The post-workout anabolic window - that urgent 30-minute period where you supposedly must consume protein or forfeit your gains - was never as tight as the fitness industry made it sound. The research that spawned the idea was largely conducted on fasted subjects who hadn’t eaten for hours before training. If you ate a meal two hours before your session, the amino acids from that meal are still circulating. The window isn’t closed. It was never really open in the way the marketing implied.
This matters because a lot of people organise significant mental energy around protein timing while chronically under-eating protein overall. They measure their post-workout shake to the gram and then eat 90 grams of protein across the rest of the day. That’s backwards.
What the actual target looks like
For most people doing regular resistance training, somewhere between 1.6 and 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day is where the evidence points for muscle protein synthesis support. The upper end of that range isn’t magic - there’s a diminishing return beyond roughly 2.2g/kg - but staying consistently in that range matters far more than when exactly you hit your numbers.
A 75kg person needs roughly 120–165g of protein daily. That’s not an aggressive target, but most people who haven’t tracked even loosely are surprised to find they’re sitting at 80–100g. The gap isn’t made up by a single shake. It requires protein to be present in most meals across the day.
The distribution question
Spread does matter, but not for the reasons usually cited. The body can only use so much protein for muscle protein synthesis in a single sitting - somewhere in the range of 30–40g per meal appears to be a reasonable working estimate based on available research, though the exact ceiling is still debated. The practical takeaway: eating 150g of protein in one meal is less useful than spreading it across three or four.
This is why meal skipping is a real problem for people with high protein targets. Not because breakfast is sacred, but because front-loading all your protein into two meals makes the distribution inefficient.
The simpler version
Hit your daily target. Spread it across meals. Keep at least one protein source in every meal you eat. Don’t stress the window.
The obsession with timing is largely a product of supplement marketing - companies that sell post-workout products have a financial interest in making the window feel urgent. Total daily intake is unglamorous and doesn’t require a product. It just requires consistency.