Your Diet Needs More Chicken

 This is one smart cow, he (is a female cow still a cow?) knows the benefits of chicken and the fun of being alive. I enjoy a cheese burger on the weekends, but during the week, the other white meat becomes the stable of my diet. There are many ways to cook chicken: broil, bake, fry and grill. A lot of people on campus are dieting, trying to cut pounds, fighting off the freshman 40 and they don’t understand the correct way to accomplish this.

Checking out the dining halls on campus I’ve seen several examples of someone dieting the wrong way. A popular dieting myth I see played out too often, is eating only one food for a meal. You could conjugate this in your head, “I’m only eating one thing, it must be good for me.” This thought appears to hold true for any-1 type of food; french fries, ice cream, beans, mashed potatoes, there’s no limit. Another one is that if I eat nothing for breakfast, and keep the rest of my meals small, I will lose weight. This might work if you were stranded on an island where obtaining food takes stalking animals and collecting berries on trees. Yah, so that’s not the case for you, so eating small meals will only lead to eating more snacks throughout your life. Snacks, in the sense of chips and candy are an enemy to the diet. Don’t get me wrong, I love sour-patch kids and ice cream, but only when I know I can work out later in the day or the next day. Why should we eat chicken?

Chicken that I purchase from Sam’s club is 99% fat free. So that means if I eat chicken for 2 of 3 meals, only one meal will have fat. Only talking about meals here, because I do snack (there is a candy jar near my desk at work…not good!). Also chicken is very low in calories, about 180 per breast. Figure my body burns ~2400 calories a day. Eating a bunch of 180 cal breasts will hardly make a dent. Another reason to eat more chicken, each breast contains 25 or more grams of protein. Protein is good for the diet, listen to these doctors.

 ”Our research suggests that higher-protein diets help people better control their appetites and calorie intake,” says researcher Donald Layman, PhD, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Controlling an appetite is difficult during a diet. You’re taking in less calories then you’re used to, your brain will then say to you, “What gives, I need calories like we used to eat”. Eating diets large in protein (CHICKEN) will help soften the yells of your brain. Protein also builds muscle mass and more muscles mean a higher metabolism which will increase the speed at which your body burns the calories. 

I find a lot of ways to eat chicken. My favorite is to grill it, mix some lettuce and tomatoes and a touch a shredded cheese and wrap it up in a soft shelled burrito. A spit of mustard will add some flavor. Just get creative, chicken sandwich, salad, burrito, plain breasts are quick and easy meals. Most importantly, chicken is a quick, tasty and healthy substitute for all of your meals. Listen to the cow, he’s smart.