Health and Fitness Calculators
Protein Target
How much protein to eat depends on your body weight and on what you are asking your body to do. Someone building muscle in a calorie deficit needs noticeably more than someone holding steady.
Aim for about 0 grams of protein a day.
How it works
A protein target is grams per kilogram of body weight, with the figure set by what you are training for. The ranges here are the ones the sports nutrition position stands settle on.
Protein in grams = weight in kilograms × grams per kilogram
A 70 kg person building muscle at 1.6 g/kg needs 70 × 1.6, which is 112 g of protein a day.
The targets
| What you are training for | Grams per kilogram |
| Keeping what I have | 1.2 |
| Building muscle | 1.6 |
| Losing fat while keeping muscle | 2.0 |
| Endurance training | 1.4 |
Lean body mass gives a better answer
Body fat has almost no protein requirement, so a target set from total weight overshoots for anyone carrying a lot of it. If you have a smart scale, setting the target from your lean body mass instead of your weight is the more accurate version, at roughly 2.0 to 2.4 g per kilogram of lean mass. FitnessSyncer reads lean body mass from any connected scale that reports it.
What this number is not
It is not a minimum you must hit every single day. Protein intake averages out over several days, and one low day inside a week of hitting the target changes nothing.
How accurate it is
These figures come from the sports nutrition position stands and describe people who train. If you do not train, the requirement is closer to 0.8 g per kilogram, which is the figure the general dietary guidelines use.
Common questions
Can I eat too much protein?
For a healthy adult the evidence says intakes well above these targets are safe. The real cost is that protein calories crowd out carbohydrate and fat, which can leave training feeling flat.
Does it matter when I eat it?
Much less than the daily total. Spreading it over three or four meals is slightly better than one large one, and the difference is small enough that the total is what to concentrate on.
Can FitnessSyncer track this?
Yes. Set a daily protein goal and your Dashboard tracks it from your connected nutrition service or from what you log in the Notebook, with the days you hit it shown over time.
