How Much Protein Do You Need After 40? Men and Women Compared
Most people don't notice themselves getting weaker. It's too gradual for that.
You just clock, somewhere in your late forties or fifties, that the shopping feels heavier than it used to, or that you're blowing a bit harder than you'd like getting up the steps at Brookwood to catch the Wa
terloo train. Your body is doing slightly less than it did a decade ago and you couldn't say exactly when that started.
Protein is one of the simpler things you can get right. It has nothing to do with wanting to look like a bodybuilder, and you don't need to be chasing bigger muscles for it to matter. Muscle is what keeps you mobile, steady on your feet and capable of looking after yourself as you get older.
The obvious question is how much protein you actually need. The slightly less obvious one is whether the answer changes depending on whether you're a man or a woman.
The difference between scraping by and staying strong
The official UK recommendation for protein is 0.75 g per kilogram of body weight each day.
For someone who weighs 75 kg, that's about 56 g.
That number is a reference intake intended to cover the basic needs of most healthy adults. It was never designed as a target for getting the best possible result from resistance training, protecting muscle during weight loss or staying strong into later life.
The organisations that focus specifically on ageing muscle tend to land higher. Around 1.0 to 1.2 g per kilogram is commonly recommended for healthy older adults, rising to about 1.2 to 1.5 g per kilogram during illness, recovery or periods of greater physical demand.
Most of those formal recommendations were written for people over 60 or 65, not for everyone the morning after their fortieth birthday. So I wouldn't pretend that 1.2 g per kilogram is a newly discovered legal requirement for middle age.
What I would say is that muscle loss does not wait politely until retirement. Midlife is when protecting it starts to become worth thinking about. Using 1.0 to 1.2 g per kilogram as a practical target after 40 is a reasonable way to get ahead of the problem, particularly if you're active.
So how much protein should you eat?
For most healthy adults over 40, this is a useful place to start:
The lower range is suitable for someone trying to support general health and hold on to muscle.
The higher range becomes more relevant if you're lifting regularly, training hard or losing weight and trying not to lose muscle along with the fat. Research generally finds a small additional benefit from higher protein when it is combined with resistance training, rather than treating protein as a substitute for the training itself.
You don't have to aim for the top of the range simply because the number exists. A 90 kg person eating 110 g consistently is doing rather better than one repeatedly chasing 145 g, finding it miserable and giving up after ten days.
If you carry a substantial amount of excess body fat, multiplying your current weight by the highest target can also leave you with a fairly absurd number. In that situation, a realistic goal weight or an individually adjusted calculation may be more useful than blindly following an online calculator.
Do men and women need different amounts?
Not in the way fitness marketing tends to suggest.
Protein needs are usually calculated from body weight, activity and circumstances. There isn't one equation for men and another for women.
If a 65 kg woman and an 85 kg man both use 1.2 g per kilogram, she lands at 78 g and he lands at 102 g. He needs more total protein because he weighs more, not simply because he's male.
Research looking directly at protein and amino acid requirements in older adults has not found a meaningful sex difference once body weight is taken into account. One study measuring leucine requirements in older men and women produced almost identical figures per kilogram, 77.8 mg per kilogram for the men and 78.2 for the women, with no sex effect worth speaking of.
There are obvious average differences in body size and muscle mass between men and women, but averages don't tell you what the person in front of you needs.
An active woman who is lifting weights while losing body fat may need more protein per kilogram than a sedentary man. Sex is part of the context, but it isn't the whole calculation.
What about menopause?
Menopause matters, but it doesn't create a new protein equation.
Changes in oestrogen can affect bone, body composition and muscle function. Women may also find that maintaining strength becomes harder while fat distribution changes. Those are good reasons to take protein and resistance training seriously.
They are not proof that every menopausal woman needs a special target that doesn't apply to anyone else.
A narrative review published in 2026 found that the possible connection between menopause, female hormones and muscle loss is biologically credible, but the evidence is still mixed. Much of the apparent muscle loss across the menopausal transition sits within the range you'd expect from ageing alone over the same decade. There isn't enough good research to prescribe a separate universal protein requirement purely because a woman is going through menopause.
The sensible advice remains much the same.
Work from body weight. Take activity into account. Move towards the higher end if you're dieting or training hard. Make sure resistance training is part of the plan. Menopause raises the stakes on keeping muscle. It doesn't rewrite the physiology underneath.
Muscle is the tissue you can't afford to lose
From midlife onwards, muscle mass and quality begin to decline, and strength tends to fall faster than muscle size does.
That's the bit worth sitting with. You can be losing useful capability quicker than the mirror lets on.
Muscle isn't just there to fill out your sleeves. It helps clear glucose from your blood, supports balance, lets you get out of a chair without using your hands and gives you some physical reserve when illness or injury knocks you sideways.
Lower muscle strength and poorer physical performance are associated with more falls, disability, hospital admissions and loss of independence in later life. That doesn't mean protein alone prevents all of those things. It means muscle is valuable tissue and allowing it to waste has consequences that go a long way beyond appearance.
This is the way I think about fitness now. I'm a grandad. Being leaner would be nice, but being able to move well, lift things, train and keep up with my granddaughter in another twenty years matters a great deal more.
"I'm not a bodybuilder, and I already eat plenty"
Fair enough. If you're having chicken or fish with dinner most nights, you probably are getting a reasonable amount of protein somewhere in the day.
The trouble is often when you're eating it.
Breakfast is usually toast, cereal or an espresso bolted on the way to the station. Lunch might be soup, a sandwich with a fairly thin filling, or a salad with six pieces of chicken hiding in it, eaten at a desk. Then you crawl back down the A30, and dinner arrives and carries most of the day's protein on its back.
