Protein intake for men over 40 who lift: what the research says

Protein questions lead the search traffic to the author's site, and the one men over 40 ask most is how much they need to support resistance training and whether the per-meal amount rises with age. This narrative review summarises three sources: a systematic review with meta-analysis and meta-regression of protein supplementation during resistance training in healthy adults (Morton et al. 2018), a pooled dose-response analysis of per-meal protein and myofibrillar protein synthesis in older versus younger men (Moore et al. 2015), and the PROT-AGE position paper on protein intake in people over 65 (Bauer et al. 2013). Morton et al. found that protein supplementation increased strength, fat-free mass and muscle size during prolonged training, that the fat-free mass effect fell with increasing age, and that intakes above about 1.6 g per kg of body weight per day produced no further gain in fat-free mass. Moore et al. report that the per-meal dose at which protein synthesis plateaued was higher in men around 71 years old than in men around 22 (about 0.40 versus 0.24 g per kg body mass). PROT-AGE recommends at least 1.0 to 1.2 g per kg per day for people over 65 and 1.2 g per kg per day or more for those who exercise. Men aged 40 to 60 fall between the "young" and "older" samples in all three sources, and no study here measured them directly. This is not medical advice. Type: narrative evidence review, not a systematic review. Disclosure: the author is not a researcher, clinician or coach; he runs FitnessForties (fitness-forties.com), which sells a strength-training app for men over 40. Written without funding. Not medical advice. Expands the evidence section of the related blog post: https://fitness-forties.com/2026/08/19/protein-per-day-after-40/