You ate breakfast. So why are you already thinking about your next meal?

If your morning meal leaves you hungry an hour or two later, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need a bigger breakfast. Sometimes, it just needs a little more balance.

Many quick breakfast staples—toast, cereal, a piece of fruit, a muffin, even some smoothies—can lean heavily on carbohydrates while offering relatively little protein, fiber, or fat. That doesn’t make carbohydrates the problem. It just means they may work better when they have some company.

In fact, Cleveland Clinic recommends building a balanced breakfast around protein, fiber and heart-healthy fats.

So if breakfast never seems to stick with you, here are three things worth looking for.

1. Protein: Give Breakfast More Staying Power

Protein is a good place to start when your breakfast isn’t holding you over.

Research suggests that increasing the amount of protein at breakfast can improve feelings of fullness and appetite control. Harvard Health highlighted research finding that people who ate extra protein at breakfast reported less appetite later in the day.

You don’t need to turn every morning into a giant plate of eggs. Instead, look at what you’re already eating and ask: Where’s the protein?

Easy options include:

• Greek yogurt or cottage cheese
• Eggs
• Tofu or tempeh
• Dairy or fortified soy milk
• Nuts and seeds
• Nut and seed butter

NuttZo can contribute here, too. A two-tablespoon serving of Organic Paleo Power Fuel provides 6 grams of plant-based protein, along with fiber and fats from its blend of seven nuts and seeds.

The key word is contribute. Pair it with another protein source—like Greek yogurt, milk or eggs—when you want to build a more substantial breakfast.

2. Fiber: Don’t Let Breakfast Be the Meal That Misses It

Fiber is another piece that’s easy to overlook in the morning.

Refined cereals, pastries, juices and white breads may not provide very much, while whole grains, fruit, chia, flax, nuts and seeds can help bring more fiber to your plate. Cleveland Clinic includes whole grains, nuts, seeds and fruit among foods that can help increase daily fiber intake.

If you want to dig deeper, we recently broke down how much fiber is actually in nut butter.

But you don’t need to count every gram at breakfast. Think in terms of simple upgrades:

Instead of: Plain toast
Try: Whole-grain toast + NuttZo + berries or banana

Instead of: Yogurt by itself
Try: Greek yogurt + fruit + oats + seeds

Instead of: A smoothie made mostly with fruit
Try: Fruit + milk or soy milk + oats or chia + NuttZo

A two-tablespoon serving of Organic Paleo Power Fuel adds 3 grams of dietary fiber to the mix.

3. Healthy Fats: Another Piece of the Puzzle

A balanced breakfast doesn’t have to be low-fat.

Foods like nuts, seeds, avocado and nut and seed butters provide unsaturated fats alongside other nutrients. Rather than thinking of fat as something you need to add in huge amounts to “stay full,” think of it as one part of the overall meal.

That’s also why nuts and seeds are so useful at breakfast: they bring more than one thing to the table.

A scoop of NuttZo, for example, contributes fat plus plant-based protein and fiber. Add it to oatmeal with fruit and yogurt, and suddenly you have a very different breakfast than oatmeal alone.

Try This Simple Breakfast Formula

You don’t need a complicated nutrition equation every morning.

Start with:

Protein + fiber-rich plant food + healthy fat

Then build around the foods you actually enjoy.

For example:

Oatmeal:
Oats + berries + Greek yogurt + NuttZo

Toast:
Whole-grain toast + eggs + avocado

Smoothie:
Fruit + fortified soy milk + oats or chia + NuttZo

Yogurt bowl:
Greek yogurt + berries + whole-grain granola + NuttZo

Running-out-the-door breakfast:
Banana + NuttZo + Greek yogurt

Need more ideas? EatingWell’s high-protein, high-fiber breakfast recipes include everything from smoothies to breakfast sandwiches and offer some good inspiration for putting the combination into practice.

Your Breakfast Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect

There’s no single breakfast that will keep everyone full for the exact same amount of time. Hunger changes from day to day depending on activity, sleep, stress, how much you ate and plenty of other factors.

And getting hungry again isn’t a sign that you did breakfast “wrong.”

But if you consistently finish breakfast only to start searching for a snack soon afterward, look at what was actually on your plate.

Was there protein? Fiber? A source of healthy fat?

Sometimes the difference between a breakfast that feels more like a quick bite and one that actually feels like a meal is simply what you add to it.

Ready to give your breakfast a little more staying power? Explore NuttZo’s blends of nuts and seeds for an easy way to add plant-based protein, fiber and healthy fats to your morning.