Health Library / Training
This content is for education only and is not medical advice. I'm a fitness coach, not a physician. Talk to your doctor before starting any medication, hormone, supplement, or new exercise program, especially if you have a medical condition or take prescriptions.
I ask new clients to write down everything they ate yesterday. Not to judge it — to count the protein. Most people over 45 are eating roughly half of what they need, and almost none of them believe it until they see it written down.
The usual pattern: coffee, maybe toast. A sandwich or a salad at noon. Then a proper dinner with actual protein in it. That's one real protein feeding in a 24-hour day, and it's arriving at 7pm.
The RDA for protein is about 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. People see that and assume it's the target.
It isn't. That figure is the amount needed to keep a healthy adult from developing a deficiency — a floor, set to prevent a problem. It was never meant to describe the intake that best supports muscle in a 57-year-old trying to hold onto it.
Researchers who work specifically on protein in older adults have argued for years that the requirement is meaningfully higher with age, with consensus recommendations landing well above the RDA — commonly in the range of 1.0 to 1.6 grams per kilogram depending on activity and health. If you're training, you're at the upper end of that conversation, not the bottom.
Here's the mechanism, and it's the single most useful piece of nutrition science for this age group.
When you eat protein, your body responds by building muscle protein. As you get older, that response gets blunted — the same meal produces a smaller building signal than it did at 25. It's called anabolic resistance.
The practical consequence: you need more protein in a single sitting to trigger the same response. A modest amount that would have done the job at 25 doesn't clear the bar at 55. It's not that the protein is wasted. It's that there's a threshold, and it moved up on you without notice.
This is why the pattern I described at the top fails. It's not only that the daily total is low. It's that two of the three meals don't clear the threshold, so they contribute far less than the calories suggest.
Anchor every meal with protein and build around it. Decide the protein first, then fill in. This one reframing fixes most people's intake without any counting.
Spread it across the day. Three or four feedings that each clear the bar beats one enormous dinner, even at the same daily total.
Breakfast is where most people are losing. Morning is typically the emptiest meal for protein and the easiest to fix. Eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, leftovers from dinner. There's no rule that breakfast has to be breakfast food.
Whole foods first. Meat, fish, eggs, dairy, legumes. Not because powder is bad — it's convenient and it works — but because whole foods bring the other things you need and powder doesn't. Use a shake to fill a gap you couldn't close, not as the foundation.
Don't forget fiber and water. When people push protein up, these two usually fall, and you'll feel that within a week. Vegetables, fruit, beans, whole grains. Drink more than you think, especially training in Hawaii heat.
You'll read that high protein damages your kidneys. In people with healthy kidneys, that claim hasn't held up under study.
But if you have kidney disease, that's a completely different situation. Protein intake is genuinely part of how kidney disease is managed, and the right amount for you is a number your doctor or a renal dietitian sets — not one you get from an article or a coach. If you have any kidney issue, or you're not sure, ask before you change anything. That one's not negotiable.
Same goes if you're on medications or managing another condition where diet is part of the treatment. Loop in the person managing it.
You're not going to weigh food forever. Nobody does.
Do it for one week. Just count, don't change anything. Almost everyone is shocked, and after that week you'll estimate well enough by eye for the rest of your life. That's the whole intervention.
Last updated September 30, 2026