How Much Protein Should You Have a Day?
Sharon Carius
Clinical Nutritionist, Metabolic Balance® Practitioner
4 September, 2026
Most people are working from a number that was never meant to be a target.
The commonly quoted figure — around 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight — comes from research designed to answer one question: what is the minimum required to prevent deficiency in an average healthy adult?
That is a floor. It is the point below which your body starts breaking down tissue to cope. It tells you nothing about the amount required to maintain muscle as you age, stay full between meals, keep blood sugar stable, or recover properly from exercise.
Using a deficiency threshold as a daily goal is one of the more common and more consequential mistakes I see in clinic.
What actually determines your requirement
There is no single correct number, because the answer genuinely depends on several things.
Body weight is the starting point, since requirements scale with size rather than being fixed.
Age matters more than most people expect. From around 40, the body becomes less efficient at converting dietary protein into muscle — a well-documented effect called anabolic resistance. The same amount of protein produces less benefit than it did at twenty-five, which means the requirement goes up rather than down.
Activity level shifts things considerably. Resistance training in particular increases requirements, because you are actively asking the body to build tissue.
Your goal changes the target. Maintaining what you have is a lower bar than building, and both differ from preserving muscle while losing fat — which is one of the harder things to do and one of the most protein-dependent.
Health status sets limits. Kidney function is the significant one here, and anyone with reduced kidney function needs individual medical guidance rather than a general figure.
The ranges worth working from
For a broadly healthy adult, current research supports the following as reasonable starting points.
General health, mostly sedentary: 1.0–1.2g per kilogram of body weight. Already above the standard recommendation, and for good reason.
Active, or preserving muscle while losing fat: 1.2–1.6g per kilogram. This is where most people who are training regularly or trying to change body composition should sit.
Over fifty, or actively building muscle: 1.4–2.0g per kilogram. The upper end is relevant for people doing serious resistance work; the middle of this range matters for almost everyone past fifty regardless of training.
For a 65kg woman, roughly 78–104g rather than 52. For an 80kg man, that means roughly 96–128g a day rather than 64.
Those gaps are not small, and they are the difference between maintaining your body and slowly losing ground.
Timing matters as much as the total
This is the part that gets overlooked, and in clinical practice it is often where the actual problem sits.
Around 25 to 30 grams per meal appears to be the threshold that meaningfully stimulates muscle protein synthesis. Below that, the signal is weak. Above it, returns diminish within a single sitting.
Which means a person eating 120 grams of protein a day, but eating 10 at breakfast, 25 at lunch and 85 at dinner, is getting considerably less benefit than the total suggests. Two of their three meals fell below the threshold entirely.
This distribution pattern — negligible protein in the morning, most of it in the evening — is close to universal in the people I see. It is also the easiest thing on this list to fix.
Breakfast is where most people lose
Toast. Cereal. Fruit. A pastry with coffee. Perhaps nothing at all until eleven.
These are what most Australian adults eat in the morning, and they contribute almost no protein. The consequences run through the entire day.
A carbohydrate-dominant breakfast produces a sharp glucose rise, a corresponding insulin response, and then a fall — which arrives as the mid-morning slump, the sugar craving, the second coffee. That pattern repeats and compounds. By late afternoon most people are running on fumes and reaching for whatever is nearest.
Protein at breakfast interrupts this at the start. It slows glucose absorption, blunts the insulin response, and produces genuine satiety rather than the temporary fullness of a carbohydrate meal.
If you are already dealing with insulin resistance, this matters more, not less — the glucose swings that drive cravings are precisely what a protein-forward breakfast reduces. The same applies if cortisol and stress are part of your picture, since blood sugar instability is itself a stressor that prompts further cortisol release.
What 30 grams actually looks like
Numbers are useless without a sense of the food.
