How much protein do you actually need?

Ask five people at a gym in Dwarka how much protein you need and you will get five answers, usually somewhere between "one gram per kilo" and "as much as you can physically eat". The honest answer is duller and more useful than either.

The range that keeps coming up

For most people who train a few times a week, the evidence clusters around 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day. Below roughly 1.6 you tend to leave muscle on the table when you are in a deficit. Above roughly 2.2 the extra does very little except cost money.

For a 75 kg person that is about 120 to 165 grams a day. Spread across three meals, it is 40 to 55 grams a meal — which, in practice, is a chicken breast, or paneer plus dal, or a serving of fish with a side that pulls its weight.

Why most people miss it

Not because they do not care. Because Indian home cooking is carbohydrate-forward by default, and because nobody weighs anything. A katori of dal feels like protein. It is mostly not.

• Two rotis and dal: roughly 12 g protein
• The same plate with 150 g of paneer or chicken: roughly 40 g
• The difference is one ingredient, weighed

What to do about it

Pick a number, hit it consistently for a month, and judge from there. The people who make progress are almost never the ones with the cleverest plan — they are the ones whose lunch does not vary by 300 calories depending on how the morning went.

That is the entire reason we weigh portions as the meal is made and print the grams on the box. Not because grams are magic. Because guessing is what breaks the streak.