High-Protein Meal Prep: How Much Is Enough?

One of the commonly touted mantras in fitness is “you gotta get your protein in.” But how much is enough? How many meals? What should you eat? And how do you meal prep in a high-protein fashion?

Wonder no more. We’ll be covering all that here. First off, let’s define what we mean when we say a meal is “high protein.”

High-Protein Meal Prep: How Much Is Enough?

What is Considered “High-Protein?”

As a general target, I recommend aiming for about 25-40g of protein in a given sitting. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, let’s talk about muscle protein synthesis (MPS). This is the rate at which your body can start building new muscle tissues from pre-existing resources. As you may expect, consuming more protein in one sitting increases the rates of MPS as well, at least to a point. It takes about 20g of protein to approach max rates of MPS, with contentious evidence for benefits at higher values. Some studies find additional benefit up to 40g, while others do not.  Thus, for satisfying MPS, I would aim for the higher end as a target, but consider yourself good if you can get in at least 20g.

The other, perhaps more important aspect of this range is practicality. Protein requirements vary from person to person due to a variety of factors, including bodyfat percentage, activity levels, caloric surplus vs. deficit, and the magnitude of a calorie deficit. Anecdotally, though, I find that most folks generally fall somewhere between 120-180g of protein as a daily target. If you aim for 25-40g of protein at each meal, that should get you there in about 3-5 meals over the day. That meal frequency encompasses a fair variety of possible eating habits, making it a decent goal.

So, we know to aim for about 25-40g of protein for a given meal to consider it “high protein.” Now what do we eat to meet that goal?

Protein Sources

In practice, there are many different sources of quality protein that you can incorporate successfully into your diet.

First, a bit of a breakdown. Proteins are composed of structures called amino acids (AAs). There are 500+ AAs in existence, but we’re particularly interested in only 20 of them, as they’re the ones that our body uses to make proteins. We eat protein, break it down into AAs, and use those AAs as building blocks to build proteins in our body, such as the ones in our muscle tissues.

Of the 20 useful AAs, nine are what we call essential amino acids (EAAs). These are considered essential because we cannot make them in our bodies ourselves – we need to get them by consuming external protein sources that have them. We can get our EAAs from two basic sources – animals and plants.

In general, animal-based protein sources tend to be excellent protein sources. Meat, dairy, and eggs all provide plenty of EAAs, and thus serve as excellent bases for a protein-based meal. Chicken, beef, pork, milk, etc. all can easily hit the 25-40g target quite easily. The only caveat is that meat is not a panacea – you definitely want to round it out with other additions such as fruit and vegetables to get a more rounded nutrient profile. There is more to health than protein, after all!

Plant-based protein sources are a little different. There is a common misconception that plant proteins are “incomplete” proteins.  This incorrectly implies that plant sources are missing some of the EAAs. However, what is true is that the EAA profiles of plant based sources tend to be less uniformly rich than animal based ones. The latter have copious amounts of all nine EAAs, while the former have varying concentrations of the nine. Thus, the hypothetical  problem here is sub-optimal amounts of certain EAAs.

This would be true…but only if you consume a singular plant source. If you’re consuming multiple different sources of plant proteins, it is very unlikely that you will run into EAA deficiencies. On top of that, some plant sources do have robust EAA profiles, such as soy.  As far as protein quality goes, it is entirely possible to meet your needs through plants – it just may take a bit more effort.  

So we have our protein target, and possible foods to meal prep. How do we narrow it down further?

Calorie Efficiency

If you have an infinite number of calories to play with, meeting your protein target is trivial. You just need to eat and eat, right? Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case.

In reality, every person has a caloric target. Some folks are in a calorie deficit, in an effort to lose weight. Others are in a caloric surplus, looking to maximize how much muscle they put on. Still others are content where they are, and looking to maintain their current physique.

This boils down to two fundamentals:

1. You have a protein goal.
2. You have a certain number of calories to reach that goal.

So, in a way, your calories are like a budget. You only have so many of them available to hit your needs. So how do you balance things? Essentially, you want the protein source  to have high amounts of protein, with as few tagalong fats/carbs as possible – the more additional fat/carbs that come with it, the more additional calories it’ll have. It’s also worth noting here that this is where plant proteins become a bit more difficult. Because they naturally tend to have higher amounts of tagalong carbs and fats, they tend to be higher in calories.

Here’s a quick and easy trick for determining if something is a good, calorie efficient protein source on a diet. If you can calculate a tip off the top of your head, you can do this:

To consider something a high source of protein, it should have about 10 grams of protein for every 100 calories. This isn’t set in stone, and more based on your deficit and protein target. However, as a rule of thumb, 10:100 works well, and rounds easily.

So, take the number of calories the food has, move the decimal place to the left one spot, and compare that to the grams of protein. If your new calorie number is close to or lower than the protein number, you’re good

Let’s take three common examples: Whey protein, salmon, and peanut butter.

Whey Protein Concentrate (32g):

• 120 calories
• 24g protein

120.0 calories. Move the decimal point one to the left. 120 becomes 12. 

Compare this to the 24 grams of protein.

12 is way less than 24. Thus, whey is an awesome source of protein.

Atlantic Salmon (100g):

• 212 calories
• 20g protein

212.0 calories. Move the decimal point one to the left. 212 becomes 21.2, which rounds to 21.

21 is more than 20, but close. Despite being a fatty fish, salmon is still a good source of protein.

Peanut Butter:

• 190 calories
• 7g protein

190.0 calories. Move the decimal point one to the left. 190 becomes 19.

19 is much higher than 7. This means peanut butter is a relatively poor source of protein, with too many tagalong calories per serving for how much protein you get.

Get used to doing this, and shopping for protein gets a lot easier. Following this also makes it a lot easier to hit your protein target without going over your calories when you meal prep.

Speaking of meal prep…

High-Protein Meal Prep Recommendations

When it comes to prepping meals, I’m a fan of simplicity. While you can certainly get more complex as you become more comfortable with the system, I’d recommend starting with the basics. Here’s a simple breakdown for how to structure your meal:

• Start with a protein base as your main priority. Make sure that whatever you choose is relatively calorie efficient, and sufficient to hit the 25-40g target.

• Once you have your protein figured out, add your sides to complement it. The first thing you should be looking for should be some sort of serving of fruit or vegetable to accompany it. These will add a nice source of micronutrients and provide satiety.

• Add other sides based on your caloric allowances. These can be things such as starchier carbohydrates, dips/accompaniments, or other snacks.

So, for a midday snack, you could do something like this (sizes, flavors, etc. are averaged):

• 1 cup of Greek yogurt (145 calories, 22g of protein)
• An apple (120 Cal, 0g P)
• 25g (20 pc) almonds (146 Cal, 5g P)
• Total: 401 Cal, 27g P

Remember, the key to keeping yourself from getting bored is diversity. Keep at least a few different protein sources on hand that you can cycle through, as well as varying accompaniments to mix and match with. If you can alter things like different seasonings, marinades, and such on top of that, the possibilities are endless. It’s also worth mentioning that adding something like a protein shake to any meal will instantly boost it into the desired protein range.

As a final note, here are a few different high protein, lower calorie sources that I personally gravitate toward:

Wrap Up

So, let’s put it all together:

1. Split your calories among the number of meals you wish to have over the course of the day.
2. Within those calorie targets, aim for 25-40g of protein with each meal.
3. Build around a protein base, add fruits and veggies next, then any additional sides as calories permit.
4. Keep several rotating sources of protein and sides on hand to keep things fresh and interesting.

Happy meal prepping!