Between 1.4 and 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight a day, and the research says more than about 1.6 stops adding muscle. Here is your number, where the 30 gram rule came from, and how to actually reach it.
Grass-fed whey and a shaker are the easy part. Knowing your number is the part most people skip.
Most people building muscle need 1.4 to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. For a 75 kilogram person that is 105 to 150 grams. Past roughly 1.6 grams per kilogram, the research stops showing further gains, so the top of that range is for people training hard or eating in a deficit rather than a target everyone should chase.
| Daily range | 1.4 to 2.0g per kg per day | The range the International Society of Sports Nutrition calls sufficient for building and maintaining muscle. |
|---|---|---|
| Where more stops helping | 1.6g per kg per day | 1.62 exactly. Past it, protein supplements added no further fat-free mass across 49 studies and 1,863 people. |
| Per meal | 0.4g per kg per meal | Across four meals or more, this is what gets you to a 1.6 g per kg day. For a 75 kg person that is 30 grams a meal. |
Sources numbered at the foot of this article. Ranges are population recommendations, not personal prescriptions.
Between 1.4 and 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, which is 105 to 150 grams for someone weighing 75 kilograms.
That range comes from the International Society of Sports Nutrition, which states that "an overall daily protein intake in the range of 1.4 to 2.0 g protein/kg body weight/day is sufficient" for building and maintaining muscle.
Three things decide where you sit in it. How much you train. Whether you are gaining, holding or losing weight. And how much muscle you are carrying already, since the target is set per kilogram of body weight. Each of those gets its own section below.
You will also see 0.8 grams per kilogram quoted, and it is a real number. It is the recommended dietary allowance, and it answers a different question: the minimum to avoid deficiency in a general adult population, not the amount that supports training. Leading with it is how most articles on this topic bury the answer.
The Promix Protein Calculator gives you a daily target from your height, build and training load, so you can get a number without weighing yourself.
It runs ten questions and returns a daily protein figure. Worth knowing before you start: it never asks your body weight. It asks your sex, your height, your build, your strength training, your cardio, your goal, how long you have trained, how many sessions you do a week, how active you are outside training, and whether you have dietary restrictions.
So the two routes on this page are different, and both are fine. The research states the target per kilogram of body weight, which is what the rest of this article uses. The calculator estimates from height, build and training load instead, which means you can get a number without a scale. Use whichever suits you. Do not expect them to produce the identical figure, because they are not working from the same input.
There are two versions, and Promix describes them like this:
Ten questions, one daily protein target, and it never asks your body weight. No scale needed.
Results are not saved, so write your number down before you close the tab.
In pounds, that is 0.64 to 0.91 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day.
The research is written in kilograms, so the pound figures below are conversions of the same range. Nothing here is a separate recommendation.
| Body weight | 1.4 g/kg | 1.6 g/kg | 2.0 g/kg |
|---|---|---|---|
| 55 kg / 121 lb | 77 g | 88 g | 110 g |
| 70 kg / 154 lb | 98 g | 112 g | 140 g |
| 75 kg / 165 lb | 105 g | 120 g | 150 g |
| 90 kg / 198 lb | 126 g | 144 g | 180 g |
| 100 kg / 220 lb | 140 g | 160 g | 200 g |
Per pound: 1.4 g/kg is 0.64 g/lb, 1.6 g/kg is 0.73 g/lb, 2.0 g/kg is 0.91 g/lb. Figures rounded to the nearest gram.
The target is set per kilogram of body weight, or per kilogram of lean mass, which is why it does not change by sex. A larger person needs more protein than a smaller one because the same figure per kilogram lands on a bigger total, not because the recommendation itself differs.
Four steps, and the only tool you need is a scale. If you would rather not do the arithmetic, the Promix Protein Calculator does it from your height, build and training instead.
Take your body weight in kilograms. If you work in pounds, divide by 2.2. Everything below is expressed per kilogram of body weight, because that is how the research states it.
Start at 1.4 grams per kilogram if you train a few times a week. Move toward 1.6 if you lift seriously, and toward 2.0 if you are training hard and eating in a deficit.
Body weight in kilograms times your number. A 75 kilogram person at 1.6 lands on 120 grams a day.
