Is the Chicken and Broccoli Diet Legit? Lose Weight Without Starving

Chicken and broccoli are two of the healthiest foods you can eat. So, it’s hardly surprising that, in our diet-obsessed society, they’d be merged to form the foundation of a diet with limited calorie intake.

The chicken and broccoli diet promises to fast-track weight loss while ensuring that you preserve muscle mass, thereby helping to achieve the much-desired lean and toned body. But does it really produce long-term fat loss? And is it even safe?

I’ve been a personal trainer for more than 30 years. Over that time, I’ve encountered every diet imaginable, from the trendy and fad to the scientifically grounded and balanced.

While I generally don’t advocate short-term restricted diets, I dissect them to educate my clients about how they should eat to maintain healthy weight loss.

Read on for the definitive analysis of the chicken and broccoli diet.

Table of Contents:

• What is the Chicken and Broccoli Diet?
• Chicken and Broccoli Nutrient Analysis
• What About the Calorie Count?
• Is the Chicken and Broccoli Diet Healthy?
• Is the Chicken and Broccoli Diet Safe?
• Adding Chicken and Broccoli to a Healthy Diet
• Wrap Up

What is the Chicken and Broccoli Diet?

The chicken and broccoli diet is a short-term restricted calorie diet that involves eating nothing but chicken and broccoli. The diet should be followed for 10-14 days.

Variations of the diet permit adding brown rice to incorporate complex carbohydrates. Other versions include green vegetables and spinach to provide essential vitamins and minerals you can’t get from broccoli and chicken.

The strict chicken and broccoli diet restricts you to 1,100 calories daily.

The rice-modified version increases the daily calorie count to 1,200 calories.

The only beverages allowed on the diet’s standard version are water and unsweetened black tea. However, many people also include club soda, black coffee, caffeinated and unsweetened herbal tea.

It is advised that the broccoli and any other vegetables you eat be steamed to preserve nutrient quality. Some people choose to eat their broccoli raw. The chicken is steamed or grilled, with the breast being the preferred cut.

Here is the suggested meal plan for the standard chicken and broccoli diet:

• Breakfast: Steamed broccoli + cup of unsweetened black tea
• Lunch: Grilled chicken breast + steamed broccoli 
• Dinner: Grilled chicken breast + steamed broccoli

Chicken and Broccoli Nutrient Analysis

Chicken and broccoli are among the best muscle-building foods promoting weight loss. Before we consider whether eating nothing but chicken and broccoli for a couple of weeks is healthy, let’s consider their individual nutritional profiles.

Chicken (100 grams)

• Protein: 24 grams
• Carbohydrates: 2.7 grams
• Fats: 3.1 grams
• Calories: 143

Chicken breast is a fantastic source of lean protein. This macronutrient is the muscles’ building block, containing amino acids that repair and maintain muscle. Chicken breast is the leanest cut, providing a high protein-to-fat ratio.

In addition to its muscle-building potential, protein is also beneficial for weight loss. It has the highest thermic effect of all macronutrients. It takes more energy to digest protein than carbohydrates or fats.

Protein is also a very satiating macronutrient. You will feel fuller for longer after eating a high-protein meal than a carb-based meal. That’s a big deal if you’re on a calorie-restricted diet. It will make you less likely to suffer from cravings between scheduled meals.

Chicken breasts’ high protein content will help you preserve muscle mass during restricted calorie dieting. When you substantially drop your caloric intake below your maintenance level, you risk losing muscle tissue, fat, and water weight. Maintaining a high protein intake will help prevent this from happening.

Related: Chicken Protein Calculator.

Broccoli (90 grams)

• Protein: 2.6 grams
• Carbohydrates: 6 grams
• Fat: 0.3 grams
• Calories: 31

Broccoli is a low-calorie food packed with nutrients. It’s particularly high in vitamin K, C, folate, fiber, and antioxidants. The high fiber content makes it great for weight loss, contributing to a feeling of satiety.

The combined satiety effects of protein and broccoli help prevent cravings and snacking.

Fiber also promotes digestive health by improving bowel function and helping to maintain a healthy gut microbiome.

Broccoli is also low in fat and rich in phytochemicals. Such compounds as glucosinolates and sulforaphane provide powerful antioxidant properties that boost the immune system and fight oxidative stress.

Finally, broccoli has an extremely high water content of 89%. This helps keep you hydrated and promotes a feeling of fullness without adding calories.

