Eating chicken alone won’t help you build muscle. You’ll need to incorporate strength training for that. When you put enough stress on your muscles, you create small tears on them. Your body needs to repair these micro-tears in your muscles, so that’s where chicken and other proteins come in. When you consume chicken, your body breaks down the protein into amino acids to create new muscle to smooth over the tears (per Transparent Labs).
While eating chicken helps you build new muscle, eating too much chicken won’t help you build more muscle. Instead, the extra protein can be used for energy, but if you don’t use that energy, your body will store it as fat, says Oklahoma State University.
Aside from protein, chicken has niacin to help your body convert food sources into energy. Your body needs vitamin B6 from chicken to draw stored glycogen from your muscles for more energy. While you’re training hard, iron shuttles oxygen to your muscles so you can work harder. Selenium found in chicken breasts not only gives your metabolism a boost but also helps repair your cells. Zinc is a mineral that helps your body build muscle by supporting hormone production (per Muscle & Fitness).