How to get 150 g of protein a day

How to split 150 g across a day

Aim for about 40 g at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and 20 to 25 g in one snack. That puts each meal at or just above the 20 to 40 g per dose the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) suggests, spread every 3 to 4 hours.¹ The ideal size of a meal also scales with body weight, which how much protein per meal explains. If you would rather eat four similar meals than three meals and a snack, about 37 g each works just as well.

Two habits make the number reachable:

• One dense protein food at the center of every meal. Chicken, fish, eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, tofu or lentils. Rice, vegetables and bread add a few grams, never forty.
• A breakfast that carries its share. A 10 g breakfast leaves 140 g for the rest of the day, and that is where 150 g gets hard. High-protein breakfasts are the quickest fix.

A 45 g lunch is not wasted, by the way. Protein past the point where one meal's muscle response levels off is still absorbed and used, which the absorption myth covers in detail.

Every gram figure below comes from USDA FoodData Central,⁵ rounded to the gram, with meat and fish weighed cooked and oats weighed dry. Vegetables, fruit, rice, potatoes and cooking fat are left out of the totals, so each day is a floor rather than a generous estimate.

A standard 150 g day

This is the easiest version to repeat, because three of the four meals rest on one food each. The shake has a specific job: 25 g in the afternoon, made in a minute, when dinner is hours away. Scoop sizes and protein per scoop vary by brand, so read the label on your own tub.

150 g a day without protein powder

The shake's 25 g became a cup of cottage cheese, within a gram of it. That is the whole move on a powder-free day: give the snack a whole food that carries 20 g or more. 250 g of nonfat Greek yogurt (26 g) or a can of tuna (20 g) does the same job.

Breakfast does more work here too. Three eggs alone are 19 g, so the cheese, the toast and the milk in the coffee are what lift it past 40.

150 g a day on a budget

Every item on that list is a food that stays cheap in most supermarkets: eggs, milk, canned fish, dried beans and lentils, peanut butter and chicken thighs. Nothing on it has "protein" printed on the front. Prices move too much to print here, so use the comparison from our cheap protein guide: what 20 g of protein costs, not what a pound of food costs.

Two budget moves that leave the menu alone:

• Cook beans and lentils from dry, in a batch. Freeze them in 1 cup portions and a lunch or dinner is already half built.
• Buy thighs, not breasts. Thigh meat carries a little less protein per 100 g (about 25 g against 31 g cooked) and usually costs less.

A vegetarian 150 g day

Look at how much food that is: 300 g of yogurt, a cup of cottage cheese, a cup each of edamame and lentils, plus tofu and tempeh. Soy supplies 64 g of the day and dairy 55 g. Yogurt, cottage cheese, edamame and lentils carry 9 to 12 g per 100 g, against 25 to 31 g for cooked chicken, so a vegetarian 150 g day means more volume and more meals where protein is planned rather than assumed.

Stacking two sources in one meal (tempeh with edamame, tofu with lentils) is what keeps any single portion from getting huge. More meals built that way are in high-protein vegetarian meals. Without dairy, soy and legumes carry the whole day, and plant-only protein sources covers how.

Who 150 g a day fits

150 g is a flat number, and protein recommendations are written per kilogram of body weight. So whether it suits you depends on what you weigh and how much you train.

Reading the table:

• If you train regularly and weigh about 75 to 107 kg (165 to 236 lb), 150 g sits inside the 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg range the ISSN gives for exercising adults.¹
• Around 1.6 g/kg is where the returns stopped on average. In a meta-analysis of 49 trials, protein beyond 1.62 g/kg a day added no further lean mass from training.² At 75 kg that point is about 120 g, so 150 g is more than the training needs. How much protein it takes to build muscle goes through that study.
• Over 65, the recommendation is at least 1.0 to 1.2 g/kg,⁴ which is 65 to 78 g at 65 kg. 150 g is roughly double that.
• The RDA is 0.8 g/kg,³ about 52 g at 65 kg. It is the intake that avoids deficiency in nearly everyone, not a target for muscle. How much protein you need per day has the full breakdown by age and activity.

Per-kilogram figures also assume most of your weight is lean. When a lot of it is not, multiplying total weight by a sports rate overshoots. The target Protein Buddy sets from its quiz accounts for this: for a higher body weight with lower activity, it scales from an adjusted weight rather than your total weight. The quiz comes up when you install the app, asks for your weight, height, age, activity and goal, and gives you your own daily number. If it comes out below 150 g, the days above shrink easily: drop the snack, or trim each main meal by 10 g.

People with kidney disease are the exception to all of these numbers. Their protein target is set with their clinician, not from a table. For everyone else, whether a high intake is safe has its own page.

150 g while losing weight

Protein matters more in a calorie deficit, because some of the weight lost is otherwise muscle, and the ISSN notes that higher intakes help resistance-trained people keep lean mass while dieting.¹ That argues for keeping protein high, and says nothing about 150 g in particular.

Hold two numbers next to it. At the standard 4 kcal per gram, 150 g of protein is about 600 kcal. On a 1,700 kcal day that is 35 percent of intake, the top of the 10 to 35 percent range the Institute of Medicine sets as acceptable for protein.³ On a 1,500 kcal day it is 40 percent, and everything else on the plate has to fit in what is left.

If 150 g is your number while you lose weight, the leaner items in the days above make room for it: nonfat Greek yogurt, chicken breast, tuna in water and 90% lean beef carry a lot of protein with little fat. Peanut butter, almonds, cheddar and salmon bring more calories per gram of protein. A high-protein diet for weight loss goes further into why the protein share matters.

If you take a GLP-1 medication, there is no established GLP-1-specific protein target, and a smaller appetite makes 40 g meals hard to finish. Set the number with your prescriber, and see protein on a GLP-1 for what the research does and does not show. The same goes for anyone with a lot of weight to lose: a clinician or dietitian can set the target from an adjusted weight.

Tracking the grams left in Protein Buddy

The plan is half of it. The other half is knowing, at 3 pm, how much of the day's protein is still to come. That number is the heart of Protein Buddy, the app we make: it sits on the Home screen, right under today's total. Here is the cheap day above, logged with a 150 g target.

Manual entry, typed meals, barcode scanning and Siri logging on iPhone are free with no limit, and you do not need an account to start. Photo, voice and Protein Scout come with 3 free tries each, then a subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase keeps them going. Protein-first tracking. Calories, macros and fiber are optional: the Keep an eye on row in Settings adds them, with a goal for each, if you are watching those too. And if it is 4 pm with 40 g still to go, the Assistant, which is free to talk to, can suggest food that fits what is left. Which logging method suits which meal is worth a look once the habit is running.

The USDA numbers used on this page

Protein per 100 g as eaten, and the portion each example day uses. FDC is the FoodData Central record number, so any figure here can be checked at the source.⁵

Real food varies by brand, cut and cooking, usually by a few grams a portion. For more foods at realistic portions, see high-protein foods and how much they contain, and for single-food portions of about 30 g, what 30 grams of protein looks like.