That matters more as you age because muscle becomes a little less responsive to a small serving of protein. This is known as anabolic resistance. In ordinary language, older muscle tends to need a louder signal to switch the repair and building process on.
Research comparing younger and older men found that younger muscle reached its maximum response at about 0.24 g per kilogram in a meal, while older muscle needed nearer 0.40 g per kilogram. Another trial found that 40 g of protein produced a greater muscle protein response than 20 g after a full body strength session.
That is where the familiar recommendation of roughly 25 to 40 g at a meal comes from.
I wouldn't turn that into another silly rule about having exactly 30 g every three hours. The longer term evidence on perfect protein distribution is mixed, and your total daily intake still matters most.
The useful part is much less fussy. Get a proper source of protein into breakfast and lunch rather than trying to rescue the whole day at eight in the evening.
What does 25 to 40 g look like?
It doesn't require a tub of powder on every surface in the kitchen. Here's a simple calculator to help you estimate your needs.
Those are estimates, not chemical analyses of your dinner. Check the packet and adjust the portion.
For most people, the quickest improvement is not making dinner larger. It's putting more thought into the two meals that currently contain next to nothing.
Protein matters more when you're losing weight
Weight loss doesn't automatically mean fat loss.
When you're in a calorie deficit, some of the weight can come from lean tissue. The more aggressive the diet, the less protein you eat and the less resistance training you do, the greater that risk becomes.
A 2024 review found that higher protein intakes helped adults with overweight or obesity preserve more muscle during weight loss. Intakes above about 1.3 g per kilogram tended to perform better, while intakes below 1.0 g per kilogram were associated with a greater loss of muscle.
This is why I don't think successful weight loss should be judged only by how quickly the scales move.
You can make the number fall faster by losing muscle. That doesn't make it a better result.
The aim is to lose body fat while keeping as much strength and useful tissue as you reasonably can. Protein helps. Strength training helps more. Together they give you a much better chance of ending the diet lighter without becoming weaker.
A few myths worth clearing up
"High protein wrecks your kidneys"
Not in healthy people, based on the evidence we have.
Reviews of controlled trials have not found that moderately higher protein diets damage kidney function in adults with healthy kidneys. The kidneys may filter more in response to the additional workload, but an adaptation is not automatically an injury.
The important exception is diagnosed chronic kidney disease. That changes the advice, sometimes substantially. Safe for healthy kidneys and suitable for everyone are not the same statement.
"Plant protein doesn't count"
It counts.
A lot of plant proteins contain less leucine and may be digested slightly less efficiently gram for gram than eggs, dairy, fish or meat. That means a plant based eater may need to pay more attention to portions and food choices.
It doesn't mean they can't get enough.
Soy foods, tofu, tempeh, edamame, beans, lentils, peas, nuts and seeds all contribute. A well planned plant based diet can support strength and muscle perfectly well. It simply takes a little more thought than slapping a chicken breast on a plate.
"I need protein powder"
You don't.
A shake is convenient when you're rushed, your appetite is poor or the alternative is eating nothing until mid afternoon. It isn't better than food and it doesn't possess any special muscle building powers.
Some protein bars are useful too. Some are expensive chocolate bars wearing gym clothes.
Use them when they solve a practical problem, not because the label has persuaded you that ordinary food has stopped working.
What to actually do about it
The plan is short.
Work out roughly what 1.0 to 1.2 g per kilogram looks like for you. Move towards 1.2 to 1.6 g if you're lifting regularly or losing weight. Then check what you're eating now before assuming you need to change everything.
Put most of your effort into breakfast and lunch. Aim for somewhere around 25 to 40 g in each main meal, adjusted to your size and appetite, and build it from food you already enjoy.
Then lift something.
The NHS recommends strengthening the major muscle groups at least twice a week. That doesn't require living in a gym, but it does require giving your muscles a reason to stay. If you want the wider picture on how strength, cardio and daily movement fit together, I've covered that in How Much Exercise Do You Actually Need After 50?
Eating more protein hands your body the raw material. Resistance training gives it a job to do.
You don't need a protein obsession. You need enough, eaten with a bit of forethought, alongside regular strength work. Do that consistently and you're making a useful investment in the body you'll still be relying on twenty years from now.
Where most people get stuck
Knowing the number is the easy part. The bit that trips people up is the gap between "I should eat more protein and lift twice a week" and actually doing it around a full diary, a commute and everything else that fills a week in Surrey Heath.
That's the part I help with.
If you'd like someone to look at what you're genuinely eating and lifting right now, and tell you the two or three changes worth making rather than handing you a spreadsheet you'll abandon by February, that's what an initial consultation at PrimeFit is for. I coach adults over 40 at Lightwater Leisure Centre, building strength and capability around two or three focused sessions a week, which is about what a busy professional can realistically hold down.
You can book a diagnostic consultation or ask me a question through edefitness.com, or email me directly at [email protected]. No hard sell, just an honest look at where you are and what's worth doing next.
Related reading
How Much Exercise Do You Actually Need After 50? — how to cover strength, cardiovascular fitness and general activity without turning exercise into a second job.
Creatine After 40: The Evidence — what creatine can do, what it can't do and whether it's worth taking as you get older.
Is a Personal Trainer Worth It After 50? — an honest look at what coaching adds, where supervision helps and when you may be fine training alone.
References (for the curious)
Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), Nutrition and Older Adults, UK Government.
British Dietetic Association, Protein: Food Fact Sheet.
