Enter your weight and your goal, and this calculator gives you a daily protein range in grams, plus a per-meal split that makes the number practical. It's a range on purpose. Anyone selling you a single perfect gram count is pretending the research is more precise than it is.
protein per day for your goal
That's roughly 5 palm-sized portions of meat, fish, or eggs a day.
Treat these numbers as starting points. If you have kidney disease or another condition that affects protein handling, get your targets from your doctor or a registered dietitian.
The official recommended dietary allowance is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight, about 0.36 grams per pound. It's worth knowing what that number is for: it's the floor that prevents deficiency in sedentary adults, set decades ago. It was never a target for people who train.
For training adults, the best-known meta-analysis pooled 49 studies and found muscle-building benefits climbing until roughly 1.6 grams per kilogram, with the upper confidence bound reaching about 2.2. That's the range this calculator uses for building muscle, and it's why the output has two ends instead of one false-precision middle.
Dieting changes the math. When calories drop, protein's job shifts from building to defending, and the effective range moves up. Lean people cutting hard have the highest needs of anyone.
Total daily grams matter most. Distribution is the tiebreaker: the practical evidence points to roughly 0.4 to 0.55 grams per kilogram per meal across four or so meals as the pattern that best supports muscle. That's where the widget's per-meal number comes from.
In food terms, a palm-sized portion of chicken, beef, fish, or a few eggs runs around 25 to 30 grams. Most people who "can't hit their protein" are one portion short at two meals, usually breakfast and lunch. Fixing those two meals fixes the day; if eggs are your breakfast lever, here's how much protein they really carry.
Losing weight. Protein is the difference between losing weight and losing fat. It defends muscle while calories are short, and it's the most filling macronutrient per calorie, which matters more in week five than week one. Set your calorie deficit with the weight loss calculator, then hit this page's grams inside it.
Building muscle. Hit the range, lift with intent, and stop stressing past 2.2 grams per kilogram; the meta-analysis found nothing extra up there for muscle gain. Spend the attention on training quality instead. The training guides handle that part.
Maintaining. The middle range holds muscle through busy seasons when training is inconsistent. Think of it as insurance that costs a couple of palm portions a day.
Most people don't fail protein because the target was wrong; they fail it on the Tuesday the meeting ran through lunch. Coaching exists for those Tuesdays: custom programming, nutrition guidance, and weekly check-ins tailored to your schedule, your equipment, and your goals, with progress review, form feedback, and program adjustments every single week.