How Much Protein Do You Actually Need?

Protein has taken over our supermarkets and our brains. It is in the bars, the shakes, the yoghurts, the bread, and apparently now the water, I've even seen 'high-protein' ice cream! Alongside that there is a lot of very confident advice online about exactly how many grams you need, usually from someone selling the thing that provides it. So I want to slow this one down and talk about what we actually know, and what it looks like on a normal Tuesday with a normal food shop.

Why the conversation has changed

The official UK reference intake for protein is around 0.75g per kilo of body weight a day. That figure was set to prevent deficiency, not to support a woman in her forties who lifts twice a week, has a physical job, is sleeping badly and is trying to hold onto muscle through a hormonal shift. Preventing deficiency and thriving are two different goals.

What has changed is our understanding of how muscle behaves as we age. From around our late 30s the body becomes a little less responsive to protein. It takes a bit more of it in one sitting to trigger the same muscle building signal. Researchers call this anabolic resistance, which is a horrible phrase for a fairly simple idea. The same meal you ate at 25 does not send quite as loud a message at 45.

So what is a sensible target

Most of the research on active adults and on older adults lands somewhere between 1.2g and 1.6g of protein per kilo of body weight a day. For a woman weighing 70kg that is roughly 85g to 110g. Not the 200g some corners of the internet will insist on, but noticeably more than the minimum.

If maths at the end of a long day is not appealing, there is an easier way to think about it. Aim for a palm sized portion of a protein rich food at each main meal, plus something protein containing at snacks. That gets most women close without a spreadsheet or a tracking app.

Spreading it out matters more than you would think

This is the bit that gets missed. Most of us eat almost no protein at breakfast, a bit at lunch, and then a large amount at dinner. Toast, then a sandwich, then a big plate of chicken and vegetables at eight in the evening.

The body cannot bank that. Muscle building is triggered meal by meal, so three moderate hits of protein across the day tend to do more than one large one at night. Aiming for something in the region of 25g to 30g at each main meal is a more useful way to think about it than a single daily total.

Breakfast is usually where the biggest win sits, and it is also the meal most women are least willing to change. You do not need to overhaul it. Adding eggs, Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese or a scoop of protein powder into what you already eat is enough.

What 25g to 30g actually looks like

Three eggs. A 170g pot of Greek yoghurt with a spoon of nuts. A 200g tub of cottage cheese. A tin of tuna or salmon. A chicken breast around the size of your palm. 150g of firm tofu with a handful of edamame. A cup of cooked lentils with some seeds through it. Two scoops of most protein powders.

If you eat plant based, you will need slightly more volume and a bit more variety across the day, because plant proteins tend to be lower in leucine, the amino acid that does most of the signalling and others are lower in other amino acids. Beans, lentils, tofu, tempeh, soya yoghurt, seeds and wholegrains together do the job perfectly well. It just takes a little more planning than opening a tin of tuna.

Do you need the powders and the bars

You do not need them. They are convenient, and convenience is genuinely useful when you are busy, but they are food products rather than medicine. A tub of Greek yoghurt or a couple of eggs will do the same thing for less money and with more nutrients attached.

The high protein packaging on everything in the supermarket is a marketing decision, not a nutritional one. Plenty of those bars are expensive confectionery, often overloaded with fat or sugar, with a bit of whey in them. Read the back of the packet rather than the front.

The parts nobody puts on the label

Protein does not work in isolation. It builds muscle when there is a reason to build muscle, which means it needs to be paired with resistance training. Eating more protein while doing no loading gives you expensive urine and not much else.

It also helps with things that have nothing to do with muscle. It is the most satiating of the three macronutrients, so meals containing decent protein tend to keep you fuller for longer and steady out the afternoon slump. It supports skin, hair, nails, immune function and bone, which are all things women in midlife tend to mention to me in the same breath.

One genuine caution. If you have reduced kidney function or any kidney condition, do not increase protein significantly without speaking to your GP first. For healthy kidneys, higher protein intakes in this range are considered safe. For compromised ones, they are not.

A realistic day

Breakfast, Greek yoghurt with berries and a spoon of nut butter, or scrambled eggs on toast. Lunch, last night's leftovers with an extra handful of beans stirred through, or a tuna and salad wrap. Snack, a small pot of cottage cheese, a boiled egg, or a glass of milk. Dinner, whatever you were already making, with a palm sized portion of fish, chicken, tofu or lentils in it.

That is it. No shaker bottle required, though there is nothing wrong with one.

The honest summary

Protein is not a trend and it is not a magic bullet. It is one of the few genuinely well evidenced levers women in midlife can pull, and most of us are simply eating a bit too little of it, too late in the day. Get more of it at breakfast, keep lifting something twice a week, and let the rest of the noise go.