How much protein do you need? What the meta-analyses say

By Robert Robinson, founder of Neato Health · September 15, 2026 · 4 min read

Protein is the one macro with a hard floor. Here is where the 0.8 gram per pound target comes from, what the research actually found, and why the number is tied to the body you are building rather than the one you have.

Calories decide whether you lose or gain weight. Protein decides what the weight is made of. Eat too little of it in a deficit and a meaningful share of what you lose is muscle; eat enough and the loss is mostly fat. Eat too little in a surplus and the surplus goes to fat; eat enough, and train, and it can go to muscle. That is why protein is the one macro Neato sets as a floor rather than a suggestion.

The government number, and why it is a floor for the sedentary

The Recommended Dietary Allowance for protein in the United States is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, about 0.36 grams per pound. It is worth knowing what that number is for: it is the intake that prevents deficiency in nearly all healthy, sedentary adults. It says nothing about the intake that preserves muscle in a calorie deficit or builds it under training, which are different questions with different answers.

What the training research found

In 2018, Morton and colleagues pooled 49 randomized trials with 1,863 participants to ask how protein intake affected muscle gained from resistance training. Two findings matter here. First, extra protein helped: on average, people who ate more gained more fat-free mass. Second, the benefit stopped. Their meta-regression found the gains plateaued at about 1.6 grams per kilogram per day, with the upper end of the confidence interval reaching 2.2. Above that, more protein did not build more muscle.

The International Society of Sports Nutrition’s 2017 position stand lands in the same place from a different direction: 1.4 to 2.0 grams per kilogram for people who train, with higher intakes, up to about 2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of fat-free mass, during a deficit when the goal is to keep every bit of muscle.

Helms, Aragon and Fitschen reviewed the evidence for bodybuilders dieting to very low body fat, the hardest case for muscle retention, and recommended 2.3 to 3.1 grams per kilogram of lean mass. That is the ceiling of the useful range; almost nobody outside a contest prep needs it.

Neato’s default: 0.8 grams per pound

Neato’s default is 0.8 grams per pound, which is 1.75 grams per kilogram. It sits just above Morton’s 1.6 breakpoint and inside the ISSN band, on the side that protects muscle in a deficit without being so high it crowds out everything else. It is a round number by design. Precision below the tens of grams is false precision; the studies themselves have confidence intervals wider than that.

There is a second reason to err high in a deficit. Weigle and colleagues showed in 2005 that raising protein to 30 percent of calories reduced appetite and spontaneous intake enough that people lost weight without being told to eat less. Protein is the most filling macro per calorie, so a higher protein target makes the calorie target easier to hit.

Which weight the number is based on

Per-pound targets have a problem: someone who weighs 300 pounds does not need 240 grams of protein a day, because most of that weight is not tissue that needs protein to maintain. The ISSN handles this by scaling to fat-free mass. Neato handles it more simply: protein is set from your current weight or your goal weight, whichever is lower.

The logic runs both ways. In a cut, the goal weight is lower, so protein is set for the body you are building rather than the one you are leaving, and the target does not balloon for heavier people. In a bulk, the current weight is lower, so protein grows as you do, in step with the lean mass you are adding. Either way the number describes the destination.

What the rest of the plate does

Once protein is set, fat takes about 28 percent of the day’s calories, inside the 20 to 35 percent range the Dietary Guidelines recommend, and carbohydrate fills the remainder. Protein and fat have floors because the body needs them; carbohydrate is the flexible fuel. This is why Neato’s macro targets move when the calorie target moves: a bigger deficit takes carbs out first and leaves protein alone.

Does it matter when you eat it?

Less than the internet says. The ISSN stand notes that spreading protein across the day in doses of roughly 0.4 grams per kilogram every three to four hours is optimal for muscle protein synthesis, and that having some protein around a workout helps. But the daily total is the lever that moves results. If you hit your number with three meals, you are fine. If you hit it with two big ones, the difference is small. If you miss it by 40 grams every day, no timing trick recovers that.

How to use this in the app

Neato’s Food dashboard shows protein as a target and a running total, the same as calories. The practical habit is to look at the gap after your last meal and, if it is large, make the next snack a protein one. Most people who miss protein miss it at breakfast, because the default Western breakfast has almost none. A yogurt, eggs or a shake there closes most of the gap before the day starts.

Neato’s guides are general wellness information built from the published research cited above. They are not a diagnosis, treatment, or medical advice, and they don’t know your history. For decisions about your health, talk to your doctor.