The answer to the question is very personal but should be informed. Managing weight loss long term is about making informed choices and understanding the consequences of a choice.
If chicken skin is a red line for you, a price too far, then go for it but also identify what you are willing to give up to balance it out. I personally love cooked chicken skin but not enough to make it my red line. I would rather have a nice pudding, a gin and tonic or the odd curly wurly.
However I have always wondered what was so bad about chicken skin. It is not like other meats where you can clearly see the fat and can cut it off before or after cooking. Despite this for the last three years I have always removed the skin, usually from chicken as I have done with the thighs in this picture.
The answer was recently shown to me after I followed a tip from my aunt, cooking the chicken thigh skins in the oven making a ‘treat’ for my dog. What was revealed after cooking made me realise that chicken skin would never been something I wanted so much that I was happy to consume the fat that comes with it.
When baked in the oven you get great the crispy skins you would expect but in the tray below is left a pool of fat. Now knowing there is still a layer of fat left on the still shiny skins you can see that even the skins , once cooked, carry their own fat count and must be a periodic treat for the dog rather than a regular one.
Even with some left on the skins look what was left behind and would have been part of your carefully planned meal. If you are watching your cholesterol, let alone trying to lose weight, is this a treat too far?
Change how you cook and still enjoy what you eat. 