Name: How to Calculate Your Protein Diet | Dr. Rhonda Patrick & Dr. Andrew Huberman
Uploaded: 2026-03-30T21:38:22.000Z
Duration: 6 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

We all hear one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight or lean body weight.

That's sort of what we're kind of what's thrown at us.

By doing the heavier weight training, do you notice that your protein appetite has increased?

Like, appetite specifically for protein foods.

You know, I interestingly have been doing a little bit more intermittent fasting, in which, you know, people think about intermittent fasting, they think about it as just one thing, one intervention.

There's a behavioral aspect to it where it's a tool to sort of lower the amount of calories you're taking in.

The other one would be this metabolic switch.

But so I've actually, since I don't know, September maybe, last September of 2025, been doing more intermittent fasting.

And what I mean by that is just really just eating less.

And the reason for that is because I noticed that everything that I was doing, which was, you know, I mean, I eat healthy, I exercise a lot,

and yet I was sort of gaining more fat in the belly section, right, the visceral fat.

And the only thing that really helped me stop that, put the brakes on, was getting more in a caloric deficit.

So maybe my drive to do that kind of is skewing whether or not my appetite for protein would go up.

But I personally am on the scale of 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram body weight, which is.

Per kilogram, which is probably a little bit less than the pound.

You know, it's a kind of a throwaway statement.

A gram of quality protein as defined as something with, you know, lots of the essential amino acids and so forth, per pound or per lean pound of body mass.

Which is something I think I and many other people shoot for.

But I'm curious how religious you are about the, you know, getting a certain protein amount or per meal.

Basically, it wasn't working for me in terms of, like, I was really trying to get aim for, like, the higher end of the, for me, you know, 1.6 grams per kilogram body weight or even a little bit above that.

And what I found, what was happening is that I was actually gaining more weight because I think I was consuming more calories at the same time.

If you're getting it from whole foods, right, like, that's just kind of naturally going to happen.

But I'm still, like I said, I'm still getting within that range of, like, probably on average maybe 1.3, 1.4 grams per kilogram body weight.

But, like, people are different and you have different goals, right?

You know, like, I'm gaining muscle mass and I feel like all my training is, like, the most important thing.

And I think that we need, generally speaking, I think people should become more obsessed with training and less obsessed with protein.

Like, the protein will complement the training.

And as you mentioned, if you're training, perhaps your appetite for protein will increase.

And so you'll start to eat, you know, more protein and less refined carbohydrates.

I already wasn't eating a lot of refined ultra-processed foods in the first place.

Probably not the answer you were expecting,

but it's really, for me, like, I just focusing on getting more protein was not working for my body in terms of but then again, I'm 47 years old.

You know, that perimenopause phase, very different than someone who's 37 maybe.

I do know that I hear from more and more people these days that they are having a hard time getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight.

It feels like a lot to them is what they're saying.

They feel like they're kind of forcing themselves to do it.

So I'm actually really pleased with your answer, not because I have an agenda here,

but because I and many other people seem to feel like unless there's a lot of resistance training or tremendous demands, like hiking, you know, while backpacking, where if you burn tons of calories you're carrying, you're basically rocking like nine hours a day, right?

That they have a hard time getting that much protein down.

And I think that's also the case if people are eating starches.

Like, I eat rice and oatmeal and some breads and things like that.

Not a lot of bread, but, you know, it sounds like you eat starches.

These days, because I really kind of more focused a little bit on I did want to calorically restrict somewhat without, you know, being unhealthy.

Obviously, you can take every stressor to a bad, unhealthy place, right?

You don't want to, like, not eat enough food.

But my meals are mostly, like, healthy protein.

And then I'll also mix in some, like, filet mignon.

Most of the times it's greens because they're the most micronutrient-dense.

And so these days I'm eating a lot of sautéed collard greens that are, like, pre-prepared, has garlic and onion.

And I'll put that, you know, I'll have that with my meal.

Or I'll have some, you know, sautéed kale.

And like I said, I also do a little bit of intermittent fasting.

But that's kind of these days what I'm doing for my meals.

Sometimes I'll eat the high-protein oats.

No, I eat oatmeal, but I like protein foods.

I feel very lucky to like those foods mainly.

And then the starch for me has to be very clean.

Like, if I go out, I'll have sometimes I'll have some homemade pasta or a sourdough bread or something.

But I find that most starches that are out there in the world have a bunch of other junk in them.

So it sounds like we eat pretty similarly, although I probably eat more starches than you do.