Protein target

Protein is the one macronutrient with a consistent effect during weight loss: it protects muscle while the deficit removes fat, and the step on what to eat explains the evidence. This page turns the guidance into grams. Everything is computed in your browser.

Which weight the grams are based on

Grams per kilogram are only useful once you decide which kilograms. The clinical range of 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram was not written for the whole weight of someone with a lot of excess fat, because fat tissue needs very little protein. The app therefore uses:

• the goal weight when BMI is 30 or below, and
• an adjusted weight above BMI 30: the weight you would have at BMI 25, plus a quarter of the excess over it.

The calculator shows which basis it used. The result is a range — the lower end is the app's minimum, the upper end its target — and both are divided into three or four meals, since something like thirty grams per meal is what the satiety evidence points to.

The energy floor

Protein is also part of why a daily target cannot be pushed arbitrarily low. The app keeps several floors under every day's target — a sex-specific minimum, a share above resting energy, a minimum energy per kilogram of fat-free mass plus what training costs, and the energy needed to fit the minimum protein with at least 20 percent of energy from fat. Whichever is highest binds, and a pace whose deficit would go under it is reduced, not squeezed. The protein floor is rarely the binding one, which is why it is not shown here as a number.

Maintenance

The maintenance figure is the European population reference intake — 0.83 grams per kilogram of body weight — for a healthy adult who is not dieting. It is a reference for adequacy, not a target during a deficit, and it is here so that the two are not confused.

In the app

The app computes the same basis and range for every day it plans, and checks each generated menu against them; a menu below the minimum protein is corrected before it is shown.