How much protein do you really need?
If 24 gm of protein, 30 grams of scoop size and 5.765 gm of BCAA mean nothing to you, then you are not alone. This is gibberish to most people. So we thought we should try and simplify (much to the dislike of the old school) the eternal question of “how much protein”?
We will try and break this into three parts – overall protein that your body needs, what you get from food and how much you might need to add.
#1. How much protein do you need?
For most people it is 1 gm per KG of body weight. So you need 60 gm if you’re 60 KG and 75 gm if you’re 75 KG.
Now that is the regular folks. If you’re the gym / training kinds, then this becomes 1.5X i.e. 1.5 gm per KG of body weight. (We're not going to do the gymmer math, it scares us !).
#2. How much do you get from food (the regular ghar ka khana)?
So dairy gives 3 g, dal gives 2X that = 6 g and chicken / paneer (the ultimate Punjabi veg!) gives 2x that = 12 g.
So if you have a bowl of curd, a glass of milk, 2 bowls of dal and some paneer you have reached a glorious 30 g.
#3. How much do you need over and above?
Here we need to recap the math. So just be with me for a bit.
If you are large boned (and not a hard core gymmer) you likely need 60 – 75 g.
If you have had a bowl of curd, a glass of milk, 2 bowls of dal and some paneer you have reached a glorious 30 g. It is safe to assume you get 5-10 g more from the other food you eat. So you need about 20-25 g of protein to be added to your diet.
Summary: You need to add 20 – 25 g of protein to your food everyday.
Protip: the body doesn’t store protein (unlike fats and carbs, damn!). So you need to have this everyday.
Hope that helps.
Stay strong with foodstrong
