Hitting your protein target on Indian food

Why the target is what it is

The 2025 joint advisory from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, the American Society for Nutrition, the Obesity Medicine Association and The Obesity Society recommends 1.2 to 1.6 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per day for people losing weight on this kind of treatment.

We work from ideal body weight rather than current weight, which for most people lands between 1.0 and 1.2 g per kilogram of actual weight and is a realistic target rather than an aspirational one. If you are doing serious resistance training, aim at the upper end.

Three rules that do most of the work

1. Protein goes in first, at every meal Your stomach only takes a small volume now. Whatever goes in first is what you actually get. If the rice goes in first, the dal does not. Eat the dal, the curd, the paneer, the egg or the fish before you touch the roti or the rice. This single reordering, changing nothing else, moves most people twenty grams a day.
2. Two or three anchors, not one big one One large protein meal a day does not work when you cannot eat a large meal. Spread it: something at breakfast, something at lunch, something in the evening.
3. Liquid protein counts and is easier Milk, chaas, a sattu drink, a thin dal drunk from a glass, curd, a whey shake. On the days when solid food is unappealing, this is how the target gets met at all.

The cheapest way to get there

Protein has a reputation for being expensive and it does not have to be. Ranked by protein per rupee, the best options in an Indian kitchen are, in order: soya chunks, which are far ahead of everything else at roughly 3 g of protein per rupee, then eggs, groundnuts, chana and dal. Whey protein is convenient and is nowhere near the top of the list on cost.

Thirty grams of dry soya chunks, which costs about five rupees, carries fifteen grams of protein. That is more than two eggs and roughly the same as a hundred grams of paneer costing eight times as much.

If you are vegetarian

• Dal alone will not do it. A katori of dal has about six grams of protein, so reaching sixty grams on dal alone means ten katoris.
• Combine through the day rather than at each meal: cereal proteins and pulse proteins complement each other across a day, so the traditional dal-chawal and rajma-roti pattern is sound as long as the quantities are there.
• Curd and paneer are your densest everyday options, and both are permitted during most vrat fasting.
• Get B12 checked and expect to supplement it. This is not optional on a vegetarian diet during weight loss.

If you are Jain

Root vegetables and sprouts are out, which removes some options but not the important ones. Dal, paneer, curd, milk, soya, groundnuts, besan and tofu are all available and between them are more than enough. The tool above filters to what is permitted.

Source: Nutritional priorities in obesity treatment, joint advisory of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, the American Society for Nutrition, the Obesity Medicine Association and The Obesity Society, published in Obesity and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2025. Protein values from standard Indian food composition data.