How Much Protein To Build Muscle After 60

How much protein do you need to build muscle after 60? Read this article to find out the best way to optimize your protein intake and reach your fitness goals.

Even if you don’t lift, more protein than the general dietary recommendations is beneficial for you as you age – both to stay healthy and maintain your physical capacity.

If you aim to build as much lean muscle mass as possible, recommendations for the general population rarely pass muster.

The amount of protein sufficient for maximum gains in your youth might not be enough anymore. Also, you should consider things like protein timing and spreading your protein intake over the day when you plan your diet.

Table of Contents

Building Muscle as an Older Adult

This article is primarily aimed at those of you over the age of 60 wanting to build muscle mass. Those of you who refuse to let age stand in the way of gaining muscle.

Do you engage in strength training mainly for health reasons and to maintain a fit and strong body?

That’s awesome! Hitting the weights is one of the best things you can do to fill your golden years with health and greater quality of life.

You’ll benefit from this article’s information, but there is no need to min-max everything to reach your goals. Strength training for health and maintaining a fit body does not require drastic dietary measures. Eat a varied, healthy, and protein-rich diet in addition to your regular weight training, and you’re good to go.

Gaining as much muscle mass as possible is a different animal entirely.

You have to put some considered effort into doing so, especially when you have reached a more advanced age.

If that’s your goal, this article was written with you in mind. You’re the one who might have to apply theory to practice.

“Anabolic Resistance”

As you age, your muscles start to resist your efforts to gain size and strength.

The amount of protein that was enough for maximal muscle-building effect when you were 30 no longer cuts it.

When a young individual eats a protein-rich meal, their muscle protein synthesis increases by about 50% above normal resting levels.

When an older adult eats the same meal, that response diminishes.

In other words, you don’t respond as well to muscle-building, anabolic stimuli as when you were young. This applies to both resistance exercise and eating a protein-rich meal.

That reduced muscular response to a protein intake is called protein resistance or amino acid resistance. The fact that a training session doesn’t create the anabolic effect it once did is called anabolic resistance.

In other words, older muscle resists the signaling mechanisms started by anabolic activities like lifting weights and eating. The good news is that you can overcome that resistance with progressive resistance training and a protein intake suitable for older adults.

What’s an “Older Lifter?”

There is no specific point in your life when these effects suddenly occur, but somewhere around 60, they become apparent in studies.

Most likely, it’s a gradual process that takes quite some time before you notice it.

Also, depending on genetics and how you live your life, the onset time differs a lot on an individual basis, but for most lifters, 60 is when you must optimize your protein intake for the best gains in muscle strength and lean mss.

Muscle Protein Synthesis and Breakdown: the Basics

Let’s look at how muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown control your muscle mass and how you increase said muscle mass through strength training.

Regardless of your age, the balance between muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein breakdown determines your muscle mass size.

Both processes are simultaneous and constant throughout your entire life.

You never only build muscle or only break down muscle. Instead, one of the processes dominates at any given moment. This balance is called your muscle protein balance.

If you don’t challenge your muscles with any weight lifting, your skeletal muscle mass remains the same over time.

Strength training and eating, especially protein, are the two things that have the greatest muscle-building potential.

In the fasted state, your muscle protein balance will always be negative. In other words, you break down more muscle than you build.

Following a meal, the balance turns positive. Amino acids from the protein you eat stimulate your muscle protein synthesis. Insulin released in response to carbs and protein decreases your muscle protein breakdown. The result? Your muscle fibers increase in size.

Strength training has a potent anabolic effect. Even if you train a muscle group without eating anything beforehand and continue fasting after the workout, your muscle protein balance improves during the recovery process. That means a gym session can help you lose less muscle during fasting.

However, you must give your muscles what they need for muscle gain. In this case, this means a healthy supply of amino acids.

This is easily accomplished by eating or drinking protein before or after your workout.

Strength training and protein act synergistically. It means that the combined anabolic effect of the two is greater than the sum of the individual anabolic effects.

One plus one equals three, in this case.

How Much Protein To Build Muscle After 60: muscle protein synthesis and breakdown

Not much happens to your muscle mass if you don’t hit the weights regularly. You don’t lose any, but you don’t gain any.

If you spend some time in the gym a few times per week, the combined effects of the training and a healthy diet with regular protein-rich meals lead to more muscle and improved body composition over time.

How Much Protein To Build Muscle After 60: fed gains

Just look at those fed gains once you add physical exercise in the form of weight lifting to the equation.

