How much protein to lose weight?

When you are losing weight, protein does not drop with your calories. It is the single most important thing to get right during a cut.

For fat loss the calculator uses three quarters of a gram per pound of body weight. For a 170 pound person that is 128 grams a day. Spread across four meals it is about 32 grams each, which is a normal chicken-breast-sized serving, not a heroic amount. If you are also training for strength it moves you to a full gram per pound.

Two reasons it matters so much in a deficit. First, when you eat under maintenance your body will take some weight from muscle unless you give it a reason not to, and high protein plus lifting is that reason. You want the scale going down because fat left, not because muscle did. Second, protein is the most filling of the three macros, so a high-protein plate keeps you fuller on fewer calories, which makes the whole cut easier to hold.

If you are undershooting, the easy fixes are a protein source in every meal and a shake to close a 25 to 30 gram gap in about a minute. Timing barely matters at this stage. Hit the daily total and let the clock go.

The target scales with your weight, so put yours into the calculator for your own range.