Recommended daily protein amount? and how to maintain it?

Nutrition

What should be my minimum protein intake for someone who wants to lose fat without losing muscle?

My Stats:
17 Male
Started at 86 kg and now at 78 kg in 2 months.
170 cm
Exercise 3-4x per week.
Exercises include the following: jump roping (600 double unders) and a 3 km jog. Also some strength training in push-ups, sit-ups, and dead hangs.

At the start of 2026. I started to be mentally conscious about my health, as I wanted to apply for PNPA. But I saw that there's an agility test and also included a standardized BMI, which means I need to train and also lose weight that correlates with my BMI, and now I want to be physically prepared for it.

Currently I am struggling to reach my protein intake daily. I use one of those websites that calculates protein count, but I keep getting different answers from each website and other answers from ChatGPT. Firstly, I started with 90-120g of protein but then suddenly shifted to 130-160g. But the problem is that I have a hard time reaching my protein requirement.

For the 1st day I started to track what I ate and ended the day with 113g of protein, and as of today I only eat under 100g of protein. If I continued under-eating my protein requirement, would I lose muscle? I just started to track my daily calorie and protein count 2 months deep into this, not realizing that protein is such an essential thing.

I have been eating common protein meals like eggs, chicken breast, lean ground beef, and vegetables. I even started to eat fast food items that are rich in protein, like Mang Inasal Pecho.

What are tips or advice I should follow to reach my protein limit without spending too much as a 17-year-old, grade 12 student that is about to graduate?

Posted Mar 10, 2026, 11:41 AM UTC

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