- three eggs plus a small serving of Greek yoghurt
- a palm-sized portion of chicken, fish, beef or lamb
- 200g of Greek yoghurt with seeds
- a large tin of tuna or salmon
- two eggs with cheese and cottage cheese
- plant-based: lentils with quinoa, or tofu with edamame and seeds — plant sources are less protein-dense per serving, so combining them and eating slightly more is usually necessary
Note how little of this resembles a conventional breakfast. That is the point.
If counting grams is not for you, use your palm. A palm-sized portion of quality protein at each meal gets most people into the right range without weighing or tracking anything, and it self-adjusts — someone larger, or someone who trains, has a larger palm and needs more. If the protein on your plate looks smaller than your own palm, increase it. This is the approach I use with clients on the 14-Day Metabolic Kickstart, because in practice it produces better adherence than any number on a page.
Can you have too much?
For most healthy people, intakes in the ranges above are well tolerated, and the concerns you may have read about bone density and kidney damage in healthy individuals are not well supported by the evidence.
The genuine exception is reduced kidney function. If you have any diagnosed kidney condition, protein intake needs to be set with your doctor, not from an article — the appropriate range in that situation is materially different.
Signs you may not be getting enough
None of these confirms anything on its own, but together they are worth paying attention to:
- persistent hunger an hour or two after eating
- cravings for sugar or starch that feel physical rather than psychological
- losing strength or finding training progress has stalled
- slow recovery from exercise or injury
- weight loss that seems to take muscle as well as fat
- hair thinning, brittle nails, poor wound healing
Where to go from here
If your breakfast currently consists of toast and coffee, changing that one meal will do more than anything else on this page. Aim for 25–30 grams and give it a fortnight before judging.
If you want a more structured start, or you would rather stop guessing at the numbers:
Option 1: The 14-Day Metabolic Kickstart
A structured fortnight of meals built around stabilising blood sugar and getting protein distribution right. A practical starting point if you want to make changes without committing to a full programme.
Start the 14-Day Metabolic Kickstart
Option 2: Book a Health Strategy Session
A focused 40-minute consultation to work out what your actual requirements are, given your age, activity, health history and goals — and whether a blood-chemistry-based approach makes sense for you.
The session is $150, with $100 credited toward any programme you go on to start.
Book a Health Strategy Session
Option 3: A plan built from your own blood chemistry
Metabolic Balance® builds your nutrition plan from more than 30 of your own blood markers alongside your health history and food preferences. Protein requirement, sources and meal timing are all individual — and this is what a plan built from your actual biochemistry, rather than population averages, is designed to resolve.
NOTE: This article is educational and is not a substitute for individual medical or nutritional advice. Anyone with reduced kidney function should discuss protein intake with their doctor.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much protein should I have a day?
For a broadly healthy adult, 1.0–1.2g per kilogram of body weight is a reasonable baseline, rising to 1.2–1.6g if you are active or trying to preserve muscle while losing fat, and 1.4–2.0g for those over fifty or building muscle. The commonly quoted 0.8g per kilogram is a deficiency threshold, not a target.
How many grams of protein per day is that in practice?
For an 80kg person, roughly 96–128g depending on activity and goals. For a 65kg person, roughly 78–104g. These are starting points rather than prescriptions.
How much protein should I have at breakfast?
Around 25–30 grams. This is the threshold that meaningfully stimulates muscle protein synthesis and produces genuine satiety. Most conventional breakfasts fall well short of it.
Does protein help with weight loss?
Indirectly, yes. Protein increases satiety, slows glucose absorption and helps preserve muscle during fat loss — muscle being metabolically active tissue you generally want to keep. It is not a weight loss intervention on its own, but inadequate protein makes fat loss considerably harder.
Do protein requirements change with age?
Yes, and they increase rather than decrease. The body becomes less efficient at using dietary protein from around forty, meaning more is required to achieve the same effect.
Is plant protein as good as animal protein?
Plant sources are generally less protein-dense per serving and have differing amino acid profiles, so plant-based eating usually requires combining sources and a slightly higher total intake. Entirely achievable with some planning.
