How much protein do I need a day?

The adult RDA is 0.8 g per kilogram of bodyweight, a minimum to avoid deficiency rather than a target. Reviews put 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg as a useful range when losing weight, 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg for people who exercise, and at least 1.0 to 1.2 g/kg for adults over 65. For a 70 kg adult that is 56 g at the RDA and 84 to 112 g at 1.2 to 1.6 g/kg.

How can I track protein intake for free?

Log your meals in an app with a food database that lists protein per portion, then read the day's total. In Fitto AI, food search, barcode scans and typed meals are free, every logged meal carries its protein, and Home shows the day's protein against a daily goal. A paper tally also works: write down the grams from the table in this guide after each meal.

Can I track protein without counting calories?

Yes. Write down only the grams of protein in each meal and add them up. Most people find it easier to log the whole meal anyway, since an app records calories and protein from the same entry, but if calories cause you stress you can look only at the protein total.

How much protein should be in each meal?

About 25 to 40 g a meal is a practical goal for most adults. The ISSN suggests roughly 0.25 g per kg of bodyweight, or 20 to 40 g, per dose, and a review of protein in weight management pointed to at least 25 to 30 g per meal. Three meals at that size cover most daily targets.

Is it safe to eat a lot of protein?

For healthy adults, intakes in the ranges above are widely used. People with kidney disease are the main exception and may need to limit protein, so if you have a kidney condition, or any condition your doctor is managing, ask them before raising your intake.

How to Track Protein Intake: A Simple Daily Method

By Samipan Bandyopadhyay, developer of Fitto AI

Protein is the number most people want to track and the one they guess worst. Calories at least show up on the front of a packet. Protein hides in the small print, and a meal that looks like “lots of protein” often turns out to be 15 g.

Tracking it doesn’t take a spreadsheet. It takes three things: a daily target in grams, a rough idea of what common foods carry, and a log you actually add up. Here is each one.

Step 1: Work out your daily protein target

Protein targets are set per kilogram of bodyweight. Pick the line that fits you and multiply:

Who	Grams per kg of bodyweight a day	For a 70 kg (154 lb) adult
Adult minimum (RDA)	0.8	56 g
Adults over 65	1.0 to 1.2	70 to 84 g
Losing weight	1.2 to 1.6	84 to 112 g
Exercising regularly	1.4 to 2.0	98 to 140 g

Where these come from:

0.8 g/kg is the Recommended Dietary Allowance set by the U.S. National Academies. It is the amount that meets the needs of nearly all healthy adults, a floor rather than a goal.
1.0 to 1.2 g/kg for over-65s is the PROT-AGE study group’s recommendation for older adults, who need more protein to keep muscle and function.
1.2 to 1.6 g/kg when losing weight is from a 2015 review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which linked higher-protein diets in that range to better appetite control and weight management.
1.4 to 2.0 g/kg for exercise is the International Society of Sports Nutrition’s position. A meta-analysis of 49 trials found gains in lean mass from strength training stopped growing past about 1.6 g/kg a day.

If you weigh in pounds, divide by 2.2 first. Higher isn’t automatically better: in that meta-analysis, protein past about 1.6 g/kg added no further lean mass on average.

Step 2: Split it across your meals

A daily total is easier to hit in pieces. The ISSN suggests roughly 0.25 g per kg of bodyweight per serving, or 20 to 40 g, and the weight-management review pointed to at least 25 to 30 g per meal. For most adults that means:

Three meals of 25 to 40 g covers most targets up to about 120 g.
A protein snack of 10 to 20 g (yogurt, cottage cheese, edamame) fills the gap on higher targets.

Meal-by-meal goals also make the log more useful. If lunch was 12 g, you know at 2pm, not at 10pm when there is one meal left to fix it.

Step 3: Know what common foods carry

These are values from USDA FoodData Central, multiplied out for a typical portion. The last column shows how much protein each food gives per 100 calories, which is the number that matters if you want more protein without eating a lot more.

