2 g per kilogram show no further benefit for muscle in the literature the stands review, outside the specific case of holding lean mass while eating at a deficit.
Every figure this tool quotes is a range in the document it came from. The single round numbers that circulate instead — a gram per pound, two grams a kilo — are the endpoints of those bands with the uncertainty filed off, and the uncertainty is the honest part. Position stands publish spans because the evidence supports a span, and collapsing one to a point invents a precision that nobody claimed.
The lowest is the reference intake of 0.80 grams per kilogram a day, from the Institute of Medicine’s dietary reference intakes. It is a floor designed to cover almost everyone against deficiency, not a training figure, and it is quoted here as the single value the source states.
For anyone training, the joint position statement of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada and the American College of Sports Medicine puts the requirement at 1.2 to 2.0 grams per kilogram. The International Society of Sports Nutrition gives 1.4 to 2.0 for building or holding muscle, and raises it to 2.3 to 3.1 for one narrow case: people who resistance train and are eating at a deficit, where the extra exists to protect lean mass rather than to add any.
Someone of 75 kg aiming to hold muscle lands on 105 to 150 grams a day. On a 2,400 kilocalorie diet that is 18 to 25 per cent of their energy, comfortably inside the 10 to 35 per cent range the reference intakes describe. Push the same body to the deficit band and it becomes 173 to 233 grams — and on a reduced 2,000 kilocalorie intake the top of that reaches 47 per cent of the day, which the tool flags, because a target that crowds out everything else is worth noticing before you commit to it.
The same sports nutrition stand recommends roughly 0.25 grams per kilogram at a sitting, or an absolute dose of 20 to 40 grams, repeated every three to four hours. For a 75 kg person that is about 19 grams a meal, which means the daily target divides into more sittings than most people plan for. The distribution is a real finding rather than a detail: the same total eaten in one enormous evening meal does less for muscle protein synthesis than the same amount spread out.
It was not designed to answer that question. The 0.80 figure is set to prevent deficiency across a general adult population, and every position stand written for people who train lands above it — by a factor of nearly two at the low end and closer to three at the top. Use it as a floor, not as a target.
For healthy adults with normal kidney function the literature reviewed by these stands finds no benefit above roughly two grams per kilogram for muscle, and no consistent harm either. The practical cost is displacement: protein calories are calories that cannot also be carbohydrate, and endurance work suffers first when that squeeze happens.
It is a defensible refinement, and some of the underlying research does express intakes per kilogram of fat-free mass. This page uses total body weight because that is the unit all three cited documents write their recommendations in, and converting between them requires a body composition estimate that carries its own substantial error.
No. The sports nutrition stand is explicit that physically active people can meet their requirements from whole foods, and treats powders as a convenience for hitting high totals without excess calories rather than as a requirement. What matters more is that each serving contains the full set of essential amino acids.