Aim for roughly 0.4 grams per kilogram at each one. For that same 75 kilogram person, four meals of about 30 grams each. Spreading it out is the pattern the distribution research supports, and it is also the easiest way to reach the total.
Write the result down. The calculator does not save it, and neither does this page.
About 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight a day is where the evidence stops rewarding more.
A meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, pooling 49 studies and 1,863 participants, found that "protein intakes at amounts greater than ~1.6 g/kg/day do not further contribute" to resistance-training gains in fat-free mass. That is the most useful single number on this page: it is not a ceiling on what is safe, it is the point where adding protein stopped adding muscle in the pooled data.
What moves you up toward it, and past it toward 2.0:
More protein is not more muscle past that point. If you are already at 1.6 grams per kilogram and not progressing, the answer is in your training or your total calories, not in another scoop.
Past about 1.6 grams per kilogram, the answer to slow progress is in the training or the calories.
Protein quality matters alongside quantity, which is a separate question. We covered it in collagen protein versus whey protein, and what the grass-fed label does and does not guarantee in how grass-fed whey is made.
There is no hard cap at 30 grams. The per-meal target the evidence supports is about 0.4 grams per kilogram of body weight, and for a 75 kilogram person that works out to 30 grams.
This is the most repeated claim in the category and it is half right, which is why it survives.
A 2018 review in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition recommends you "consume protein at a target intake of 0.4 g/kg/meal across a minimum of four meals in order to reach a minimum of 1.6 g/kg/day", with "a maximum of 0.55 g/kg/meal" at higher daily intakes.
Run the arithmetic and the famous number falls out of it. 0.4 grams per kilogram is 30 grams for a 75 kilogram person. So 30 grams is roughly the per-meal target for an average-sized adult. What is wrong about the claim is the word ceiling. Nothing above 30 grams is discarded, and the figure is not fixed: it is 28 grams at 70 kilograms and 36 grams at 90 kilograms.
Two separate questions get collapsed together here, and it is worth keeping them apart:
How much protein in one sitting maximally stimulates muscle protein synthesis. The International Society of Sports Nutrition puts this at "0.25 g of a high-quality protein per kg of body weight, or an absolute dose of 20 to 40 g".
How much to aim for at each meal so the day adds up. That is the 0.4 grams per kilogram figure, across four meals or more. It is deliberately higher than the stimulation threshold because its job is reaching a daily total.
Those two figures are not in conflict. They answer different questions, and printed side by side without that distinction they look like a contradiction.
The strongest evidence against a cap is not a review, it is a tracer study, and it points further than we do. Trommelen and colleagues fed 36 healthy, recreationally active young men either 25 grams or 100 grams of protein after one bout of resistance training, then followed the amino acids into muscle for more than 12 hours. The 100 gram dose produced a greater and longer response than the 25 gram dose, and the paper concludes that the anabolic response "has no upper limit in magnitude and duration". Amino acid oxidation barely moved, so the idea that the surplus is simply burned off did not survive the measurement either.
Read the limits alongside it, because they matter. That is 36 young men, 12 per group, measured once after a single session. It tells you a large dose is not wasted. It does not tell you that one big meal beats four spread across a day for the muscle you actually keep, which is the different question Morton and Nunes measured. We are citing the paper that argues against our own per-meal advice, because it is the best evidence on the question and you should have it.
Other researchers pushed back on how that paper gets used. A 2024 commentary in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism cautioned that "the practical implications of these findings may have been misinterpreted, at least in terms of dismissing the concept of protein meal distribution as an important factor", and noted that the subjects were recreationally active rather than resistance-trained. The same commentary points out that "this idea that the anabolic response to protein ingestion has no upper limit does not appear to translate to resistance-trained young women". No published reply from the original authors exists. So: one big dose is not wasted, and that is not a reason to stop spreading protein across the day.
The practical version: what decides your result is the daily total, not a per-meal limit. Spread it anyway, because that is what the distribution evidence actually supports.
The position stands recommend spreading protein evenly across the day, every 3 to 4 hours, rather than aiming at a narrow window after training.
The International Society of Sports Nutrition's position is that protein doses "should ideally be evenly distributed, every 3 to 4 h, across the day". That is a distribution recommendation, not a race.
