How much protein do women over 40 need?

The short answer

Roughly 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, which for a 70kg woman is about 85 to 110 grams. That is well above the official minimum, which is set to prevent deficiency rather than to preserve muscle.

Medically reviewed by Leah Grant

RD, Registered Dietitian

Reviewed 21 August 2026
Updated 29 August 2026

The fuller picture

The recommended daily allowance of 0.8g per kg is frequently misread as a target. It is a floor designed to stop nitrogen balance going negative in the average adult, not an amount optimised for maintaining muscle in a woman losing oestrogen.
Distribution matters as well as total. Roughly 25 to 30 grams per meal appears to be what is needed to trigger muscle protein synthesis, and most women eat almost none at breakfast and most at dinner.
Protein needs go up, not down, with age. The muscle-building response to a given amount of protein becomes blunted, so older adults need more of it to get the same signal.

Here is what the target looks like on an actual day, because grams per kilogram is not a thing anyone can picture.

For a 70kg woman aiming at roughly 100 grams:

Three eggs and a slice of wholegrain toast at breakfast, about 25 grams
A tin of tuna or a chicken breast in a lunch salad, about 30 grams
Greek yoghurt in the afternoon, about 15 grams
A palm-sized piece of fish or meat, or a generous serving of peas and lentils, at dinner, about 30 grams

That is it. No powder required, though powder is a reasonable shortcut for the meal you are always rushing.

Why the official number is lower

The recommended daily allowance exists to answer a specific question: what is the minimum that prevents deficiency in the average healthy adult? That is a useful public health floor and a poor personal target. It was never intended to describe the intake that best preserves lean mass in a woman in her forties whose oestrogen is falling and whose muscle is under threat.

In a Caribbean kitchen

The target is entirely reachable on food people already cook. Saltfish, snapper, chicken, red peas, gungo peas, callaloo with an egg, and Greek yoghurt where the shop stocks it. The usual gap is not the protein source, it is the ratio: the plate is often heavy on ground provisions, rice and dumpling, and light on the fish or the peas. Shifting that ratio does most of the work.

What to do next

Weigh and count for two weeks only. Almost nobody guesses this accurately, and two weeks permanently recalibrates the estimate.
Fix breakfast first. It is where the deficit almost always is, and moving from five grams to thirty at that one meal often closes most of the gap on its own.
Pair it with resistance training. Protein without a training stimulus does far less than either does with the other.

Speak to someone rather than reading on if

You have reduced kidney function, in which case protein intake needs to be set by a clinician rather than a website
You have a history of disordered eating, in which case counting may not be the right tool for you