Muscle Protein Synthesis and Breakdown When You Get Older

As you age, everything works as described above, but less efficiently. You no longer get as large a muscle-building effect after a meal.

That means that your “fed gains” become smaller with age, meaning you start to lose lean mass. Muscle mass decreases 3–8% per decade after 30, and that rate of decline accelerates after 60.¹

Unless you do something about it.

Decades ago, scientists believed this age-related muscle loss was caused by a decline in average resting protein synthesis rates or an increase in muscle protein breakdown during aging.

That does not seem to be the case.

Recent, more sensitive methods of measuring protein synthesis and breakdown can’t find any differences between young and old individuals.²

One thing of note is that such a difference might exist, even though studies haven’t been able to discern it. This could be because of two main reasons:

Systemic inflammation is much more common in older people. Chronic inflammatory conditions lead to increased muscle breakdown and a reduced capacity to maintain muscle mass, and aging is associated with chronic, low-grade inflammation.
Testosterone levels decline with age. When you’re 60, your testosterone levels are typically lower than those of the average 40-year-old. However, the clinical trial that failed to see any difference in muscle protein synthesis between young and older men didn’t measure free testosterone.

In general, however, aging in and of itself does not cause a significant decline in resting muscle protein synthesis.

Instead, your response to muscle-building activities, like your fitness regimen, workout routine, and proper nutrition, is not quite what it once was.

How Much Protein Do Older Lifters Need?

General guidelines from US and European authorities recommend a daily protein intake of around 0.8 grams per kilogram (0.36 grams per pound) of body weight. That’s enough for the average person who performs a limited amount of physical activity.

Recent research indicates seniors need more than that for health and physical function. After 60, you need between 1 to 1.3 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and day, especially if you exercise and are physically active.³

However, what you need for general health is not necessarily what you need to gain as much muscle as possible. It rarely is.

When you are young, you need 1.6 grams of protein per kg (0.7 grams per pound) of body weight per day to optimize gains in muscle mass.⁴

Nothing terrible happens if you eat more than that, but don’t expect to gain any more muscle mass from doing so, either. Adding even more protein to such an already large amount does not give you an advantage when building muscle.

After 60, that amount might not be enough to promote maximal gains.

Unfortunately, the available research is lacking in many areas. It might be a good idea to shoot for a whopping 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and day if your goal is to build as much muscle mass as possible.

Feel free to use our spiffy protein calculator to help you determine your protein intake:

>> Protein Calculator for Weight Loss and Muscle Gain

Your total protein intake isn’t the only thing to consider, though. How you distribute that intake throughout the day is also important.

How Much Protein Per Meal Do You Need After 60?

Young muscle is very responsive even to small amounts of protein. Eating as little as 5 grams increases muscle protein synthesis rates above normal resting levels.

When you are young, you reach a plateau at around 20 grams in one meal, where eating more protein does not build any more muscle.

Several studies show that 20 grams of high-quality protein are enough to max your muscle protein synthesis out at rest and after a workout when you are young.⁵ ⁶

Be it egg protein or a whey protein shake, 20 grams is enough. If you eat or drink more than that in one sitting, you get a very limited, if any, additional anabolic response.

Once past a certain age, however, consuming that amount of protein doesn’t do much. Your older muscles don’t respond by increasing muscle protein synthesis like a young person’s. You need more than 20 grams.

In another study, both young and older men and women ate either 30 grams or 90 grams of protein in the form of lean beef . Despite providing three times as much protein and calories, 340 grams of meat did not build any more muscle than 113 grams in the hours following the meal.⁷ This suggests that even though 20 grams of protein is too little for the elderly who don’t engage in strength training, 30 grams seem to do the job.

You, however, do engage in strength training. You want to build muscle. For you, even 30 grams might not always be enough. Several studies investigate the effects of ingesting 20 or 40 grams of protein after a workout. According to the results, you will benefit from the larger amount.

Muscle Protein Synthesis Following a Workout

One of these studies gave 37 older men with an average age of 71 years either 0 grams, 10 grams, 20 grams, or 40 grams of whey protein after a leg workout using only one leg.

Twenty grams were enough to increase muscle protein synthesis in the exercised leg, but 40 grams were more effective. According to earlier studies, 20 grams of protein maximizes muscle protein synthesis following this kind of workout in young subjects.

This result shows that your muscles need more building blocks in the form of protein for the same effect when you are older.⁸

A recent study lends support to this conclusion.

