Ronan Oliveira (Mindvalley) explains how to estimate daily and per-meal protein needs using body weight and activity level. He frames protein as the materials/workers used to build and repair the body (analogy: a city under attack), cites an activity-based per-kg recommendation chart, and works through an example: a 60 kg lightly active person using 1.5 g/kg → ~90 g protein/day, divided as ~3 meals × 30 g protein. He then gives practical portion guides showing typical foods that yield ~30 g protein (≈100 g chicken or beef, ~5 eggs, servings of Greek yogurt, lentils+seeds, tofu, or 1–2 scoops of protein powder) and notes calorie/volume trade-offs and dietary considerations.
Chapters
In a previous video, we talked about how important it is to have protein in every single meal of the day. Now the question is, how much protein do I need per meal and how much protein do I need per day? This is what I want to answer to you in this video. This is Ronan from mindvalley. And for you to know how much protein you need per day, imagine that you have a city under attack and you are trying to build a wall. And for you to build this wall, you need bricks, mortar, and the workers. But at the same time that you build the wall, part of the wall is being broken because it's under attack. And protein in our body will work in a similar way. We need the material. The protein in this case represents not only the bricks, not only the mortars, the bricks, the mortars and the workers. This is all different components is what protein represents in our body. And not only you are building things, you protein to build things. There's also part of it that's being broken down every day that you need to rebuild. So for you to know how much protein you need per day, the first question you need to ask is how big is the wall? How big is your body? The bigger the body, the more protein you need. And the second thing that you need to know is how much is being broken down every day. If the city is under heavy attack, you need more workers and more bricks and more mortar because it needs to repair in a faster pace. So we have a chart here. This I took from Coach Juma Iraki. So shout out to Coach Juma. It's a chart that shows all the different possibilities of a optimal range of protein. On the left side, you see a protein recommendation per day for someone who has a sedentary lifestyle. In all, all of these protein recommendations are based on the kilogram or pounds of your body weight. On the right side of this chart, you have a protein recommendation for someone who is really active and is also lifting weights and working as an athlete. Why is this relevant? It's because this level of activity is what is breaking down the protein. The level of activity represents how much attack the CT is under. The more active you are, the more you are breaking down your existing protein and more repair needs to be done on a daily basis. So someone who is sedentary needs less protein than someone who is active, and someone who is active needs less protein than someone who is active and lift weights and works as an athlete. So let's have an example here. Let's have an example of a person. And this would be the same thing whether you are a woman or a man. So let's have an example of someone who is 60 kg or around 130 pounds. And let's say that this person has a desk job. So during the day they don't move much, but they go for walks and maybe do some cardio sessions maybe three times a week. So they are lightly active throughout the week. So things that are important here is the level of activity. And for this level of activity, I would choose something in the middle. So let's say someone who is here in the middle will have 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of their body weight per day. So this is how we choose more or less the level of activity. And then their body weighs 60 kilograms, which is more or less 130 pounds. So if I multiply this 1.5 that came from the activity level times the body weight in kilograms, I'll have the answer. That is the whole amount of protein per day. So for this person, more or less 90 grams of protein per day will be enough and it will be optimal. And then let's say that this person has three meals per day, a breakfast, a lunch and a dinner. And we break this down to three meals with 30 grams of protein each. So now we have an idea that for you to achieve, for this person to achieve the optimum level of performance of weight loss and mood and longevity, more or less 30 grams of protein per meal over the course of 30 meals in a day will be the optimum number. Now the next question is, how do I. What does it look like? 30 grams of protein? You know, one of the key mistakes here, we know that from a previous video that I talked about the best sources of protein. If you haven't watched it yet, go check it out. We talk about this in details, but we know that, for example, if you eat animal products, maybe something like a chicken breast or a lean meat would be a preferable source of protein. But 30 grams of chicken breast doesn't mean 30 grams of protein. No chicken breast has protein and it also has water and also has many other things inside. So there is a ratio of each source of protein that will give you protein itself. And this is what I want to show you what it looks like, because most of the times we don't know from animal products if you have them, your key source will be lean cuts of protein. So here I have chicken breast and I have a lean cut of a high round beef. So it's a both lean cuts of protein. It's probably the most effective source, if you have animal products, these are both around 100 grams of chicken breast and 100 grams of beef. That will give you more or less 30 grams of protein in this meal. And for you to have a visual cue is more or less the size of the palm of a hand without the fingers, just the palm, and more or less the same thickness. The size and the thickness of a palm of a hand, of an adult person will give more or less 30 grams of protein. So this is more or less how you know, okay, it's not half of this. It's not twice as much. This is more or less what it looks like. If I'm getting this same amount of protein from eggs, for example, I will need to have five eggs. So this is a big quantity. And it's not only not the best, most delicious choice of meal, but I can have. It's also very high in fats as well, which is not a bad thing. But if I'm trying to control weight loss, I want to decrease a little bit of calories, so I can combine eggs with other things. Instead of five eggs, if I have two eggs and half of a tuna, can I also get 30 grams of protein, but for a lot less of the calories? So the five eggs here would give me more or less 400, 390 calories. And this combination gives me half of that more or less 200 calories for the same amount of protein. So here you see how you can combine these things for a smarter option. If I'm getting this from dairy, from Greek yogurt, more or less two of these little pinches of Greek yogurt, each one has more or less 15 grams of protein. So two of them will give me 30. Again, it's not going to be my main choice every single day because dairy can have an inflammatory response in most people. So sometimes I can have this. But my main choice will still be lean meats if I eat animal products. If I don't, then I know that I want to combine legumes with other things. First of all, if I am getting 30 grams of protein from lentils, this will be almost 2 cups of lentils. It is quite a bit. It's a big volume to get 30 grams. So the answer, yes, I can get, you know, all my protein from legumes, but the volume is a lot. It's almost two cans of this now times three for three meals in a day. And you ended the day very bloated. It's difficult and uncomfortable to have all of this for Most people. So I can have something different. I can have half of this amount of lentils and combine with something like pumpkin seeds. If I have one cup of pumpkin seeds, this is half a cup. So twice this guy and combine this with half of this amount of lentils is something that is a lot more doable. And it gives me also 30 grams of protein. But then if I want to have even lesser volume of food, I can still have half of this amount of lentils and more or less 3/4 of a cup of tofu. Tofu is not going to be my main source of protein every single day, but it can complement legumes very well and it decreases the volume of food. And so I start managing my options to have a smarter idea of a meal. And then lastly, if I want to use a protein powder supplement, here I have two options, and both of them represent more or less 30 grams of protein. This is a scoop of whey protein. It gives me more or less 24 grams of protein. And this is a vegan blend. Vegan blend usually comes in a smaller scoop. And so usually two scoops is what gives me 24 to 30 grams protein. So now you have an idea of what it looks like to have 30 grams in protein in a meal and what it would look like to have 90 grams for that person who is 60 kilos, has a desk job, and does some, you know, walks and cardio throughout the week. Now use that chart to figure out how many grams of protein you should have per day, break them down more or less evenly throughout meals, and estimate the portion sizes. So not only you have protein every meal, but you also have the adequate amount. And this will support all your health and fitness goals going forward. But we don't usually only have a, you know, macronutrients isolated. I don't eat only protein or carbohydrates or fats. We eat foods that are a combination of these things. And more than that, we eat meals that are a combination of foods. So for us to talk in a more realistic way of how to choose different types of foods to eat, I will have another video to talk about that in detail. So we can look at foods in general, how we combine them in meals, and how to make good choices out of those things. And for that, I will see you in the next video. Sam.
