Less Television = Fewer Calories
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 9:03AM
What would happen if you watched television only half as much as you do now? You might lose weight - not because you eat less but because if you got up off the couch, you might burn more calories. That’s the conclusion of a study published in the December 14/28, 2009 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers at the University of Vermont assessed the TV watching time of 36 adults over the course of three weeks - the participants' average TV watching time was almost five hours a day. Then the investigators gave 20 of their subjects a device that turned off the television after they had watched half as many hours as they had been accustomed to. Another 16 study participants served as a control group. All the participants wore an armband that measured physical activity for the duration of the three-week study. The group that had their TV-time cut in half burned 119 more calories per day than they did before the study; those in the control group burned 95 fewer calories per day even though their TV-time was unaffected. The investigators suggested that small changes in daily habits - such as watching less television - could make a dent in our national obesity epidemic. Cutting only 100 calories per day "could prevent the gradual weight gain observed in most of the population," the researchers wrote.
My take? I'm not opposed to spending an occasional hour in front of the television, but I am concerned about the unhealthy eating habits couch potatoes often adopt and the fact that the more leisure time you spend in front of the television, the less time you have for more active pursuits. As this small study shows, cutting TV time can make a difference in the amount of calories you burn, and over time could turn out to be a big benefit for your weight and your health.
Reader Comments (5)
I am surprised it takes a study to reveal something that seems so obvious. We are giving away a big portion of our lives to a box in the corner of our homes. We breathe less, walk less, communicate less, imagine and dream less (unless we fall asleep). Besides allowing our brains to be slowly sucked out by mostly mindless, irritating commercials, we expose our brains to blue light, which inhibits the release of chemicals that make us feel sleepy and allow us to get a full night of restful sleep. Can you imagine what our life would be like if we started an extra creative project, new talent, went back to school, started another job, had time to teach our children, hold, or read to them with the extra 5 hours we used to sit in front of the t.v., watching whatever came after the first program we wanted to watch? And, oh so easily lose weight. Thank you for your article.
Thank you!
I know from experience that what this study is saying is true. When my daughter was young we had to make some lifestyle changes due to finances, and one of the things I did was stop the cable, and give away the TV. We had only a computer for word processing, email, music, to watch DVDs (Friday movie night), and to hear the news. It was tough at first, getting used to the quiet mostly, but it made a tremendous difference in our lives. My daughter is 17 now, and we still do not have TVs. We both have lap tops - which I write on in the evenings, and she ended up in community theatre/dance companies. Plus we are both cultivated a love of books. We even had reading nights where one story was passed back and forth and read aloud. And the biggest plus of all was that the money went towards travel (with a lot of walking :)
Thanks for listening
Nncy T
Dear Nancy:
What a wonderful account and thank you so much for posting.
Congratulations!!!
Hi Dr. Weil,
First, thanks for this post and for your books, some of which I've read. We purposefully chose to live without television until recently. There was no computer either (or cell phones etc.) Just nature, singing, dancing, swimming etc. We wanted our daughters to grow up with the love of books and nature. Then, four years ago I started my radio interview show and was given a link to cable TV. Around the same time we got a computer. At that time our daughters were 13 and 15. It didn't take them long to catch up on computer skillls and to get into watching some movies on cable television. We still don't watch commercial television. Do the girls complain about how we've raised them? No. They love books. The 19-year-old is even a skilled, trained editor. These girls, raised in this way without vaccinations and on organic vegetarian food have never had so much as an ear ache between them and have never had to visit a doctor. They are fit, slim, healthy, happy, compassionate human beings. All without television until recently.
I relate to Nancy's post. Well done. We regularly read out loud to each other. Our eldest has read all of the Harry Potter books out loud to us plus a number of David Eddings books. You can see she loves fantasy. I cannot too highly recommend reading out loud. Helen and Scott Nearing were still doing it when he was in his 90s.
Sincerely,
John Haines
http://www.insearchofsimplicity.com/