Protein requirement isn’t one universal number — it scales with body weight and shifts meaningfully with activity level and individual goal, which is why you’ll see genuinely different figures depending on the source you’re reading. General population guidelines — the kind aimed at preventing deficiency in a sedentary population rather than optimising for a training goal — commonly sit around 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. People training regularly, or specifically working toward muscle gain or strength goals, are commonly advised toward a considerably higher range, often cited somewhere between roughly 1.2 and 2 grams per kilogram, depending on training volume, intensity and individual goal.
Why the range is this wide
Someone doing light, occasional activity and someone doing regular structured resistance training have meaningfully different protein needs even at an identical body weight, since protein requirement in the research literature scales with the demands placed on muscle tissue, not with body weight alone. It’s also worth knowing that the research on the upper end of useful protein intake for muscle-building goals specifically is genuinely less settled than the lower, deficiency-prevention end of the range — there’s more scientific consensus around "enough to avoid deficiency" than around "the exact optimal amount for maximising muscle gain," and figures at the higher end of commonly cited ranges reflect that ongoing debate rather than a single settled number.
What’s actually useful to look at on a meal plan
A daily total, not a per-meal figure. Protein-per-meal claims are genuinely difficult to substantiate accurately, since protein absorption and use by the body aren’t neatly divided into discrete per-meal blocks the way a marketing claim implies — which is part of why the honest way to describe a plan’s protein content is as a daily figure rather than a headline number attached to a single meal. On this site, that figure is published as a daily total: a typical plan here runs about 72 grams of protein a day, stated that way specifically because that’s what’s actually measured and meaningful, not because a larger-sounding per-meal number would read more impressively on a plan page.
Where the protein actually comes from matters too
Total grams isn’t the only useful number — protein quality and source vary. Dal, paneer, legumes, eggs, poultry and fish all contribute differently to a day’s protein total, with different accompanying nutrients and different digestibility profiles. A plan that publishes not just a daily gram total but the actual dishes and ingredients behind it lets you see the source, not just the number, which is a more complete picture than a total figure alone.
What this site doesn’t claim
This article describes general protein-requirement guidance drawn from widely available nutrition science. It isn’t a claim that any specific plan here is formulated to hit an optimal number for your particular training goal — that’s a conversation worth having with a trainer or dietitian who knows your actual training load and goals, using the published daily figure as one honest input into that conversation rather than a substitute for it.
Every plan on this site lists its full rotation the same way, day by day, with these figures attached to each dish — the menus are readable without signing up.