Twenty-three men, around 70, performed a leg training session composed of Smith machine squats, leg presses, and leg extensions. After the workout, they drank a shake with either 20 or 40 grams of whey protein. The larger amount boosted muscle protein synthesis significantly. Twenty grams of protein, however, did not.⁹

Strength

You can gain more than muscle mass by increasing the amount of protein you eat per meal as a senior. If your primary training goal is strength, eating or drinking 40 grams of protein instead of 20 grams after a workout will benefit you.

Older men, around 70 years of age, performed a strength training session three times per week for ten weeks.¹⁰ In addition to their usual diet, they added a post-workout shake providing either 20 or 40 grams of whey protein.

Compared to the 20-gram group, those who drank 40 grams of whey protein after their workouts improved their strength in the chest press, shoulder press, and leg extension by 19%, 21%, and 16%, respectively.

Both groups ate similar amounts of protein before the study began, meaning the difference in strength gains can be attributed to the added protein shake.

Perhaps surprisingly, neither of the groups gained any muscle mass. There are several possible reasons why this didn’t happen:

The study only lasted 10 weeks. Typically, you begin to see some gains in muscle mass after 6–8 weeks of strength training in studies. However, maybe 10 weeks wasn’t enough for 70-year-old men to gain any appreciable muscle mass.
The participants did not eat a whole lot of protein to begin with. Their regular diet only provided 58–59 grams of protein per day. Because they weighed 92 kilograms on average, that’s a poor diet for anyone looking for serious gains. Not even providing an extra 40 grams of whey protein supplement brought them close to the 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight we mentioned earlier.

Had the study lasted longer, and had the researchers made sure the participants had a high baseline protein intake, it might have resulted in more muscle mass as well as strength.

Regardless, this study suggests that you should aim for 40 grams of protein after your workouts if your goal is to increase your strength.

Why Does Muscle Become Resistant To Protein During Aging?

Science hasn’t determined the cause of the age-related changes in the muscles’ sensitivity to anabolic stimuli with 100% certainty.

However, the leading theory points to the so-called “leucine threshold” as the main culprit.¹¹

Leucine is one of the essential amino acids. Your body can’t produce essential amino acids, so you have to provide them through your diet.

Leucine is also the amino acid that triggers muscle protein synthesis.¹²

When you are young, your muscles are very sensitive to amino acids and react to even small amounts of leucine in the bloodstream.

Even if you eat enough protein to provide just a single gram of leucine, that is enough to trigger muscle protein synthesis. If you eat enough for 3 grams of leucine, you stimulate your muscle protein synthesis maximally.

However, if you eat even more protein in a single meal, you don’t build any more muscle. Your leucine threshold is the amount of leucine you need to maximize muscle protein synthesis.

With old age, your amino acid sensitivity slowly but surely goes down.

Suddenly, you need 2 grams of leucine to trigger muscle protein synthesis. That’s about the amount you get from ~20 grams of whey protein.

After 60, your leucine threshold might be 4 grams instead of 3 grams. That explains why you need 40 grams of protein to get the maximum anabolic response from a meal.

Protein Distribution

Does spreading your protein intake throughout the day affect how much muscle you gain? Possibly.

Current recommendations for young people engaging in strength training state that up to 0.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and meal are a good amount to shoot for.

Spread meals of that size out over the day, separated by 3–4 hours, and you’re good to go.

You can still build muscle with any other protein distribution, but that’s considered optimal.¹³

Are those recommendations suitable for older individuals as well? Yes, as long as you get 30, preferably 40 grams of protein per meal. That way, you maximize muscle protein synthesis several times per day.

One study showed that protein distribution doesn’t make a difference.¹⁴

Eating a small amount of protein for breakfast and lunch, then bingeing on protein come dinner was just as effective as eating an equal amount of protein at each meal.

However, that study didn’t look at muscle protein balance specifically. It looked at whole-body protein balance, meaning the balance between protein synthesis and protein breakdown in the entire body. That includes things like your liver, your gut, your skin, and so on.

That’s all well and good, but if you work out hard and want the best results, you are probably mainly interested in how well your protein intake helps you build muscle.

In that case, you can spread your protein intake in equally large meals throughout the day. If your total intake is as high as this article recommends, you also have plenty for every other organ and body tissue.

Fast and Slow Proteins

As an older athlete, you probably benefit from a protein you absorb rapidly, a so-called fast protein. In young people, slow proteins, like casein, improve protein balance more. In the elderly, it’s the other way around.¹⁵

When you are older, you need rapid and sizable amounts of amino acids to flood your bloodstream after a workout to maximize muscle protein synthesis.

