How much protein do I need to build muscle?

If you lift, aim for 0.7-1.0 grams per pound of your current body weight per day (1.6-2.2 g/kg). Going higher than that has sharply diminishing returns in the research.

Should I use my current weight or goal weight to calculate protein?

Use your current body weight. Keep it simple - 0.7-1.0g per pound of what you weigh right now is what the research supports. You don't need goal-weight math to get this right.

Can your body only absorb 30g of protein per meal?

No. You absorb essentially all the protein you eat. The 30g figure refers to per-meal muscle-protein-synthesis stimulation, and even that doesn't hold up well in research - daily total matters far more than per-meal limits.

How Much Protein Do You Actually Need? (The Honest Numbers)

Protein recommendations online run anywhere from "the RDA is fine" (0.36g/lb) to "2g per pound or you're wasting your time." Both extremes are wrong, and the truth is more boring — which is exactly why nobody markets it.

What the research actually supports

For people who lift, the meta-analyses converge on a range of roughly 0.7–1.0g per pound of body weight per day (1.6–2.2 g/kg). Above that, the measurable benefit for muscle growth flattens out. Not to zero — but close enough that forcing down an extra 60g a day is effort spent in the wrong place.

Two adjustments worth knowing:

In a fat-loss deficit, aim at the higher end. Protein is what tells your body to burn fat instead of muscle when calories are short. This is the single most expensive thing to get wrong on a cut.
Use your current weight — don't overthink it. Your bodyweight in pounds is the anchor; you don't need goal-weight math or a lean-mass formula. Simple and repeatable beats precise-looking every time.

The 30-second calculation

Your current body weight in pounds × 0.9 is a number almost nobody regrets. For where I'm at that lands me around 200g a day, and I round up because protein is filling and cheap insurance in a deficit. Don't want to do the math? Run your numbers through the protein calculator — it works off your current weight and adjusts for whether you're cutting or building.

Where the marketing exaggerates

"You can only absorb 30g per meal." You absorb essentially all of it; the question is how much maximally stimulates muscle protein synthesis per sitting, and even there the 30g ceiling doesn't hold up — especially for whole-food meals that digest slowly.
"You need protein within 30 minutes of training." The anabolic window is more like a garage door than a mail slot. Daily total beats timing by a mile.
"Plant protein doesn't count." It counts; you just need slightly more of it and some variety, because plant sources are lower in leucine and sometimes incomplete.

What actually matters, in order

Daily total — the 0.7–1g/lb range. This is 90% of the game.
Spread across 3–4 meals — a real but small effect.
Everything else — timing, type, powders — is rounding error.

If hitting your number is the problem (it usually is), the four-meal structure in How To Hit 200g of Protein a Day is the system I actually use.