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Nutrition & Recovery/Nutrition

How Much Protein Do You Really Need for Muscle & Recovery?

Learn how much protein you actually need, how to spread it through the day, and how to use tracking without obsessing over every gram.

Kleos Coaching Team

Coaches & Personal Trainers

Protein is one of the key building blocks your body uses to repair and grow muscle tissue. If you lift regularly, getting enough protein each day makes it easier to recover, maintain muscle, and build new strength over time.

How much protein do I need?

For most people who are weight training:

  • A good starting range is 1.2–1.6 g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day
  • Example: at 75 kg, that’s around 90–120 g of protein per day

More isn’t always better. Going far above ~1.6–2.0 g/kg usually brings diminishing returns for most lifters who already meet their baseline needs.

When should I eat protein?

You don’t need to slam a shake in a 30-minute “anabolic window”, but distribution across the day helps:

  • Aim for 3–4 meals containing 20–40 g of protein each
  • Try not to leave all your protein for one big evening meal
  • Having protein within a few hours before or after training is a simple, effective rule

Think less about perfect timing and more about hitting your daily total consistently.

Where should my protein come from?

Focus on whole foods first:

  • Meat, poultry, fish
  • Eggs and dairy (yoghurt, milk, cheese)
  • Tofu, tempeh, legumes, lentils, beans
  • Protein powders to fill the gaps when needed

Supplements are just convenience tools, not magic.

Using Kleos to track protein

With Kleos Pro, you can:

  • Set a daily protein target
  • Log your protein intake alongside your workouts
  • See patterns over time — for example, days you train hard but under-eat protein

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s awareness. When you can see your training and protein trends together, it’s easier to make small adjustments that add up over weeks and months.

Sources

  • https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35187864/
  • https://sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40798-022-00508-w
  • https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-018-0215-1
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