With their fancy intact amino acid sensitivity, youngsters get away with high-quality protein, fast or slow, as long as it provides enough leucine.

Unfortunately, you won’t find rapidly absorbed protein in appropriate amounts in most regular foods. Here’s where protein powders like whey protein enter the picture.

Regular cow’s milk contains whey protein, but not much of it. Casein makes up 80% of the protein content in milk, with whey providing a mere 20%. That would mean liters of milk if you want any significant amount of whey protein because casein is considered a “slow” protein.

Another alternative is lean meat, as long as you chew it enough. If you grind it down sufficiently before swallowing it, meat provides fast protein that stimulates protein synthesis. If you don’t chew it thoroughly, it doesn’t.¹⁶ Only lean red meat has been studied. Still, it likely applies to chicken and other white meat as well.

Soy protein isolate is less effective, despite being a fast protein. The amino acids from soy protein isolate are incorporated more into gut and organ protein than muscle protein in older people.¹⁷

Whey protein is the ideal protein supplement for older lifters.

If you can’t or don’t want to eat meat or use whey protein, it’s not the end of the world.

You’ll still be able to get results from your training.

The total amount of protein in your diet is more important. However, rapidly absorbed protein like whey can offer some advantages for gaining muscle mass.

Is It Important To Eat or Drink Protein Immediately After a Workout?

If you are young: no. Your muscles are extra sensitive to the amino acids in the food you eat for at least 24 hours post-workout. You gain as much new muscle protein from a protein-rich meal for at least 3 hours after your workout as you would by chugging a protein shake immediately after your last set.¹⁸

For older lifters, it could be more critical and make a difference.

Older men between the ages of 73 and 75 performed a strength training session thrice per week during a 12-week-long study.¹⁹

After the workouts, they all drank a protein shake. Half the subjects drank it immediately after the training session, while the others waited 2 hours.

Twelve weeks later, the groups had a significant difference in muscle hypertrophy. Those who drank the protein right after the workout gained more muscle.

It is important to note that the amount of protein in the shake was relatively small. It was far from what we know is needed for a robust anabolic response following a workout, providing only 10 grams of protein.

Perhaps both groups would have gained the same amount of muscle if they had received 30 to 40 grams of protein instead, regardless of timing?

You might benefit from eating or drinking protein close to your workout. There is no benefit to waiting hours before doing so, be it a regular protein-rich meal or a protein shake.

In any case, we can’t discard the possibility that protein timing after a workout is important when you are older.

The Importance of Protein Quality

When you plan your protein intake, the total amount is one of many things you must consider. Protein quality is also an issue.

To stimulate muscle protein synthesis and to build muscle, you only need the essential amino acids.

Your body also requires the non-essential, but it can make those on its own, so you only have to provide the essential ones through your diet. You can’t make the essential amino acids.

How Much Protein To Build Muscle After 60: amino acids

Protein sources from the animal kingdom generally provide more essential amino acids than plant-based sources per gram of protein. That means an animal-based protein has more powerful muscle-building properties, gram for gram.²⁰

How Much Protein To Build Muscle After 60: animal protein and plant protein

A protein that gives you all essential amino acids in sufficient amounts is called a high-quality protein or a complete protein.

You can get enough of the amino acids you need to build muscle by eating more plant protein or combining different vegetable protein sources.

The problem with that approach is that plant-based protein sources often give you more than protein. You get as many or more carbohydrates at the same time.

There is nothing wrong with that, per se, but it also substantially increases the number of calories in the meal.

To get enough essential amino acids to correspond to 30 or 40 grams of high-quality protein, you’d have to eat quite hefty meals regularly, thus increasing your calorie intake, maybe more than you want or need, especially if your goal is weight loss and losing body fat.

If you eat 150 grams of broiled chicken breast, you get around 40 grams of high-quality protein and all the amino acids you need to build muscle.

At the same time, you only get a little more than 200 calories.

You’d have to eat more than half a kilogram of boiled lentils to get that amount of protein with similar muscle-building properties.

That also means more than 70 grams of carbs and 500 calories. Besides, you may want more varied meals than that.

Most likely, you can make a plant-based diet work for you, even if you’re going for gains in muscle mass at a more advanced age.

However, it will be a bit harder, at least if you don’t want a calorie intake high enough to make you gain fat at the same rate as muscle or even faster.

Aging and Your Appetite

Tell the average 80-year-old to eat 160 grams of protein daily, split into four big 40-gram meals. It won’t go over well.

