THE PROTEIN CALCULATOR
How much protein do you actually need — to build muscle, keep it on a cut, or just stop guessing? Enter your weight, pick your situation, get a number backed by the research consensus.
THE CALCULATOR
Where these numbers come from
Protein recommendations get stated with weird confidence on the internet, so here's the honest shape of the evidence:
- The RDA (0.36g/lb) is a deficiency-prevention floor set for sedentary adults — the amount below which things go wrong, not the amount at which things go well.
- For building muscle, meta-analyses of resistance-training studies converge around 0.7–1g per pound of body weight per day (1.6–2.2 g/kg). Above that range, extra protein stops producing extra muscle.
- On a cut, needs go up, not down: higher intakes (up to ~1.2g/lb) protect lean mass while calories are restricted, and protein is the most satiating macro — the cheapest hunger-management tool you have.
- Past 60, the body responds less to each dose of protein ("anabolic resistance"), so the target per pound rises and lifting becomes non-negotiable.
Hitting the number without living on chicken
Most people undershoot protein not from ignorance but from logistics. What works:
- Anchor every meal at 30–40g. Three anchored meals + one snack lands most lifters in range without counting hard.
- Front-load breakfast. The default Western breakfast is ~10g. Eggs, Greek yogurt, or a shake turns your worst meal into your easiest 30g.
- Cheap density: Greek yogurt (~10g/100g), cottage cheese, canned tuna, whey, lentils, and the humble chicken thigh — flavor, budget, and macros can coexist.
- Scan, don't guess. Label-reading is where protein targets die. Our free barcode scanner gives you protein per gram on 4.7M+ products in two seconds.
Where protein actually comes from, ranked per calorie
Knowing your number is the easy half. Hitting it without blowing your calorie budget is the half people struggle with, and it comes down to one ratio: grams of protein per calorie. Anything above 0.15 is doing real work. Below 0.10 you are mostly buying calories that happen to contain protein.
Every figure below is USDA FoodData Central, per 100 g, and every linked food has its own page showing the record it came from and the raw-versus-cooked catch that goes with it.
| Food (per 100 g) | Protein | Calories | g per calorie |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shrimp, cooked | 24.0 g | 99 | 0.24 |
| Canned tuna in water | 19.4 g | 86 | 0.23 |
| Egg white, raw | 10.9 g | 52 | 0.21 |
| Turkey breast, roasted | 30.1 g | 147 | 0.20 |
| Chicken breast, roasted | 31.0 g | 165 | 0.19 |
| Greek yogurt, nonfat | 10.2 g | 59 | 0.17 |
| Ground beef 93/7, cooked | 26.2 g | 193 | 0.14 |
| Cottage cheese, 2% | 10.4 g | 81 | 0.13 |
| Salmon, farmed, cooked | 22.1 g | 206 | 0.11 |
| Milk, nonfat | 3.4 g | 34 | 0.10 |
| Whole egg, raw | 12.6 g | 143 | 0.09 |
| Broccoli, raw | 2.8 g | 34 | 0.08 |
| Black beans, boiled | 8.9 g | 132 | 0.07 |
| Peanut butter | 22.2 g | 598 | 0.04 |
| Almonds, dry roasted | 21.0 g | 598 | 0.04 |
Three things fall out of that table that are worth more than any supplement.
- Shrimp, tuna and egg whites beat chicken breast per calorie. Chicken is the default because it is cheap and neutral, not because it is the most efficient. If you are fighting a calorie ceiling, the top four rows are where the room is.
- Peanut butter and almonds are at the bottom, at 0.04. They are widely treated as protein foods and they are not — they are fats that contain protein. Eat them for the fat, log them as fat.
- A whole egg is 0.09 and an egg white is 0.21. The yolk carries about two-thirds of the calories and most of the nutrients. That is a genuine trade-off rather than a right answer, and it is the clearest example on the table of why "high protein" depends entirely on what else came with it.
What that looks like as actual food
Take a 180 lb lifter aiming at roughly 145 g of protein a day. That is not a spreadsheet exercise, it is four decisions:
| Meal | Food | Protein | Calories |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | 200 g nonfat Greek yogurt | 20 g | 118 |
| Lunch | 150 g roasted chicken breast | 47 g | 248 |
| Snack | 1 drained tin of tuna, about 115 g | 22 g | 99 |
| Dinner | 200 g ground beef 93/7, cooked | 52 g | 386 |
| Total | 141 g | 851 |
141 g of protein for 851 calories, leaving well over a thousand for carbohydrate, fat and the rest of the day. Protein targets feel impossible when they are attempted with peanut butter and shakes; they are unremarkable when the ratio is doing the work.
Protein is one lever of four
Protein gets the headlines, but it only works inside a calorie budget that matches your goal. If you haven't set that yet, run the full macro calculator — it sets calories with Mifflin-St Jeor, then splits protein, carbs and fat around your goal. And inside EatSleepRep, the adaptive Coach re-checks those targets weekly against your actual weight trend, free.
The rest of the free calculators — barbell plate math and a one-rep max estimator — are on the tools page, and none of them ask for an email.
Set your protein target and track it free →FAQ
Is 1g of protein per pound necessary?
It's the convenient top of the evidence range, not a cliff. 0.7g/lb captures most of the benefit; 1g/lb is a simple, safe default that also survives the days you miss.
Can I eat too much protein?
For healthy people, intakes well above 1g/lb haven't shown harm in research — they're just wasted money and crowd out carbs that would fuel training.
Does protein timing matter?
Total daily intake matters far more than timing. Spreading it across 3–5 feedings of 25–40g is a mild optimization, not a requirement. The anabolic window is more of a garage door.
Do protein shakes count as real protein?
Yes — whey and casein are among the highest-quality proteins measured. A shake is food that happens to pour.