How much protein do you actually need?

Most nutrition apps give you a protein target in grams per day and leave it there. That number is close to meaningless on its own: 140 g is generous for a 60 kg runner and thin for a 95 kg lifter. The useful figure is protein per kilogram of bodyweight, which is why IGNYT shows it that way.

The ranges most people land in

Published intake guidance clusters into a few broad bands. Treat these as starting points to test against your own results, not as prescriptions.

• Sedentary maintenance: around 0.8 g per kg — enough to avoid deficiency, not enough to support hard training.
• General training and recomposition: roughly 1.4–1.8 g per kg is where most recommendations for active people sit.
• Dieting in a calorie deficit: toward the upper end, often 1.8–2.2 g per kg, because protein needs rise as calories fall and preserving lean mass matters more.
• Older adults: needs trend higher than the sedentary baseline, as the same dose of protein produces a smaller response.

Total intake beats timing

The anabolic window has been oversold. Distributing protein reasonably across the day is sensible and easier to digest, but the single biggest lever is the daily total. Someone hitting their target across three meals will do better than someone missing it across six perfectly timed ones.

A practical distribution is three to four servings of 25–40 g. Beyond that, precision has diminishing returns compared with just consistently reaching the number.

Why people miss the target

1. Breakfast. It is the meal most likely to be carbohydrate-only, and the easiest place to add 25 g.
2. Underestimating portions. Cooked and raw weights differ substantially; log the state you actually ate.
3. Counting the whole dish. A curry is not 30 g of protein because it contains chicken — log the components.
4. Weekends. Adherence data almost always dips on Saturday and Sunday, and a weekly average hides it.

Tracking it without the tedium

You do not need to weigh food forever. Two weeks of accurate logging teaches you what 30 g of protein looks like on a plate, and after that you are calibrating rather than measuring. IGNYT shows protein per kilogram on the dashboard and charts the seven-day average, which smooths out the single unusual day that would otherwise look like failure.