A post-workout shake is a genuinely convenient way to land one of those doses, which is how Promix frames its own powder: for use in "post-workout shakes, smoothies, baking" and "between meals to meet protein goals". Both uses are the same idea. It is easier to reach a number with a drink you can make in thirty seconds than with another meal you have to cook.
What we are not going to tell you is that the shake has to be immediate. If you get your daily total and spread it sensibly, the exact minute is not the variable doing the work.
The Promix calculator asks about cardiovascular training separately from strength work, for the same reason.
Protein before bed is a separate question with its own evidence, and we covered it in casein versus whey protein before bed.
For healthy adults there is a point where more protein stops adding muscle, and in the pooled research that point is about 1.6 grams per kilogram a day.
That is the honest answer to the question people are usually asking, which is whether the extra scoop is doing anything. A 2018 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, pooling 49 studies and 1,863 participants, put the figure at 1.62 grams per kilogram a day: past that, protein supplementation produced no further gain in fat-free mass.
A larger and more recent review agrees on the number. Nunes and colleagues pooled 74 randomized controlled trials in 2022 and found the effect on lean body mass was significant for adults under 65 "ingesting ≥1.6 g of protein/kg/day submitted to RE", meaning resistance exercise. For adults over 65 the same review found the effect at a lower intake, 1.2 to 1.59 grams per kilogram a day. Read that as the level where the benefit showed up in older adults, not as a reason for anyone to aim lower.
These two analyses are not independent of each other. They share a senior author and a co-author, and the 2022 one was funded by a grant from a food-industry institute. So treat the matching 1.6 figure as one research group reaching the same answer twice with more data, which is worth something, rather than as two separate confirmations.
The 2022 review was formally challenged. A 2025 letter in the same journal argued its effect sizes were calculated the wrong way and that several studies should not have been pooled. The authors replied in print that they had used a difference-in-differences calculation rather than the within-group method described, and they re-ran the analysis without the four disputed studies. The overall effect held at 0.15 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.23) against 0.19 (0.11 to 0.28) originally, and the effect at 1.6 grams per kilogram a day and above held at 0.23 (0.10 to 0.37) against 0.30 (0.17 to 0.43). Smaller, still there. We are telling you about the challenge because it happened, and about the re-analysis because that is the part that answers it.
On intakes well above the range, the International Society of Sports Nutrition records that "higher protein intakes (>3.0 g/kg/d) may have positive effects on body composition". Read that for what it says. It is a statement about body composition in trained populations, not a safety finding, and we are not presenting it as one.
If you have a diagnosed kidney condition, this is a conversation with your clinician and not with a calculator. Promix's own protein calculator asks about exactly that and adjusts, which tells you the company treats it as a medical question too. We are not going to give you a number for it here.
For everyone else, the practical limit is usually appetite and calories rather than a rule. Protein is filling, and at some point the grams you are adding are simply calories you have not accounted for.
Add up what your food already gives you, then use protein powder for whatever gap is left.
A number is only useful if you reach it, and most people have never added up an ordinary day to find out where they actually land.
Do that first. Count the protein in what you actually eat for two days. Whatever the shortfall is, that is the job a powder is for, and Promix's own guidance for its whey says the same thing: "between meals to meet protein goals".
| Product | Per serving | Serving |
|---|---|---|
| Grass-Fed Whey Protein | 25 g protein, 5.9 g BCAAs | 2 scoops, 36 g |
| Whey Protein Isolate | 30 g protein, 6.6 g BCAAs, 14.2 g essential amino acids | 2 scoops |
One serving is two scoops, not one. Counting single scoops is the most common way people end up at half the protein they think they are getting.
Read from Promix's own published panel, verified September 11, 2026. The figures are written out in the table above so they stay readable without the image.
For a 75 kilogram person aiming at 120 grams a day, one serving of whey is a fifth of the target. That is the honest scale of what a shake does: it closes a gap, it does not do the job on its own.
If dairy is the problem, the isolate is "micro-filtered to <1g of lactose for fast, easy digestion", and we went through that in detail in does whey protein have lactose. If you are choosing between the two on digestion rather than lactose alone, that is whey isolate versus concentrate. If you want to know how to check any brand's testing before you buy, including ours, start with how to check if a supplement is third party tested.
