Is eating chicken and broccoli for every meal dangerous?

ethionupe

Amateur here but Ive meal prepped chicken and broccoli for an entire week, 2 meals a day. Is it unhealthy to keep this up?

littlegreenparrot1

You wouldn't get a range of vitamins and minerals.
Different coloured fruit and veg contain different things, eating a varied diet helps make sure you get what you need.

Besides which surely it would be very boring, it wouldn't be long before I got very fed up with that plan and stopped bothering.

MikePTY

Broccoli is good. Chicken is good. But eating only broccoli and chicken isn't good. Could you do it for a week without any negative side effects? Probably. But by only eating those two foods, you would deprive your body of many important vitamins, minerals, and macro nutrients found in other foods. Diet diversity is important. And if you kept this up long term, you would likely run into some deficiencies.

Not to mention, it is hard for me to see how you would get enough calories eveyy day eating only two meals a day of chicken and broccoli, both of which are low calorie foods. As a male, you should intake at a minimum 1500 calories a day, likely more depending on your stats and how much you have to lose. I don't see that being likely on just chicken and broccoli.

Now if you are asking can you have chicken and broccoli twice a day, and also have other foods along with it? Then the answer is yes. As I mentioned, both are foods that are nutritious and can be a big part of a weight loss diet that is also good for your health. They just shouldn't be all you eat.

glovepuppet

You need a balanced and varied diet. There's no way you're going to get everything you need from only two basic ingredients. Chicken and broccoli are great, but if you want to get all your nutrients you need to add a lot to that. Plus, you're going to get bored! So very, very bored.

If you aren't a confident cook, or lack time, salad and stir-fry can be thrown together in minutes. You can add nuts and grains, and enough different veg to turn your plate into a rainbow. You can still use up your chicken and broccoli in them.

ceiswyn

There's nothing wrong with that being your main foodstuff, but you need to eat a variety of other things as well to make up for any nutrient gaps. Particularly fats.

Snack on a variety of fruits and nuts, occasionally add a cheese topping to your chick&broc, and you'll probably be basically fine (if eventually a little bored)

paperpudding

ethionupe wrote: »

Amateur here but Ive meal prepped chicken and broccoli for an entire week, 2 meals a day. Is it unhealthy to keep this up?

Do you mean you eat chicken and broccoli and nothing else? - or you eat, say, 6 meals
/snacks a day and 2 of them are chicken and broccoli and the others are different things.

Former not a good idea - latter could be ok if you really like chicken and broccoli and the other meals/snacks are a variety of foods.

My general advice though - don't try drastic extreme diets - just aim to eat the number of net calories MFP gives you and aim for a variety of nutritious foods (and some not so nutritious ones if you want to)
Thats really all there is to it.

missysippy930

Depends, what are you eating for the 3rd meal and/or snacks?

nighthawk584

throw in other veggies, salad, fruit, nuts , whole grains and fats like avocado,,and fish

snickerscharlie

"Is eating chicken and broccoli for every meal dangerous?"

For me, yes, because I'd die of sheer boredom.

That aside, I agree that although chicken and broccoli is good, it's far from nutritionally complete on its own. What else would you be eating in a typical day?

Athijade

It wouldn't be healthy for my mental heath, that is for sure.

changeconsumeme

Dangerously boring.

NovusDies

For 2 weeks it is no real problem if you can suffer through the monotony of it. Long term it lacks enough variety to be nutritionally complete.

A chicken and broccoli meal is notorious for being a diet meal. Most diets fail. That is not to say that having this meal as a cornerstone of you plan means you will fail but it would cause me to fail.

earlnabby

ethionupe wrote: »

Amateur here but Ive meal prepped chicken and broccoli for an entire week, 2 meals a day. Is it unhealthy to keep this up?

Unhealthy? If it is one week, not really. Boring? Yes. I assume next week you will be prepping something different and eat that all week since eating chicken and broccoli every day all year long would definitely make you deficient in some nutrients. How about prepping 2-3 different kinds of meals and freezing some so you actually have a couple of weeks of meals ready with more variety?

