5 Creative Ways to Increase Your Protein Intake

Most people know protein is important — but few know how to actually get more of it without overhauling their entire diet. Here are five strategies that work in a normal week, using food that is already in most Saudi kitchens.

1. Swap Your Grains for Protein-Dense Alternatives

One of the easiest swaps with the biggest payoff: replace white rice with quinoa (roughly 8g of protein per cooked cup, against rice's 4g), or swap regular pasta for chickpea or lentil pasta, which can deliver up to 20g per serving. Legume-based alternatives also tend to be more filling for the same volume, which is why they show up so often in weight-management advice.

Try it: Use quinoa as the base for a grain bowl, or fold it into a salad instead of rice. If a full swap is a hard sell at a family lunch, start with half rice, half quinoa.

2. Add Unflavoured Protein Powder to Things You Already Eat

Unflavoured whey or plant protein dissolves almost invisibly into soup, oatmeal, smoothies, laban and even baked goods. A single scoop typically adds 20–25g with very little change in taste or texture.

Whey is the most studied option and the easiest to absorb; a plant blend (pea and rice together) is the better choice if dairy doesn't sit well with you.

Try it: Stir one scoop into your morning oats, or into a bowl of lentil soup once it's off the heat — high heat will thicken it unpleasantly.

3. Snack Strategically

Most snacks are carbohydrate-heavy and protein-poor. Swapping a few of them can add 15–30g to your daily total without adding a single meal:

• Greek yogurt (17–20g per 200g) instead of regular yogurt
• Labneh or cottage cheese (roughly 12–14g per half cup) as a dip instead of a cream-based one
• Hard-boiled eggs (6g each), which keep for days in the fridge
• Edamame or roasted chickpeas (up to 17g per cup) instead of crisps
• Nuts with dates — the dates are the sugar, the nuts are the point; a 30g handful of almonds adds about 6g

Make it automatic: Prep these on a Friday and keep them at eye level in the fridge. The single most reliable predictor of what you snack on is what you can see without bending down.

4. Front-Load Protein at Breakfast

People who eat 30–40g of protein at breakfast tend to eat less across the rest of the day and hold on to more muscle mass. Yet for most people breakfast is the lowest-protein meal of the day — and in Saudi Arabia it is often the most carbohydrate-heavy one.

Breakfasts that clear 30g:

• Three-egg omelette with labneh or cottage cheese — around 30g
• Foul medames with two eggs and wholemeal bread — around 28g
• Greek yogurt with hemp or chia seeds and nuts — around 28g
• A shake with whey, milk and peanut butter — around 35g

The principle underneath all of these is protein quality, not just grams: a first meal built on complete proteins — eggs, dairy, fish, meat — gives the body the full set of amino acids it needs rather than a partial one.

5. Use the "Protein Pairing" Method

Most plant proteins are incomplete on their own, missing or running short on one or more essential amino acids. Pairing the right foods across a day fills the gaps.

Classic pairs, most of them already local:

• Rice and beans, or rice and lentils — the pairing that shows up in nearly every cuisine
• Hummus with wholemeal pita
• Foul with bread
• Lentil soup with yogurt
• Wholemeal bread with peanut butter

For anyone eating mostly plants, this is one of the most effective tools available — and research on plant-based protein quality (Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022) supports the pairing approach as a practical way to reach complete intake without animal products.

How Much Do You Actually Need?

The widely used RDA is 0.8g per kg of body weight — but that figure is the floor for preventing deficiency, not the target for someone training. For active adults, most sports-nutrition bodies recommend:

• 1.2–1.6g/kg for general fitness and health
• 1.6–2.2g/kg for building muscle, or for holding on to it while losing fat

For a 70kg person, that is roughly 112–154g of protein per day.

If you're training hard or eating in a deficit and can't reach that from food alone, a higher-calorie blend closes the gap more easily than another chicken breast at 10pm.

The bottom line: You don't need to track every gram or rebuild your diet. Pick one or two of these, make them habits, and add from there. Consistency beats precision.

Sources: Frontiers in Nutrition (2022) on plant protein quality; International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand on protein and exercise; WHO/FAO protein and amino acid requirements.