As we age, we often lose our appetite. Sometimes by a lot.

Age-related loss of appetite can be caused by mechanical issues like difficulties chewing or swallowing. Other causes may include:

Medicines
An impaired sense of taste and smell
Age-related hunger- and satiety-signaling

Add the fact that protein is the most filling nutrient, and you find that many older people have a hard time eating enough food, not to mention enough protein to maintain or gain muscle mass.

You probably don’t have this problem, but sometimes eating large amounts of protein can be tricky anyway. Can you get around that dilemma somehow?

A possible solution might be to add the amino acid leucine to a small protein feeding.

Doing so makes a small amount of protein as anabolic as a more significant amount. In young people, adding enough leucine to 6.75 grams of whey protein, for a total of 5 grams of leucine, makes the blend as muscle-building as 25 grams of whey protein.²¹

In older people, the amount of amino acids corresponding to 15 grams of whey protein stimulates muscle protein synthesis, but only after adding 1.1 grams of extra leucine to the mix.²²

It is still being determined whether or not this method leads to actual gains in muscle mass in the long run. Leucine might trigger muscle protein synthesis, but not much might happen unless you have an abundant supply of all amino acids. You may need more of all the essential amino acids.

More research is needed, long-term research in general and strength training-related research in particular. Currently, we don’t know enough to say for sure.

Regardless, supplementing protein feedings with leucine to stimulate muscle protein synthesis further is an interesting theory. It might help older lifters obtain enough amino acids to add pounds of muscle without resorting to force-feeding.

Important Points When You Plan Your Protein Intake

Let’s put theory into practice.

You might need more protein to gain muscle mass than someone younger.

If your training goals are health and physical performance in general, you don’t have to go above and beyond. Eating 1.2 to 1.3 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is enough for the health benefits of strength training.

More won’t hurt, but it likely won’t give you any benefits, either.

Granted, it is more than recommended for the average younger adult, but still not an amount you’ll have trouble reaching.

You get enough for young bodybuilders if you shoot for 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and day. That will give you great potential for gaining muscle.

However, if you want to make 100% sure that you get enough, or even more than enough, protein for optimal gains, you can aim for 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and day.

Only a little scientific evidence supports the need for such amounts, but recent overviews speculate on it.

Your daily total protein requirements increase, and you also need more protein per meal.

In young individuals, 20 grams of high-quality protein is enough to maximize muscle protein synthesis in the hours following the meal.

You might need double that amount for a similar anabolic response, especially after a training session.

If your target protein intake for the day is 160 grams, you can split that amount into four meals, each providing 40 grams of protein.

Alternatively, you can distribute it in four meals of 30 grams of protein over the day and add a 40-gram protein shake after your workout.

Either way, you should evenly distribute your protein-rich meals over your waking hours.

Fast protein, the protein you absorb rapidly, stimulates muscle protein synthesis to a greater degree.

You won’t find fast proteins in most regular food. A whey protein supplement might be a good idea.

You don’t need protein supplements if you’re training for fitness, but it might be prudent if we are talking about gaining as much muscle as you can.

It is certainly not wrong to make whey your post-exercise protein of choice.

Try to eat some high-quality, complete protein in every meal.

That way, you ensure you get enough of the essential amino acids you need to build muscle every time you eat.

Eat or drink some form of protein following your workouts.

One study demonstrated that this strategy could be the difference between good and ok-ish results.

If and when you eat meat, make sure to chew it properly.

It might sound like a silly thing to mention, but studies with older subjects show that thoroughly chewed meat stimulates protein synthesis, while unchewed or sloppily chewed meat doesn’t.

Final Words

As you age, your muscles become less sensitive to protein-rich meals.

For older sedentary adults, this can be a health risk, ultimately leading to a loss of muscle mass, a risk of falls, and decreased mobility.

You probably don’t have to worry about that part since you already engage in the most anabolic activity of all: strength training.

You have the edge over your sedentary contemporaries and will likely keep enough muscle mass to stay functional and healthy all your life.

However, to build as much muscle mass as possible at an advanced age, you must remember a few things. Things that took care of themselves 30 years ago.

First and foremost, you need more protein every day.
Also, you need more protein per meal. You can still promote muscle growth by eating a protein-rich meal, but you must trick your muscles into responding to the amino acids by increasing your portion size.

Keep these things in mind as you plan your diet. You will increase your chances of gaining muscle, even after the retirement.

Age is not just a number. However, you don’t have to let it stop you from building muscle, progressing in the gym, and staying in better shape than the vast majority of younger people.

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