I live alone and don't do well if I have to cook every day. I make a lot of stews and casseroles with 4-6 servings and eat it until it is gone. Those with 6 servings usually get a couple of servings frozen for future use. I then make something completely different. I also eat a variety for lunch and snacks. If you look at any of my weeks, it will be a lot of the same stuff. If you look at a month, you will see a lot of variety.

pancakerunner

Sounds like fun.

J72FIT

ethionupe wrote: »

Amateur here but Ive meal prepped chicken and broccoli for an entire week, 2 meals a day. Is it unhealthy to keep this up?

Probably. IMO, variety...

missysippy930

Applebee’s has grilled chicken on their menu that I always order when I go there with side of broccoli. Could I eat it twice a day, no. My husband and daughter can eat the same meal all week, but I need variety.
How are you preparing your chicken and broccoli and what else are you eating during the day? Depending on what else you are eating during the day, I think it’s fine as long as you aren’t bored with eating it twice a day

sgt1372

Dangerous? No.

Boring? Yes.

Hannahwalksfar

Your other meal or meals would need to fill you with the vitamins and nutrients chicken and broccoli lack

Cahgetsfit

extremely boring - I agree with that.

As for dangerous, well... actually - you WOULD be missing out on a whole bunch of other nutrients that you get from different veg/meats.

From experience eating a stupidly restrictive diet for a while back a few years ago when I was prepping for a competition - I started to get issues with the food I was eating - I started to get massive bloating issues for example. And after a while I'd just look at a sweet potato and just want to vomit. I didn't eat sweet potato for about 2 years after that experience. And when I did go back to eating normal variety of foods, there was some adjusting that my stomach had to do.

That's my experience. And people I have spoken to have had similar experiences. People develop intolerances that they didn't have prior to restricting their diet so much. All sorts of digestive issues come into play too.

So, it won't KILL you, but there is no harm whatsoever in eating something else apart from that.

Chicken and broccoli is just an old fashioned "bro" bodybuilding myth that to be lean you gotta eat chicken and broccoli. No.

shaumom

So first, re: the idea that it's boring to repeat the meal over and over?

The thing I'd say here is that it is immaterial whether OTHERS would find it boring (and I notice that you never said you were having the exact same MEAL of broccoli and chicken every day, just the same two ingredients). The question is if YOU would find it boring. Do you like to mix it up a lot with your foods, or are you perfectly content with repetition, or do you even prefer that?

Some folks in my family are perfectly fine having the exact same meal plan (not just one meal, but for the entire day) pretty much every single day of the year with a few breaks for holidays. Or the exact same weekly meal plan every week of the year. And they are content with that, because they pick foods they like, that are easy to make, and then they don't have to waste the time or energy making lots of different foods. They are MORE successful with their eating habits when they keep it simplified and repetitive, not less.

So again, I'd just ask yourself if YOU would find repetition boring. If you would, then having the same thing every day is, as others have said, problematic for your success.

If you like repetition, sounds like a fine idea.

As long as you are getting enough nutrients during the day with the chicken, broccoli, and other foods, then it shouldn't be an issue in terms of nutrition, either, I wouldn't think, nor safety. Last I heard, chicken and broccoli aren't like rice or tuna, that have contamination issues so you want to have limits during the week (arsenic for rice, mercury for tuna, I believe), so that shouldn't cause trouble. :-)

lemurcat2

It sounds like OP is planning on ONLY chicken and broccoli. I'd ask if there's any source of fat beyond that in the diet (I'm assuming chicken breasts). If not, yes, it's not healthy.

Even beyond that, you won't get sick from eating only those 2 foods (ideally with some fat, like olive oil you cooked with) for 2 weeks, but it's not really optimal. I think one is going to get a lot more nutritionally complete diet if one eats a variety of different foods, especially a variety of different veg and other whole foods.