Protein intake?

havewings

I just read an article from MFP that calculated my suggested daily protein should be 109 grams, but my diary in MFP has my daily goal of protein grams in the high 60's. What gives?
I'm still new here. I'm learning a lot, but still so much I don't get.

craigheon

You will want to get approximately .6g to 1g of protein per bodyweight. So, say you weigh 150 lbs, you should be taking in anywhere from 90g to 150g total daily. It depends on your goals. Protein and fats will keep you satiated longer. You can play around with those numbers but that is a good range to go by. Hope this helps!

AnnPT77

Can you link the article? It would help to have some context.

There are different ways to estimate protein needs. As a generality, sometimes they're estimated in grams per day, sometimes as a percent of daily calories.

When protein needs are estimated in grams, it's usually X grams per pound or kilo of body weight. In those cases, if someone is substantially overweight, it can be OK - better even - to use a healthy goal weight as the basis for estimating, since we don't need lots of extra protein to maintain our fat mass. (It's mostly for our lean mass.)

Other times, the estimate is per pound or kilo of lean mass, which requires a reasonable estimate of body fat percent, but uses a different number of grams per pound or kilo than if using body weight. Most of us don't have great estimates of lean body mass, but this is a case where reasonably close is good enough (because of how the arithmetic works out).

If the estimate is in percent of calories, that can go wrong in cases where someone has cut calories unreasonably fat for their current body weight. There's just no getting adequate nutrients - protein or any other requirement, really - on too few calories. Someone with a small-ish amount to lose will minimize health risk in that and other ways by losing weight more slowly than someone who has a lot of weight to lose.

Personally, I like the rule of thumb that a reasonable protein minimum is likely to fall in the range of 0.6-0.8 grams per day per pound of healthy goal weight, or 0.8-1 gram per pound of estimated lean body mass. That rule of thumb tends to overlap the range suggested by this research-based calculator, noting that that site suggests someone who's quite overweight can use a lower weight (maybe goal weight) as the basis for that estimate:

https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

However, other people, including some authorities much more expert in nutrition than I am, may suggest rules of thumb that are higher or lower than the ones I mentioned.

I'm 5'5", lower 130s pounds in maintenance though up a little from my ideally preferred weight in mid-120s. I target a minimum of 100g protein daily, which I usually exceed. I've been averaging 113-117g over the last few weeks. I figure my lean mass is somewhere in the upper 90s pounds.

If your protein goal were 70, and you're set up in MFP currently for the default of 20% protein, your calorie goal would be 1400, which is not a high calorie goal. Since you say "high 60s", that would imply lower calories than 1400 at default protein percent; 65% would imply something above 1300. Whether that's potentially too-low calories depends on things about your demographics that you haven't shared in this post. You also haven't said if you're eating back exercise calories, and if so letting that add more protein.

You can increase your protein percent in your MFP profile if you wish, of course. If calorie intake is too low - and I'm not saying it is - adequate protein can be difficult to fit in while getting good nutrition in other respects.

Best wishes!