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Is 150 g of protein a day too much?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20267 sources

No, not for healthy kidneys. 150 g a day is in the typical range for anyone from about 205 to 280 lb. At 150 lb it’s 2.2 g per kg, the top end of what helped people who lift in the biggest review of the trials. Lighter than about 200 lb, it’s more than you need, and the extra mostly costs calories. The Gyroscope app personalizes yours.

People worry about 150 g for two opposite reasons. One camp has heard that high protein wears out your kidneys. The other has heard that your body can only use 30 g at a time, so anything over that is flushed away. Neither holds up for healthy adults, and the real question is a lot more boring: do you need it?

We’d say 150 g is a sensible number for big people and for lighter people who lift hard and want the top of the evidence. For a 160 lb person who mainly wants to eat better, it’s more food than the job needs. That’s fine, but 100 to 115 g would do the same work for less money and about 150 fewer calories.

Where 150 g lands at your weight

Try your own weight in Is my number enough?, which also shows 150 g as meals and as food. It comes out at about four 4 oz cooked chicken breasts and a Greek yogurt.

What the extra buys you

In a 2018 review of 49 trials with 1,863 people who lifted, protein helped build muscle up to about 1.6 g per kg a day, and past that the gains leveled off. The researchers weren’t sure exactly where. Their uncertainty ran from 1.03 to 2.2 g per kg, which is why some coaches use 2.2 as a margin. At 150 lb, 150 g is that margin. At 180 lb, it’s 1.8.

The extra also costs something. 150 g of protein is 600 calories, at 4 calories a gram (USDA), about 30% of a 2,000 calorie day. Every gram past what you need is food that could have been vegetables, fruit or fiber.

It’s a bit like over-insuring your car. You’re covered, and you’re paying for cover you’ll rarely use.

What about the kidneys?

Protein makes the kidneys filter more, and that’s what the trials see. In 22 trials in adults without kidney disease, a 2026 review found that the filtering rate (eGFR) went up on high-protein diets, while creatinine, a blood marker of kidney damage, didn’t change. The authors found no consistent sign of injury. An earlier review of 28 studies with 1,358 healthy adults came to the same conclusion in 2018.

The limit is time. Most of those trials ran for weeks or months, not decades, so nobody has measured what 20 years of 150 g does. The report behind the 2025 to 2030 guidelines says no upper limit for protein has been set, because there aren’t enough good studies to set one.

Kidney disease changes everything. The 2024 kidney guideline suggests 0.8 g per kg for adults in stages 3 to 5 and says to avoid more than 1.3 in adults at risk of getting worse. More than 1 in 10 American adults have kidney disease, and most of them don’t know it, so if you have diabetes or high blood pressure, ask your doctor before you go high. See protein with kidney disease and the myth that protein damages healthy kidneys.

One step up: is 200 g too much?