How Much Protein Do Women Actually Need During Menopause?

Here's the number first: about 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, every day. That's the target researchers now point to for women moving through the menopausal transition, and a new analysis out of CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, found most women in their 40s and 50s are falling roughly 35 grams short of it. Not because they're not trying. Because almost nobody told them protein, not less food, was the piece missing.

How much protein do women actually need in menopause?

CSIRO looked at Australia's 2023–24 National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey alongside an online survey of 1,303 women in its Total Wellbeing Diet program. Only about one in three women were hitting adequate protein levels. Nearly eight in ten reported weight gain during the menopausal transition, and almost 90% said menopause affected their overall wellbeing, one in five calling that impact significant. "Adequate dietary protein helps to manage appetite, support muscle mass, strength and overall physical health," says Dr. Gilly Hendrie, the CSIRO research scientist behind the analysis, released September 1. Her point isn't subtle: for a lot of women, eating less has been the wrong prescription this whole time.

Why does the protein gap show up as weight gain?

Because muscle is doing more work than most of us were taught to think it does. A separate study published this year in the International Journal of Obesity followed nearly 3,800 postmenopausal women using data from the Women's Health Initiative and modeled what would happen if they'd hit higher protein targets over three years — 0.8, 1.0, 1.2, and 1.5 grams per kilogram. The higher the intake, the more consistently women lost abdominal fat and gained lean tissue. A broader review of more than 350 studies published this summer reached a similar conclusion: most people, women especially, are working from protein guidelines set decades ago that undersell what the body actually needs as it ages. Protein isn't a diet trend here. It's what keeps the muscle that keeps your metabolism, your strength, and your appetite signals working the way they're supposed to as estrogen drops. We wrote about this same misfire in what's actually worth changing about your diet for menopause weight gain — the theme keeps repeating because the standard advice keeps being wrong.

Why this matters for you

If you're in your late 30s heading toward this transition, or already in the middle of it, the finding worth sitting with is this: the plan you were probably handed, eat less, might be working against you. A body running on too little protein tends to hold onto fat and let go of muscle, which is the opposite of what most midlife weight advice is chasing. It also explains why eating more, not less, has helped some women lose weight — the quality of what's on your plate can matter more than how little of it there is. And it's one more place where the research on women's bodies is only now catching up, the same gap that shows up in why so few doctors even ask about menopause symptoms like brain fog. Nobody gave you this number sooner because almost nobody was funded to study it until recently.

One thing to try today

Pick your very next meal and ask one question before you eat it: where's the protein? A woman around 70 kg (about 154 lbs) is looking at roughly 84 grams spread across the day — eggs or Greek yogurt at breakfast, fish, chicken, or lentils at lunch, tofu or beans worked into dinner gets most people there without counting a single calorie. Start with one meal today. That's the whole ask.

Quote to sit with

"Skeletal muscle is the organ of longevity." — Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

💌 Sarah