Watching TV Can Make You Fat
Watching TV can make you fat.. An average American sits in front of a TV for seven hours a day on average, burning very little calories and eating more of junk foods they don’t need.
According to a recent research, the risk of obesity is very high in families that watch more than six hours of TV a day. There is even an association between obesity and TV watching among healthy adults that exercise regularly.. So it is that scary.
Obesity and obesity related diseases are a huge burden on public health systems around the world, but especially in Anglo countries- United Kingdom, Australia and United States where obesity is at epidemic levels.
When you are sitting and staring at a screen, you are not moving much at all, watching TV is a sedentary activity so you burn only 50-60 calories max per hour, even less than while you’re sleeping. TV decreases your metabolic rate and your ability to burn fat.
Sleep interruption or deprivation is another contributing factor to weight gain and obesity as your body will be holding on to fat. Think about the number of hours you do not sleep or wake up to be able to watch those late night shows.
As you are not aware what you’re eating while all your attention is on a TV show, you are more likely to eat whatever is advertised on television, without thinking. You will see at least ten food and beverage commercials in an hour of sitting down and watching TV, and believe me these are full of evil messages that get into your subconscious mind without you being aware. How often do you see ads that suggest you eat fruits and veggies?
And most of these TV commercials are quite misinforming, confusing and deceiving with beautiful slim models or actors representing a junk food item to make bucket loads of money. If the food companies are spending billions of dollars every year, you can be sure they’re going to get a lot more than that as profit from your pockets. Do you think they care about how much sugar and fat you eat or about how much money they make?
TV commercials are mostly about high sugar, high saturated or trans fat, low dietary fiber processed and packaged foods that have a long list of ingredients- mostly chemical, they will certainly make you acquire bad eating habits, usually increase your cholesterol and make you gain weight.
Would they have messages like ‘Corn syrup is good for you, it is made from healthy corn’, ‘Eating chips can lower your cholesterol’ , ‘Quench your thirst by drinking Coke’, ‘Candy bar is great for satisfying your hunger’?? Why do you think diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases are on the rise in US and around the world? TV surely is not the only reason for these obesity related diseases but certainly is a major contributing factor.
Having said that, not everything on TV is bad for you.. You will find a few health, exercise and nutrition programs that are very informative and helpful. You can even exercise with some of the famous fitness instructors for free. So as long you make certain changes around your TV watching habits, reduce your TV hours, choose what you watch, remove TVs from kitchen and bedrooms, turn off the TV while eating and be more conscious of what you eat, you can even lose weight watching TV.
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