TempoLife › Features › Video explainers › how-much-protein-a-day
How much protein you actually need
The viewer leaves with a target in grams for their own body weight, and a sense of what that looks like on a plate.
There are no videos here yet, and this page does not pretend otherwise. TempoLife has published no explainer videos, so nothing on this surface is watchable and there is no player anywhere on it. What is published is the script library: the full storyboard for each explainer, ready to shoot.
The hook
“Not a scoop. Not a steak. A number, based on your weight.”
First four seconds. It states the surprise outright rather than promising one, because a promise is a reason to scroll and a surprise is a reason to stay.
Why this topic is worth 80 seconds
Everyone under-eats protein at breakfast and over-eats it at dinner. Naming the pattern is more useful than the daily total.
The 0.8 g per kg is a floor for a sedentary adult, and it is not the target the script actually recommends. Say the range and where it comes from.
The ceiling is where most short videos fall over. Protein above roughly 1.6 g per kg of body weight per day stops paying dividends for muscle building, and the video should say that plainly.
Protein advice arrives either as a supplement advertisement or as a government minimum that assumes you are sedentary. The useful answer is a range in grams per kilogram, and it is easy to compute on screen.
The second half is what makes it stick: converting the target into actual food, so the viewer can see whether their normal day is close or nowhere near.
The storyboard
| Time | On screen | Voiceover | Visual |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:05 | How much protein? | Not a scoop. Not a steak. A number, based on your weight. | Protein tub pushed out of frame. |
| 0:05–0:20 | Grams per kilogram | The unit is grams per kilogram of body weight. The floor for a sedentary adult is under one. For someone training regularly, the range that keeps coming up is roughly one point two to two. | A slider moving across a range, not landing on a single point. |
| 0:20–0:38 | Work out yours | So take your weight in kilograms and multiply. At an average adult weight, that is a spread of several tens of grams between the bottom and the top of the range. | Multiplication on screen, the range shown as a band. |
| 0:38–0:58 | What that looks like on a plate | Now convert it to food, because grams of protein are not something you can picture. A chicken breast, a few eggs, a bowl of oats — the target is reachable without a single supplement. | Foods arriving on a plate one at a time, running total climbing. |
| 0:58–1:12 | Spread it out | Distributing it across the day appears to work slightly better for muscle than loading it all into dinner. Slightly. Total intake still matters far more than timing. | Three plates across a day, protein figures on each. |
| 1:12–1:20 | Your number | The calculator does the arithmetic for your weight. | End card: /calculators/macro. |
Read it as a script
The voiceover column, in order, is the whole piece:
Not a scoop. Not a steak. A number, based on your weight.
The unit is grams per kilogram of body weight. The floor for a sedentary adult is under one. For someone training regularly, the range that keeps coming up is roughly one point two to two.
So take your weight in kilograms and multiply. At an average adult weight, that is a spread of several tens of grams between the bottom and the top of the range.
Now convert it to food, because grams of protein are not something you can picture. A chicken breast, a few eggs, a bowl of oats — the target is reachable without a single supplement.
Distributing it across the day appears to work slightly better for muscle than loading it all into dinner. Slightly. Total intake still matters far more than timing.
The calculator does the arithmetic for your weight.
Every number this script shows
The multiplication beat and the plate beat, at 75 kg body weight.
| What appears on screen | Value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Sedentary floor (0.8 g/kg) | 60 g/day | Computed on this page |
| Active, lower end (1.2 g/kg) | 90 g/day | Computed on this page |
| Active, upper end (2 g/kg) | 150 g/day | Computed on this page |
| Mid-range target used on screen | 120 g/day | Computed on this page at 1.6 g/kg |
| Chicken breast, 150 g | 46.5 g protein (2.6 of these = target) | TempoLife food database (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy) |
| Egg (hard-boiled), 50 g | 6.3 g protein (19.0 of these = target) | TempoLife food database (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy) |
| Oats, 50 g | 8.5 g protein (14.2 of these = target) | TempoLife food database (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy) |
Nothing in the storyboard above quotes a figure directly. The beats refer to numbers and this table supplies them, so a script written months ago cannot go stale against its own data.
Production notes
- Show a range, never a single number. The evidence supports a band and a single figure would misrepresent it.
- The plate beat should use ordinary food, not fitness-industry food. That is the point being made.
- Say "slightly" out loud in the timing beat, and do not let the graphic overstate it.
Closing card
Work out your own target at tempolife.app/calculators/macro
General information, not medical advice. These scripts describe averages across populations; nothing in them is a diagnosis or a treatment recommendation.
Source: Figures computed from the TempoLife food database (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy) and the 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities · checked 2026-09-02
What the script points at
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All scripts · Listen to the guides
The numbers, for your own day
This script shows averages. TempoLife records yours: meals, steps, sleep and weight in one place.