Chicken and rice are easy ways to fuel your day, but is it healthy? The risk is that maybe you will gain lightweight more easily and will get bored if you eat it every day. Clearly, the price is more affordable.
In this article, we will explain to you the benefits and drawbacks of regularly consuming chicken with rice every day. We will explain from a broad perspective. Check below.
Advantages of Eating Chicken and Rice
In fact, if you only eat chicken and rice for a full month, you will get quite a lot of benefits. Especially if you want to lose a lot of weight.
Adequate Energy Needs
Being in a calorie deficit for a long time will adversely affect your physical condition. You may experience fatigue and laziness to do your daily activities. Can eating chicken and rice fill you with energy for the day and stay healthy?
Well, the answer is correct. Eating chicken and rice will keep you healthy. You can still meet your calorie needs even if you only eat them.
Eating chicken and rice is healthy because both are practical carbohydrates and protein intake and are easily digested by the body.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC provides a statement that it is better for you to do your daily activities with your calorie needs to be met than to continuously reduce your calorie intake without doing activities.
Stay Active All Day
Exercise is the best way to reduce your stress levels and burn lots of calories. Sometimes you may be stressed with work, with relationships, or from your studies. Moments like that make us feel out of control.
For some people eating becomes an outlet when we are in such conditions. Usually experienced by people who have difficulty with weight loss.
Therefore try to do physical activity.
A professor from the University of Illinois, Emma Childs, Ph.D. stated that “exercise can reduce the emotional consequences produced by stress”
Exercise will reduce the negative impact generated by stress, including eating lots of food in the kitchen. You will be enthusiastic and energetic in carrying out your daily work. And your mind becomes clearer.
However, physical activity still requires energy intake.
Therefore, eating chicken and rice is a guarantee while taking it that you will still have enough energy and stay healthy. In addition, this food is also practical at a low price.
Chicken and Rice Help You Lose Weight By Staying Healthy
Eating chicken and rice every day will definitely get boring even if you are a fan of both.
A nutritionist named Barbara J. Rolls, Ph.D., states that eating the same food will activate special sensory satiety and reduce the desire to eat in large quantities.
Just imagine if you get the same menu on your plate every day.
Compare if you get food with a variety of variations. It will trigger your appetite more.
Dr. Rolls added the statement “Variety in food consumption can cause a temporary decrease, and can also eliminate appetite completely”
The point is that the variety of food affects our appetite. Try to eat a wide variety of foods. You can add vegetables to your chicken like broccoli. Or occasionally you replace animal protein with fish or other meat.
Disadvantages of Eating Rice and Chicken Every Day
After knowing the benefits, now is the time for you to understand the disadvantages of eating chicken and rice every day.
Reducing Enjoyment In Food
If you are a family-oriented person, maybe eating together will become a habit that hinders your intention to continue eating chicken and rice every day.
In addition, eating the same menu will also eliminate the pleasure in food. You will quickly get boredom and even lose your appetite.
There are many ways to lose weight. Eating the same menu may be one of them, but we don’t recommend it to you. There are many other ways that are much healthier.
You Will Miss Your Old Meals
Eating grilled chicken and rice in small portions may make you healthy and lose weight. You can reduce your desire to eat other things and limit your calorie intake.
Unfortunately, it won’t last long.
A diet program by eating only one type of food will only trigger your desire to eat your favorite dishes that you have left behind. Instead of reducing appetite, it will actually increase.
Even worse, maybe your appetite will be bigger than before you went on this diet.
For example, you are a taco lover and intend to change your menu to chicken and rice for a long time. Then tacos will make you think about them all the time.
In addition, this diet only works in the short term and won’t necessarily work if you do it continuously.
Because basically, even though you are able to meet your daily calorie and nutritional needs in general, your body still needs additional nutrients such as vegetable protein and vitamins.
Maybe in one or two months, you can still do it, but then you will feel great boredom.
Deficiency of Intake of Vitamins and Minerals
Other effects if you eat too much chicken and rice continuously can occur in the short or long term.
Maybe in an instant, you will find significant weight loss just by eating chicken with low-calorie rice every day. But in the long term, your body can lack other nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. Both of these nutrients are also very important for the health of the body.
You will only get weight loss results at the beginning of the diet program, then the experts have expressed their opinion. One of them is Mahtab Sohrab Bamji, a Former Director-Grade Scientist from the National Institute of Nutrition.
He argues that rice contains very little of the essential vitamins A, C, D, E, and K. Rice also lacks the minerals magnesium and phosphorus. In fact, he said that Japanese people lack 20 percent of vitamin A.
In other words, you should consider this diet pattern. That doesn’t mean staying away from it altogether, but reducing this habit and still meeting other nutritional needs.
Basically, both of them can be eaten continuously, provided you have to add other menu variations such as vegetables and fruits. If you have done it, then you have adopted a healthy lifestyle.
Chicken and rice have been part of the culture of various countries for centuries and they are proven to be healthy. So these two foods are very safe for consumption.
Is Chicken and Rice Healthy for Breakfast?
If you ask, chicken and rice are actually healthy for breakfast because they contain protein and carbohydrates. The body can easily digest both of them.
The protein contained in chicken stimulates the growth of protein in the body. Meanwhile, carbohydrates make you energy throughout the day.
In Asian countries, it is very common to find that rice is the staple food for breakfast. Especially in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, rice is the largest food product, and people usually costumes it at any time.
Interestingly, these countries have fewer food problems such as obesity, heart disease, and metabolic problems than countries that do not consume rice.
Maybe rice is not the main culprit or more towards the correlation but basically, eating chicken with rice is generally quite good for breakfast. It is a simple but complete source of protein and energy.
In fact, rice is a staple food for professions that require high physical endurance, such as actors, bodybuilders, and models.
Reasons Bodybuilders Eat Chicken and Rice
As I mentioned earlier, even bodybuilders like rice and chicken as main menus to maintain the quality of their bodies. There are several reasons underlying this statement.
Chicken Contains Lean Protein
An IFBB Pro bodybuilder expressed his preference for chicken with rice. “Chicken is the perfect source of protein to promote muscle protein synthesis to replace amino acids instantly”
What is meant by muscle protein synthesis is the process of breaking down protein into amino acids. It functions to rebuild muscle fibers after heavy exercise.
Rice Contains High Glycemic Carbohydrates
Rice is a glycemic carbohydrate producer with a high enough amount to replace glycogen that has been used in the muscles.
University of Georgia Food Technology Professor, Fanbin Kong, Ph.D. stated that “White rice has a high glycemic content. In other words, after it enters the stomach, it will be immediately destroyed by gastric juice.”
Strained glucose from rice functions to restore the lost glycogen after exercising hard.
Therefore, bodybuilders use chicken and rice as their diet to build toned muscles and stay in shape.
Conclusion
Consuming chicken with rice continuously for a month has its own advantages and disadvantages. After trying to do this diet, I will try to summarize the results for you.
Using this diet method is not recommended for those of you who get bored easily or are not even used to eating rice. You will probably get sick of seeing chicken with rice every day.
Eating chicken with rice means learning about another culture. As we know, eating rice is a culture in some countries, and by experiencing them. It’s not just about calories and waistlines.
However, this diet is actually still effective and is used by many people in their weight loss program.
We recommend that you continue to eat food as needed, and vary your food ingredients but still focus on reducing the levels of nutrients that increase weight such as fat. And also keep a balance with lots of exercises.