Most people aiming to lose weight should eat between 1.6 and 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, which works out to about 0.73 to 1 gram per pound. For a 170-pound person, that’s roughly 124 to 170 grams of protein daily. This is significantly more than the old baseline recommendation of 0.8 grams per kilogram, which was designed to prevent deficiency, not to support fat loss or preserve muscle.
Why Protein Matters More During Weight Loss
When you cut calories, your body doesn’t just burn fat. It also breaks down muscle for energy, especially if your protein intake is too low. Eating enough protein sends a strong signal to your body to hold onto that muscle tissue, even while you’re in a caloric deficit. This matters because muscle is metabolically active tissue. The more of it you keep, the higher your resting metabolism stays, which makes it easier to continue losing fat and harder to regain weight later.
Research on very low-calorie diets found that people need at least 1.2 to 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram per day just to limit muscle loss during aggressive calorie restriction. If your deficit is more moderate (which it should be for most people), aiming for the 1.6 to 2.2 range gives you a stronger buffer against losing the lean mass you want to keep.
Protein Burns More Calories to Digest
Your body uses energy to break down and absorb food, and protein is by far the most “expensive” macronutrient to process. Digesting protein increases your metabolic rate by 15 to 30 percent of the calories consumed, compared to 5 to 10 percent for carbohydrates and 0 to 3 percent for fat. So if you eat 200 calories of chicken breast, your body spends 30 to 60 of those calories just processing it. That thermic advantage adds up over the course of a day, giving high-protein diets a small but real metabolic edge.
How Protein Controls Hunger
Protein is the most satiating macronutrient, and the effect is hormonal, not just about stomach fullness. A meta-analysis of controlled trials found that eating protein lowers ghrelin (the hormone that drives hunger) and raises two gut hormones that signal fullness. These appetite-suppressing effects were statistically significant at doses of 35 grams or more per meal. In practical terms, people who eat higher-protein meals report less hunger, less desire to eat, and greater feelings of fullness compared to meals with the same calories but less protein.
This is arguably the most important benefit for weight loss. Calorie deficits are hard to sustain when you’re constantly hungry. Protein makes the deficit feel more manageable.
How to Calculate Your Target
Start with your body weight in pounds and multiply by 0.73 to 1.0. That gives you your daily protein range in grams.
- 140-pound person: 102 to 140 grams per day
- 170-pound person: 124 to 170 grams per day
- 200-pound person: 146 to 200 grams per day
- 230-pound person: 168 to 230 grams per day
If you exercise regularly or do any kind of strength training, push toward the higher end. Athletes and heavy exercisers aiming for weight loss can benefit from 1.0 to 1.5 grams per pound, which translates to 2.2 to 3.4 grams per kilogram. If you’re mostly sedentary, the lower end of the range is a reasonable starting point.
Another way to frame it: aim for 20 to 30 percent of your total daily calories to come from protein. At 1,600 calories a day, that’s 80 to 120 grams. At 2,000 calories, it’s 100 to 150 grams.
Adjustments for Adults Over 65
Older adults need more protein, not less. The body becomes less efficient at using protein to build and maintain muscle with age, a decline that accelerates during weight loss. An international expert panel recommended that adults over 65 consume at least 1.0 to 1.2 grams per kilogram daily as a baseline, with higher amounts for those who are active. When older adults lose weight on low protein intakes, the body compensates by breaking down lean mass to maintain its nitrogen balance, which over time contributes to sarcopenia, frailty, and loss of independence.
Combining higher protein intake with resistance training appears to be particularly effective for older adults trying to lose fat without accelerating muscle loss.
Spread It Across Four or More Meals
Your body can only use so much protein at once for muscle maintenance and repair. Research suggests targeting about 0.4 grams per kilogram per meal, spread across at least four eating occasions per day, to get the most benefit from your total daily intake. For a 170-pound person (77 kg), that works out to roughly 30 to 40 grams per meal.
Front-loading all your protein into one or two meals is less effective than distributing it evenly. If you eat three meals and a snack, aim for a solid protein source at each one rather than having a low-protein breakfast and trying to make it all up at dinner.
High-Protein Foods Worth Prioritizing
When you’re cutting calories, you want foods that deliver the most protein per calorie. These are the most efficient options:
- Greek yogurt (plain, nonfat): 12 to 18 grams per 5 oz container
- Cottage cheese (part skim): 14 grams per half cup
- Chicken, turkey, lean beef, pork, fish: 7 grams per ounce (a 4-oz serving delivers 28 grams)
- Eggs: 6 grams each
- Lentils: 9 grams per half cup
- Edamame (dry roasted): 13 grams per ounce
- Kidney, black, or navy beans: 8 grams per half cup
- Ultra-filtered milk (fat free): 13 grams per 8 oz
Notice the difference in protein density. A 4-ounce chicken breast gives you 28 grams of protein for about 130 calories. Two tablespoons of peanut butter give you 7 grams for nearly 200 calories. Both are fine foods, but when you’re trying to hit a protein target on limited calories, lean meats, seafood, eggs, Greek yogurt, and cottage cheese do the heaviest lifting. Plant-based eaters can build meals around lentils, beans, edamame, and tofu, though they’ll typically need to combine several sources to hit 30-plus grams per meal.
Is There Such a Thing as Too Much?
For healthy adults, protein intakes in the 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram range are well within safe limits. The concern about high protein damaging kidneys comes from studies on people who already have kidney disease. In people with normal kidney function, there’s no strong evidence that higher protein intake causes harm. That said, protein beyond what your body can use for muscle maintenance and metabolic functions gets converted to energy or stored as fat, just like excess calories from any source. More is not always better. The 2025 Dietary Guidelines now recommend 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram for the general adult population, acknowledging that the old 0.8 baseline was too low for most people but also noting that excess protein still contributes to calorie surplus.
The practical ceiling for most people losing weight is around 1 gram per pound of body weight. Going higher than that rarely provides additional fat-loss benefits unless you’re an athlete training intensely.