Promix Whey Protein Isolate, Dutch Chocolate.
"Best For: Building muscle and improving recovery." 25 grams of protein and 5.9 grams of branched-chain amino acids per two-scoop serving, from grass-fed cows, with no artificial anything.
Any food can, protein included, if it takes you above the calories you use. Protein itself is not special in that respect. What the research does show is that protein intake supports the muscle you build from training, and that past roughly 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight a day, adding more did not add further fat-free mass across 49 studies. So there is a point where extra protein stops working for you and simply counts as extra calories.
Powder is not a separate category from food. Work out your daily protein target first, subtract what you already eat, and use powder for whatever gap is left. For most people that is one or two servings. A serving of Promix whey protein is two scoops, which is 36 grams of powder and 25 grams of protein.
Digestion and absorption of a normal meal run over a few hours rather than minutes, which is one reason the day matters more than the moment. The International Society of Sports Nutrition recommends spreading protein doses evenly every 3 to 4 hours across the day. Individual timing varies with the meal, so treat that as a pattern rather than a stopwatch.
As much as your daily target needs after food, and no more. Promix grass-fed whey delivers 25 grams of protein and 5.9 grams of branched-chain amino acids per two-scoop serving. Promix whey isolate delivers 30 grams of protein, 6.6 grams of branched-chain amino acids and 14.2 grams of essential amino acids per serving. One or two servings covers the gap for most people.
Longer than the old post-workout advice implies, and the exact time depends on the meal, the other food with it and the form the protein is in. The practical answer is that spacing protein every 3 to 4 hours across the day, as the International Society of Sports Nutrition recommends, matters more than getting any single serving in fast.
Read the label before counting scoops, because one serving is usually more than one scoop. On Promix whey protein, a serving is two scoops. So one serving a day is two scoops, and two servings is four. Counting single scoops is the most common way people end up at half the protein they think they are getting.
Not the way it stores fat or carbohydrate. There is no dedicated protein reserve waiting to be drawn on, which is why intake is spread across the day rather than loaded into one meal. That is the reasoning behind the recommendation to distribute protein evenly every 3 to 4 hours.
One or two covers the gap for most people, but the honest answer is that it depends entirely on what your food already gives you. Work out your daily target, add up what you eat, and let the shake fill the difference. Promix's own guidance is to use it between meals to meet protein goals, which is exactly the job a shake is good at.
Who funded the science on this page
Every study cited above has at least one author with a declared commercial relationship in the protein or nutrition industry. Not most of them. All of them. We are not going to pretend otherwise on a page that sells protein.
The International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand declares supplement industry relationships for author after author, including two who were employees of a supplement company, and it states that no funding was provided for the stand itself. The 2018 meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine carries a correction, published in 2020, declaring that one of its authors, Brad Schoenfeld, served on the advisory board of Dymatize Nutrition while the paper was being written. He and a second author of that meta-analysis wrote the per-meal paper we cite for the 0.4 grams per kilogram figure, and that paper declared the relationship up front.
The 2023 tracer study has an author who is an employee of FrieslandCampina, a dairy ingredients company, and the paper states the company had no role in its funding, data collection, analysis or writing. We have used that paper to argue against our own per-meal advice rather than for it, and we have printed the published commentary that pushes back on it.
The 2022 review of 74 trials is the one we would most like to have been able to call independent, and it is not. It was funded by a grant from the International Life Sciences Institute (Europe) and carried out by one of its expert groups, three of its co-authors are employees of Abbott Nutrition, International Flavors and Fragrances and Givaudan, and it shares its senior author and one co-author with the 2018 meta-analysis.
So there is no clean outside check to offer you here. What there is instead: the two papers that were formally challenged in print, both challenges cited above, and in one case a re-analysis by the original authors that we have quoted whether or not it flattered them. Where the evidence is weaker than the headline, we have said so in the body of the page rather than in the footnotes.
Detox Flush contains Niacin and WILL cause flushing and tingling. This is NORMAL.
DO NOT purchase Detox Flush if you are not comfortable with flushing and tingling.
DO NOT take a full serving your first time using Detox Flush. Take a 1/4 serving to understand how the tingling and flushing will feel.
For use ONLY by healthy individuals over 18 years old. Do not take if you are pregnant or nursing.
