The honest basics · Last reviewed 23 August 2026
You have a plan. The next question is always the same one: what should I eat? This page is the short answer, and it is deliberately short, because the part of nutrition that actually moves the needle is small enough to fit on one screen. Everything past that is detail, and most of what gets sold as detail is not detail at all.
This is general fitness information, not medical or dietary advice. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, under 18, managing diabetes, kidney disease or any diagnosed condition, taking medication, or you have a history of disordered eating, talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian before changing how you eat. Nothing here is a substitute for that conversation.
If you only take one thing from this page, take this. When researchers pooled every controlled trial they could find on protein and resistance training, the benefit to muscle and strength kept improving as intake rose and then flattened out at roughly 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day (Morton et al., 2018). Above that, the extra protein did not buy measurably more muscle.
The International Society of Sports Nutrition puts the useful working range at 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg/day. That is a wide band on purpose. Hitting it approximately is what matters; the difference between 1.6 and 1.8 is not something you will ever feel.
| Body weight | Target (1.6 g/kg) | Sensible range |
|---|---|---|
| 50 kg / 110 lb | 80 g | 70–100 g |
| 60 kg / 132 lb | 95 g | 85–120 g |
| 70 kg / 154 lb | 110 g | 100–140 g |
| 80 kg / 176 lb | 130 g | 110–160 g |
| 90 kg / 198 lb | 145 g | 125–180 g |
| 100 kg / 220 lb | 160 g | 140–200 g |
| 110 kg / 243 lb | 175 g | 155–220 g |
Two honest caveats. If you are carrying a lot of extra body fat, calculating on your total weight overshoots; work from a target weight instead and you will land somewhere sensible. And if you eat little or no animal protein, aim at the upper half of the range and spread it across more meals, because plant proteins are generally less concentrated and less complete.
Three or four meals containing 25 to 40 g of protein each will get most people there without any planning. There is evidence that distributing protein across the day beats stacking it into one enormous evening meal, but the effect is modest. Total daily intake is the thing that matters most, and it is not close.
Your plan shows an estimated calorie burn and a daily target. Read both as a direction of travel. They come from published MET values multiplied by the body weight you entered, which makes them a reasonable starting estimate and nothing more precise than that.
If the scale has not moved in the direction you want after three or four weeks of consistent training and eating, adjust intake slightly and give it another few weeks. That is the whole loop.
Timing is where most of the noise lives, and it is the area where the honest answer is the most freeing. Almost none of it matters as much as the total.
You must eat protein within 30 minutes of training
When studies controlled for total daily protein, the apparent advantage of the post-workout window largely disappeared (Schoenfeld, Aragon & Krieger, 2013). The practical window is measured in hours, not minutes. Eat a normal meal within a few hours either side of training and you have covered it.
Fasted cardio burns more fat
You do oxidise more fat during a fasted session. Over days and weeks, body composition change tracks total calories rather than which fuel you burned at the time, and controlled comparisons find no meaningful difference in fat lost. Train fasted if you prefer it and it does not wreck your session.
Eating late at night makes you gain fat
The clock has no independent effect on body composition once total intake is accounted for. Late eating correlates with weight gain mostly because evening snacking is where extra calories tend to arrive, not because of the hour itself.
Six small meals keep your metabolism stoked
The energy cost of digesting food scales with how much you eat, not how many sittings you split it into. Meal frequency is a preference. Pick the pattern you can repeat without thinking about it.
Getting enough total protein and enough total calories for your goal. Eating enough carbohydrate to train hard on the sessions this generator prescribes. And not turning up to a heavy session so hungry or so full that you train badly. That is the entire list.
Drink to thirst, and use the colour of your urine as a rough check: pale straw is fine, consistently dark suggests you are behind. Some vitamin supplements turn it bright yellow, which is harmless and not a hydration signal.
European food-safety guidance puts adequate total water intake around 2.0 litres a day for women and 2.5 for men, counting the water in food as well as what you drink. Your plan's water figure scales that with your body weight and session length, so treat it the same way as the calorie number: a starting estimate.
For a normal indoor session under an hour, plain water is enough and an electrolyte drink is a purchase, not a need. Long, hot or heavily sweaty sessions are the real case for replacing sodium. The American College of Sports Medicine suggests keeping fluid loss during exercise under about 2% of body weight; if you want to know your own sweat rate, weigh yourself before and after a hard session and drink roughly 1.25 to 1.5 litres for every kilogram lost.
More is not better. Forcing down large volumes you do not want carries its own small risks, and none of the benefits.
Food beats powder for reasons that have nothing to do with purity or clean eating. Whole food is more filling per calorie, carries fibre and micronutrients that isolated protein does not, and is usually cheaper per gram of protein. Build the habit on food and use convenience products to patch the gaps, not the other way round.