What About the Calorie Count?

To lose weight, you need to create a daily negative calorie balance. That means that you burn off more calories for energy each day than you consume through food. This forces your body to draw on its stored energy (glycogen stores) to make up the difference.

If you cut your caloric intake too far, you will have problems. Firstly, you’ll have no energy and feel lethargic most of the day. You’ll also risk catabolizing muscle tissue as an energy source.

When you go on a severely calorie-restricted diet, your body feels as if it is about to starve to death. Of course, you can eat more food; it’s just that you are choosing not to. Your brain knows that — but the rest of your body doesn’t. It thinks that you are in an emergency situation.

As a result of your body’s perception of danger, it kicks into survival mode. Perceiving that calories will be severely restricted for an extended period, hormonal changes take place that allow you to hoard as much fuel as you can from the reduced amount of food you are eating.

Your body will cling to more fat for stored fuel to see you through the lean times. It’s the same thing that bears do to carry them through the hibernation period.

When you are dieting, your brain responds differently to tasty-looking food than when you are not. You will become more attuned to food; you’ll notice it everywhere, your senses will pick up flavors sooner, and you will even salivate more quickly when you see a food you adore.

All of these things make the food appear even more delicious and tempting than before. As if that’s not bad enough, the part of your brain that is used to resist temptation, the prefrontal cortex, exhibits diminished activity when you are on a diet.

A 2011 study showed that low circulating glucose levels, as occurs in diets restricting carb intake, activated limbic-striatal brain regions that respond to food cues to increase the desire for high-calorie foods. [1]

In other words, when you go on a diet, your desire to eat is enhanced naturally while your resistance to eating is lowered. Please let me know if you can think of a greater recipe for disaster.

Another factor that works against calorie-restricted weight-loss diets is the human metabolism. When we restrict our caloric intake, our metabolism slows down. It does this to save energy. This allows the body to operate on fewer calories than it needed before. The result is that more calories are left unused and stored as body fat.

So, is the chicken and broccoli diet’s caloric count too low?

Yes, it is.

While the number of calories required to meet our daily energy needs differs, most of us require more than 2,000 calories daily. So, restricting our intake to 1,100 means cutting out almost a thousand calories per day.

That amount of caloric restriction is considered severe and will initiate the body’s starvation response. Your body’s essential functions will slow down to preserve energy. But when you go off the diet and return to your normal caloric consumption, it will take time for the body to reset.

So, for a period after the diet, your metabolism will be slower at the very time that your caloric intake skyrockets. As a result, you will likely regain a sizable amount of the weight you’ve lost during the diet.

Is the Chicken and Broccoli Diet Healthy?

From the above, it’s pretty clear that chicken and broccoli are extremely healthy foods. But does that mean eating nothing but chicken and broccoli is good for you?

The answer is an unequivocal no!

Limiting yourself to chicken and broccoli means that you will be missing out on essential nutrients, including vitamins, minerals, fats, and carbohydrates. Eating diverse foods ensures you meet your daily macro and micronutrient goals.

Here are half a dozen nutrients that you will not get in sufficient amounts on the chicken and broccoli diet:

• Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids
• Complex carbohydrates
• Calcium
• B vitamins
• Zinc
• Potassium

An obvious problem with eating only chicken and broccoli is its monotony. Chowing down on broccoli and chicken breast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two weeks is not appealing.

Most people will want to add some variety by the end of the first week, making it challenging to stay strict with the diet for 14 days.

It will also make eating a rather unpleasant chore. That’s not how it should be. By eating a more comprehensive range of foods that includes those that you actually look forward to, you’ll be able to establish long-term, sustainable, healthy eating habits.

Is the Chicken and Broccoli Diet Safe?

Eating only chicken and broccoli poses several potential health risks. Its restrictive nature means that you could become deficient in the following nutrients:

• Potassium
• Zinc
• Omega 3 and omega six fatty acids
• Vitamin D
• Calcium

These deficiencies could lead to several physical problems, including weak muscles, cramping, immune system impairment, reduced wound healing ability, bone weakness, and increased inflammation.

The lack of nutrient variety may lead to poor skin health, increasing a person’s susceptibility to skin disorders and making their skin dry and brittle.

Beyond the physical problems that could arise, the lack of variety in this diet could result in mental health issues. These may include mood swings, irritability, and poor concentration.

