7 Things That Happen To Your Body When You Eat Chicken Every Day

Building muscle

Closeup front view of cute little girl eating fried chicken and yes, enjoying it. She has a piece of chicken stuck on a fork and biting it with pleasure. Her eyes are closed, the girl is wearing pink t-shirt.

While grilled chicken is always healthier than fried chicken, here is something each kind of chicken has in common: helping you to build muscle!

Your body needs protein to help you build muscle (which is one of the reasons bodybuilders focus so much on consuming it). Chicken is an awesome complete protein that studies have shown helps facilitate your muscle protein synthesis. If you eat at least three chicken breasts (each should be a minimum of 3.5 ounces) each day, you may be surprised by how much your body’s muscles begin to develop.

Weight fluctuation

If they are being honest, most people balk at the idea of eating chicken every day because they worry about how it could affect their weight. The truth is that chicken can affect your weight, but not necessarily in the ways you are expecting.

It all comes down to how much you eat. For example, while the protein in chicken helps you build muscles, you can very easily put on weight if more than 20% of your daily diet is protein. If 15% or less of your diet is protein, though, you should be fine.

And if you’re lucky, daily chicken consumption can help you lose weight. That’s because it takes longer for your body to break down chicken than carbohydrates. That means you’ll feel fuller for a longer period of time. If chicken causes you to ultimately eat less each day, then you may be able to fit into those old jeans again!

Increased sodium consumption

Are you concerned about your overall sodium consumption? If so, you should definitely be wary of how you eat your chicken!

For example, fried chicken contains more sodium than grilled chicken. This is due to the skin and the batter used to fry it. Grilled chicken contains less sodium, so it will always be a bit healthier for you.

Also: this may go without saying, but the unhealthiest chicken comes from fast food places. If you want to eat chicken every day the healthy way, you need to drive past Chick-fil-a and make your chicken at home.

Increased fat consumption

Are you on a diet that involves cutting fat? Switching to chicken from things like red meat can really help. However, there is more fat in your chicken than you might realize.

For example, a four-ounce serving of chicken usually contains five grams of saturated fat and a total of 17 grams of fat. This is higher than the fat content when you were growing up due to the modern practice of genetically modifying foods.

Higher risk of food poisoning

As we noted, it is healthiest to prepare your own chicken at home. However, you need to be careful of how you prepare this food if you want to avoid the risk of food poisoning.

Each year, about a million people in America suffer food poisoning from eating chicken. This is almost always due to how the chicken is prepared and/or cooked.

To stay safe, use a separate cutting board for your chicken and avoid doing anything that spreads raw chicken juice to your utensils or random parts of your kitchen. As long as you clean everything that comes into contact with the chicken and cook it to an internal temperature of at least 165 °F, you can mitigate the risk of getting food poisoning.

Ongoing risk of constipation

It’s one thing to add more chicken to your daily diet. But if you don’t balance that diet out, you are likelier to end up constipated.

The good news is that chicken doesn’t directly cause you to become constipated. However, many who begin eating more protein don’t increase their fiber intake to compensate. Unless you eat enough fruits, veggies, beans, and whole grains with your chicken, you may end up backed up.

Potentially shortening your lifespan

By now, you can probably tell there are both good things and bad things that occur if you eat chicken every day. However, one of the most compelling reasons to not have a daily chicken diet is that it could shorten your lifespan!

This is due to several different factors. For example, some studies have shown a link between eating chicken and getting cancer. The more often you eat and the higher the amounts, the greater your potential risk.

On top of that, if you eat fried chicken, you are at a greater risk of obesity and even heart-related death. Ultimately, it seems like it is better to eat chicken like anything else: in moderation.