How much protein keeps your muscle as you age, how much builds more, and what that is in grams for your weight.
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7 Oct 2026Some everyday plates get you there easily, and some fall short without you noticing.
3 Oct 2026The standard recommended amount is 0.8 g per kilogram of body weight a day. An expert group recommends 1.0 to 1.2 g for people over 65, and at least 1.2 g for anyone active. Our free macro calculator gives you your own number.
About 30 g. That is 0.40 g per kilogram for someone who weighs 75 kg, the amount older men in lab studies needed to get the most out of a meal. A bigger protein meal is not wasted, so treat 30 g as a floor. See what 30 g looks like.
Chicken breast, steamed fish and grilled prawns reach 30 g with an ordinary portion. A normal plate of chicken rice has about 19 g, from Singapore's Health Promotion Board food data, and asking for double meat takes it to about 31 g.
Muscle is rebuilt from protein, so a day short on it is a day your body borrows from the muscle you already have. In a feeding trial of 22 lean adults, a lower-protein menu also led to about 12% more eating, mostly savoury snacks between meals.
Yes. Your body uses 20 to 30% of the energy in protein just to digest and process it, against 5 to 10% for carbohydrate and 0 to 3% for fat, according to a 2004 review of how much energy digestion takes. So 100 kcal of protein leaves you about 70 to 80.
It is your body making new muscle protein from the protein in your food. Each meal sets off a burst of it, and how big the burst gets depends on how much protein that meal carries, which is why we aim for about 30 g at each meal.
Our free calculator works out your resting rate, your maintenance calories and your protein target.