Protein Intake Chart by Body Weight

Every cell is body weight in kilograms multiplied by the intake rate in grams per kilogram, rounded to the nearest gram. The columns span the whole range of defensible recommendations: 0.8 g/kg is the official adult requirement, and 2.2 g/kg is the top of the range the International Society of Sports Nutrition describes for athletes building muscle.

The chart deliberately does not tell you which column is correct, because that depends on what you are trying to do. This table maps each intake to the situation it comes from, with the figure for a 70 kg adult as a reference point.

The most common mistake is treating 0.8 g/kg as a target rather than a floor. It is the amount that prevents deficiency in the average sedentary adult, set to cover requirements at the population level. It is not the intake associated with best outcomes for anyone who lifts, runs, is dieting, or is over about 60 — all of whom do better at roughly double that figure.

Total daily protein is the factor that matters most, but distribution has a smaller measurable effect: spreading intake across three to five servings of roughly 0.4 g/kg each appears to stimulate muscle protein synthesis better than concentrating it in one or two meals. The table below shows what that means in practice at 80 kg.

For most people the practical takeaway is that hitting a high daily total requires protein at every meal rather than one large serving at dinner. Around 30 to 40 g per meal is enough for the vast majority of adults, and there is no need to weigh the split precisely — the difference between an even split and a slightly lopsided one is small next to the difference between 1.0 and 1.8 g/kg in total.

Protein needs go up, not down, in a calorie deficit. Two reasons: higher intakes protect lean mass when total energy is restricted, so more of the weight you lose is fat, and protein is the most satiating of the three macronutrients, which makes the deficit easier to hold. A reasonable target while dieting is 1.8 to 2.2 g/kg, at the higher end if you are already lean or the deficit is aggressive.

One adjustment matters at higher body weights. Because recommendations scale with total body weight, they can produce impractically large targets for people with a lot of fat mass to lose — 2.0 g/kg at 130 kg is 260 g a day. In that case scaling to goal weight or to lean body mass is the more sensible approach; the protein calculator lets you enter whichever weight you want to base the target on, and the body fat calculator will estimate your lean mass from tape measurements.

• These are targets for healthy adults. Reduced protein intake is sometimes prescribed in chronic kidney disease and some liver conditions. If you have been given a protein limit by a clinician, that limit takes precedence over any chart.
• More is not linearly better. Evidence for additional benefit above roughly 2.2 g/kg is weak in most situations. Very high intakes are not dangerous for healthy kidneys, but they displace carbohydrate and fat from the diet, which can hurt training quality.
• Protein quality varies. The chart counts grams, not amino acid profiles. Diets built largely on plant proteins generally need a slightly higher total and more attention to variety to cover the essential amino acids, particularly leucine.
• Grams of food are not grams of protein. A 200 g chicken breast supplies roughly 60 g of protein, not 200 g. Read the figure from a label or a food database rather than from portion size.

Our guide on how much protein you really need per day covers the underlying evidence, including where the higher figures come from and how confident we should be in them.