The severe caloric restriction of the chicken and broccoli diet will likely make you feel tired and lethargic due to the lack of energy in your body.

Another potential issue with such a restrictive diet is that it can lead to social isolation. If all you can eat is chicken and broccoli, you’re dining out, and socializing around food options will be severely restricted.

Adding Chicken and Broccoli to a Healthy Diet

I am not a fan of the chicken and broccoli diet. It’s too restrictive, the calorie count is too low, and it deprives you of essential nutrients. It also activates the body’s starvation response, with the result that you will probably put any lost weight back on when you go off the diet.

Instead of going all in on the chicken and broccoli diet, I advise incorporating chicken and broccoli as part of a balanced weight-loss diet. Here are five healthy eating habits that will help you lose your excess body fat correctly and keep it off.

1. Eat a Balanced Diet

Your diet must include protein, carbohydrates, and fats to meet your nutritional requirements. Chicken and broccoli are excellent protein sources but are very low on the other two macronutrients.

Include a range of leafy greens, vegetables that grow under the ground, and fruits to get a healthy range of complex carbs. Get healthy fats from eggs, nuts, fatty fish, and coconut oil.

As a general guide on how much of each macronutrient you should consume, divide your dinner plate into six pizza slices. Three slices should be complex carbs, two slices should be protein, and one slice should be healthy fats.

2. Meal Prepping

Meal prepping is one of the secrets to staying on track with your smart eating plan. It involves spending a couple of hours, generally on the weekend, to prepare your meals for the week. This makes reaching for healthy choices that abide by your macronutrient guidelines much easier. Meal prepping will also make it far less likely that you will revert to unhealthy eating habits.

3. Improve Sleep Quality

It’s typical for individuals who don’t get sufficient sleep to experience increased appetite. Interestingly, sleep-deprived people prefer consuming carbohydrates and fats rather than protein.

Two hormones are associated with appetite: the hormone that suppresses appetite, leptin, and the hormone that stimulates appetite, ghrelin. They move in the reverse direction when we are sleep deprived, which is to say that leptin levels rise and ghrelin levels fall.

Establish a consistent sleep routine of seven to eight hours per night to prevent sleep-deprived weight gain. To achieve this, make your bedroom as dark and quiet as possible. Try to maintain a temperature of 67 degrees F (19.4 degrees C). And keep all technology, including your phone, out of the bedroom.

4. Modest Caloric Reduction

To lose weight, you must create a daily negative calorie balance. But you don’t want to cut back too much, or you’ll trigger the body’s starvation response. Reducing calories excessively will also rob you of energy and may catabolize muscle tissue.

I recommend reducing your caloric intake by 250-500 calories below your basal metabolic rate (BMR). This is the number of calories your body needs to meet its energy needs for the day.

Go here to work out your BMR.

5. Exercise

Besides reducing your caloric intake by 250-500 calories daily, you should also aim to burn off a similar number of calories through exercise. You should be doing cardiovascular and strength training exercises to achieve this.

My three favorite forms of calorie-burning cardio are:

• Rowing machine
• SkiErg
• Treadmill on a 12-degree incline

I recommend doing a minimum of three 30-minute cardio sessions per week. Each one should burn around 250 calories.

Strength training won’t burn as many calories as cardio. However, if it’s done with enough intensity, it will bring on an enhanced post-exercise energy consumption (EPOC) effect. This boosts your metabolism for several hours after your workout.

Strength training also builds muscle. The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism will be. That’s because muscle tissue requires much more energy to sustain than fat.

Wrap Up

I do not recommend the chicken and broccoli diet to anyone. It is too restrictive. The calories are too low, and it omits too many essential nutrients.

All short-term, calorie-restricted diets are counterproductive. You may lose some weight in a couple of weeks, but you’ll put it all back, probably with a little extra, when you return to your usual way of eating.

Rather than following the chicken and broccoli diet, include these two excellent foods in a healthy, balanced diet. Combine it with exercise, maintain consistency, and get to your weight loss goals safely and effectively.

References:

1. Page KA, Seo D, Belfort-DeAguiar R, Lacadie C, Dzuira J, Naik S, Amarnath S, Constable RT, Sherwin RS, Sinha R. Circulating glucose levels modulate neural control of desire for high-calorie foods in humans. J Clin Invest. 2011 Oct;121(10):4161-9. doi: 10.1172/JCI57873. Epub 2011 Sep 19. PMID: 21926468; PMCID: PMC3195474.

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