7 Habits That Make It Easier to Increase Your Protein Intake

Protein is essential for our health, but you may not get enough.

Not every day will be perfect, but nutrition guidelines say the average adult should eat at least 0.8 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight (PDF). For example, if you weigh 150 pounds (68 kilograms), you should aim for about 55 to 68 grams of protein per day. One of the easiest ways to make sure you hit the target is to divide the required amount of protein by the number of meals you eat per day. This way you know how much protein each meal should contain.

Active people, those who lift weights, work out, or do strenuous work may find that consuming more protein than the minimum recommended amount benefits them. Older adults, especially those at risk for sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss), may also benefit from consuming more protein. Try this dietary reference intake calculator from the United States Department of Agriculture to calculate how much protein you need. CNET’s visual guide also shows you what it is. 100 grams of protein It looks like.

Here are seven simple strategies to increase the grams of protein you eat daily. For more on improving your diet, learn what foods you should eat to increase happiness, how to eat your way to a healthier heart, and how to master the Mediterranean diet.

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1. Make protein a ritual

The adage “consistency is key” has become universal advice because it’s true and can be applied to just about anything. habit Any habit you want to start and maintain or break.

Ritualizing things or connecting one action to another can help with this. consistency, which eventually leads to habits. For example, if you’re trying to get more steps each day, you might say, “I’ll walk 10 minutes every day after breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Boom, that’s an extra 30 minutes of walking every day.

In this sense, try ritualizing protein. Maybe you drink milk for breakfast every morning or drink a protein shake instead, and protein becomes part of your breakfast ritual. A daily protein shake containing 20 to 40 grams of protein can quickly increase your overall protein intake.

You can also ritualize protein by drinking a post-workout shake. This may seem like common sense, but trust me, it’s easy to forget about your post-workout drink if you say, “Well, I’ll have it after dinner or after the shower.” Go ahead and do it as soon as your workout is over; If you drink it during your post-workout stretching or cool-down, it will become a ritual.

2. Eat your protein first

When you eat meals that contain protein sources, try eating the bulk of the protein before moving on to other food sources on your plate, especially grains that can fill you up quickly. Eating your protein source first ensures you eat it all before you get too full.

An added bonus: Protein can make you feel fuller, so if you’re trying to lose weight, consuming enough protein can help you reach your health goals.

Read more: Meal Replacement Shakes: Can They Help You Lose Weight?

3. Best foods with chopped nuts

Nuts may not be the best source of protein by volume, but adding them to your meals throughout the day can give you a nice protein boost.

Try adding chopped walnuts (4.3 grams of protein per serving) to salads, chopped peanuts (6.7 grams per serving) or almonds (six grams per serving) to oatmeal, and chopped cashews (5.2 grams per serving) to stir-fries. .

In addition to their protein content, nuts also contain many healthy fats, fiber, vitamins and minerals; Therefore, by adding nuts to your meals, you will benefit your health in every aspect.

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4. Choose leaner meats

Leaner meats have less fat per serving, which means they have more lean meat per serving, thus more protein. This is a super easy way to add more protein to your daily intake if you eat animal protein every day.

Lean meats have fewer calories than fatty meats, and protein stimulates satiety; so this is a good tactic for anyone trying to lose weight. The leanest cuts of beef, according to the Mayo Clinic:

• Best sirloin steak
• Senior roast and steak
• Bottom round roast and steak
• Round roast and eye of steak
• sirloin steak

If you are going to eat poultry, a good rule of thumb is to choose white meat over dark meat. For pork, the leanest cuts of pork are tenderloin, loin and rump, says the Mayo Clinic.

5. Choose brown rice or quinoa instead of white rice

This is an easy swap you can use often to get more protein in your diet. Both quinoa and brown rice contain more protein per serving than white rice and can replace white rice in most meals.

The texture is similar, although quinoa has an earthier taste than rice. Each serving of cooked quinoa contains 8 grams of protein per cup, while brown rice contains 5.3 grams of protein per cup, while white rice contains only 4.4 grams of protein per cup.

Quinoa beats out both white and brown rice in terms of protein, but brown rice still offers more protein than white rice and is a good choice if you don’t like quinoa.

6. Add beans to everything

Beans are an often overlooked and underappreciated source of protein. They’re easy to add to salads, pasta, tacos, and many other dishes, and depending on the type of beans, they can add up to 10 grams of protein per half-cup.

This isn’t much compared to animal protein sources like poultry and eggs, but adding beans to meals can fill in some gaps in your daily protein intake. Beans are also a great source of fiber and other nutrients.

7. Replace white bread with whole grain bread

Bread is a modest place to boost your protein intake, but some breads actually contain quite a bit of protein: Just as brown rice has more protein than white rice, whole grain bread also contains more protein than white bread.

This is because whole grain foods retain all parts of the grain (germ, bran, and endosperm), whereas the refining process only breaks the grain down to the endosperm, which doesn’t contain many nutrients.

For example, Dave’s Killer Bread 21 Whole Seeds and Grains contains five grams of protein per slice. If you eat two slices for breakfast, that’s automatically 10 grams of protein that you won’t get with refined white bread.

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