NUTRITION · 2026-09-01
The honest answer for someone training three or four times a week — and why it is easier to hit than the internet makes out.
Ask five people how much protein you need and you will get five answers, most of them from someone selling a tub of powder. Here is the boring, useful version.
Public health guidance in Ireland and across the EU sits around 0.75 to 0.83g of protein per kilo of bodyweight per day for a general adult. That is the floor for avoiding deficiency, not the target for someone who trains.
If you are lifting, running, or trying to hold onto muscle while losing fat, the research consistently lands higher — roughly 1.4 to 2.0g per kilo. For an 80kg person that is somewhere between 112g and 160g a day.
People panic at 140g until they break it into meals. Four feeds of 30–40g gets you there without a shaker in sight:
Most people eat 10g at breakfast, 15g at lunch and then 60g at dinner. Total looks fine on paper, but the body uses protein better when it arrives in reasonable amounts through the day — the practical advice is 20–40g per meal, three or four times.
That middle-of-the-day meal is where most people fall down, because grabbing lunch usually means grabbing carbs. That is the entire reason the Gym Fuel range exists: every pack is 20g+ protein and under 500 calories, so lunch stops being the weak link.
If your lunch has more protein than your coffee, you are already ahead of most of the queue.
Train regularly? Aim for 1.6g per kilo, spread over three or four meals, and make one of those meals a deliberate high-protein choice rather than whatever is nearest the till.