Food	Portion	Protein (g)	Calories	Protein per 100 kcal
Chicken breast, roasted, meat only	120 g (1 small breast)	37	198	18.8
Tuna, light, canned in water, drained	1 can (165 g)	32	142	22.6
Lean beef mince (90%), cooked	85 g (3 oz)	21	173	12.4
Salmon, baked	85 g (3 oz)	19	175	10.7
Shrimp, cooked	85 g (3 oz)	19	101	19.2
Eggs, boiled	2 eggs (100 g)	12	143	8.7
Greek yogurt, plain, nonfat	170 g (1 pot)	18	104	16.9
Cottage cheese, low fat (2%)	110 g (½ cup)	12	92	13.1
Milk, 2%	245 g (1 cup)	9	125	6.8
Cheddar cheese	28 g (1 oz)	6	113	5.7
Tofu, firm	81 g (¼ block)	14	117	12.0
Edamame	155 g (1 cup)	18	188	9.8
Lentils, boiled	198 g (1 cup)	18	226	7.9
Black beans, boiled	172 g (1 cup)	15	227	6.7
Chickpeas, boiled	164 g (1 cup)	15	269	5.4
Peanut butter	32 g (2 tbsp)	7	191	3.7
Whole-wheat bread	64 g (2 slices)	8	161	4.9
Oatmeal, cooked with water	234 g (1 cup)	6	166	3.6
White rice, cooked	158 g (1 cup)	4	205	2.1

Three patterns are worth remembering:

Lean meat, fish, Greek yogurt and cottage cheese give the most protein per calorie. A can of tuna is 32 g for under 150 calories.
Peanut butter, cheese and nuts are often called protein foods, but most of their calories come from fat. Two tablespoons of peanut butter is 7 g of protein and 191 calories.
Grains and bread add up. No single slice is a protein source, but two slices of whole-wheat toast and a bowl of oatmeal together carry 14 g.

What a 112 g day looks like

Here is one way a 70 kg adult reaches 1.6 g/kg, using only foods from the table above:

Meal	Foods	Protein
Breakfast	Greek yogurt (170 g) and a bowl of oatmeal	24 g
Lunch	Chicken breast (120 g) with a cup of rice	41 g
Snack	Two slices of whole-wheat toast with peanut butter	15 g
Dinner	A cup of lentils with a quarter block of tofu	32 g
Total		112 g

Nothing in it is a supplement or a special product. The point is that every meal has one food from the top of the table, and that is usually enough.

How to track protein day to day

Log each meal as you eat it. Protein is the number people overestimate most, so a guess at the end of the day is the least reliable way to track it.
Read protein per portion, not per 100 g. A label’s “per 100 g” figure for yogurt or chicken is only useful once you know how much you ate. Use the portion you actually had.
Check the total at lunch. If you are well under half your target by mid-afternoon, dinner is the place to fix it, not a late snack.
Look at the week, not the day. One low day doesn’t matter. A weekly average that sits well under target is what tells you to change your usual meals.

If you’d rather not count calories, you don’t have to. Write down the grams of protein from each meal and ignore the rest. Most people find it easier to log the whole meal in an app anyway, because one entry records both.

How to track protein in Fitto AI

Every meal logged in Fitto AI carries its protein along with calories, carbs and fat. Home shows the day’s protein against a daily goal, and the Target tab shows your average protein per day across the week.

Logging it can be free. Search over 10,000 foods, including everything in the table above, pick a portion and the protein for that portion appears before you add it. Barcode scans and typing a meal in yourself are free too. Our guide to free logging with no credits walks through it. If you’d rather not search, photograph your meal, or say or type what is on it, and Fitto estimates each food’s portion and macros for you to check and edit. That costs 1 AI credit, and new accounts get 5 free.

The Fitto coach reads your log too, so you can ask it how many of your logged days in the last two weeks reached your protein goal. Chatting with the coach is free.

For meals you cook yourself, the cooked-weight method for homemade food gives you protein per gram for the whole pot, the same way it does calories.

Fitto AI provides estimates for general wellness, not medical advice. If you have kidney disease or another medical condition, ask your doctor or a registered dietitian before changing how much protein you eat.

Sources

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2005.
Bauer J, Biolo G, Cederholm T, et al. Evidence-based recommendations for optimal dietary protein intake in older people: a position paper from the PROT-AGE Study Group. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 2013;14(8):542–559.
Leidy HJ, Clifton PM, Astrup A, et al. The role of protein in weight loss and maintenance. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2015;101(6):1320S–1329S.
Jäger R, Kerksick CM, Campbell BI, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: protein and exercise. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017;14:20.
Morton RW, Murphy KT, McKellar SR, et al. A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2018;52(6):376–384.
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: chicken breast, roasted (FDC ID 171477); tuna, light, canned in water (173709); ground beef, 90% lean, pan-broiled (171793); salmon, baked (175168); shrimp, cooked (171971); egg, boiled (2707154); Greek yogurt, plain, nonfat (330137); cottage cheese, 2% (328841); milk, 2% (170870); cheddar (173414); tofu, firm (172475); edamame (168411); lentils, boiled (175254); black beans, boiled (175237); chickpeas, boiled (173799); peanut butter (2707537); whole-wheat bread (172688); oats, cooked with water (173905); white rice, cooked (168878). Values per 100 g, retrieved November 2026.