A plate that works for almost everyone: a protein anchor, a carbohydrate portion sized to how hard you are training that day, vegetables for volume and fibre, and some fat for satiety and flavour. Carbohydrate is not the enemy of body composition. It is the fuel that lets you finish the sets your plan asks for.
| Food | Portion | Protein |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | 100 g cooked | ~31 g |
| Lean beef or pork | 100 g cooked | ~28 g |
| Salmon | 100 g cooked | ~25 g |
| Tuna | 1 drained tin | ~26 g |
| Eggs | 2 large | ~13 g |
| Greek yogurt | 170 g pot | ~17 g |
| Cottage cheese | 200 g | ~22 g |
| Milk | 300 ml | ~10 g |
| Firm tofu | 100 g | ~15 g |
| Cooked lentils | 200 g | ~18 g |
| Cooked chickpeas | 200 g | ~16 g |
| Whey powder | 1 scoop, ~30 g | ~24 g |
Fibre gets forgotten in training nutrition and it should not. Most public-health guidance lands around 25 to 30 g a day, and a diet built on meat and shakes rarely gets close. Vegetables, fruit, beans, oats and wholegrains cover it.
Most people need none of them
That is the honest headline, and it is not one you will read on a site that sells supplements. The industry is enormous, largely unregulated in terms of the claims it makes, and built on the gap between what people hope a product does and what has ever been demonstrated. Two products have real evidence behind them. Almost everything else is packaging.
The most studied supplement in sport, and the only one in the aisle with a genuinely convincing body of evidence behind it. It produces modest but real improvements in strength, lean mass and repeated high-intensity effort. Three to five grams a day, at any time of day, is the entire protocol. Loading phases are optional and only make it work sooner, not better.
Buy plain monohydrate. The exotic forms cost more and have never been shown to beat it. The early weight gain is water drawn into muscle, which is normal and is not fat.
Not a drug and not magic. It is a convenient, concentrated protein source that makes hitting the number in the table above easier when cooking is inconvenient. Whey, casein and blended plant proteins all work. If you already reach your protein target from food, it adds nothing at all.
Worth naming honestly because the evidence for performance is good. It is also in the coffee most people already drink, which is why it belongs here rather than in a shopping basket. If a pre-workout product does anything for you, caffeine is almost always the ingredient responsible.
Not a performance supplement, and it is on this list only because deficiency is genuinely common at northern latitudes and through winter. That makes it a question for a blood test and a doctor, not something to guess at based on a training goal.
BCAAs and EAAs are redundant when you already eat enough protein, which is the same population being sold them. Fat burners, testosterone boosters, detox products, anything promising to tone, and most multi-ingredient pre-workouts beyond their caffeine content are sold on a story rather than a result. Glutamine, ketone esters and the rest of the rotating cast are the same trade.
If you do buy something, third-party testing is the one label that means anything: Informed Sport and NSF Certified for Sport verify that what is on the label is what is in the tub. That matters a great deal if you are drug-tested and it is a reasonable baseline for everyone else.
How much protein do I actually need?
Around 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day is where the measured benefit plateaus in the best available meta-analysis. Anywhere between 1.4 and 2.0 g/kg is sensible, and precision beyond that buys you nothing you will notice.
Do I need protein powder?
No. It is a convenience food that makes reaching your daily protein target easier, and if you already reach it from meals then it adds nothing.
Is there really an anabolic window after training?
Not the 30-minute one the marketing describes. Once total daily protein is matched between groups, the timing advantage largely disappears, so eating a normal meal within a few hours of training is entirely sufficient.
Does creatine actually work?
Yes, it is the most researched supplement in sport and reliably produces modest gains in strength and lean mass. Three to five grams a day of plain monohydrate is the whole protocol, and loading is optional.
Should I do cardio fasted to burn more fat?
You will burn slightly more fat during the session itself, but over weeks the change in body fat is driven by total calories rather than fuel used at the time. Train at whatever time you perform best.
How much water should I drink?
Drink to thirst and use pale-straw urine as a rough check, which for most people lands near 2.0 to 2.5 litres a day including the water in food. A normal indoor gym session needs water rather than an electrolyte drink.
Do I need to eat before training?
No, it is a comfort and performance preference rather than a rule. If training on an empty stomach leaves you weak or lightheaded, eat something small one to two hours beforehand.
Can I build muscle and lose fat at the same time?
Beginners, people returning after a long break, and those carrying more fat to lose frequently do both at once. It becomes progressively harder the leaner and better trained you get.
The figures above are drawn from peer-reviewed reviews and position stands rather than from any single study or any product's marketing. If you want to check any of it, these are searchable by title.
Nothing on this page is personalised to you, because a web page cannot be. It is the set of principles that applies to most people most of the time. If you want advice built around your health, your medication or your history, a registered dietitian is the person who can give it.