TV - It Won't Flatter Your Figure

by Martha Edwards (Subscribe to Martha Edwards's posts)
Feb 6th 2009 3:00PM

This might sound like the most blatantly obvious news out there, but your weight has a very close connection with how much TV you watch -- as in, the more TV you watch, the more you are likely to weigh. Whether it has to do with the fact that people tend to snack a lot in front of the tube, or the fact that when you're watching TV, you're probably not doing anything active, the moral of the story is clear: TV is no good for your figure.

Keeping this in mind, maybe now's a good time to forgo some of your must-see shows for an evening walk? But if missing Lost is absolutely not an option, perhaps you can catch the lasest episode while on the treadmill at the gym? Or, at the very least, try to do some sit-ups and push-ups on the commercial break.

(via Calorie Lab)

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u262f 2-06-2009 @ 7:50PM

The linked article didn't say what you said, but what you said brought up a different thought. I didn't think about it before, but I started losing weight after we got a TiVo, in spite of the TiVo resulted in us watching more TV...

Maybe fast-forwarding through commercials efficiently means that's no time to visit the kitchen for seconds while we're watching TV. Maybe the ability to easily pause the show to have random discussions in the middle means that we're talking more and eating less.

I know it's supposed to be bad to eat in front of the TV, but we do that all the time. We put the food on individual plates ahead of time. Being in the middle of a show makes us not want to stop to get seconds. We can take two hours or more to eat a plate of food while watching one show (pausing to discuss or MST3K the show in between). Also, since we're watching TV, we polish off far more and a far larger variety of vegetables than we would if we actually had to taste them.

Come to think of it, maybe one tactic to get kids to eat vegetables without complaint might be to stick them in front of a TV. Give them a plate with a little bit of their favorite food (enough to convince them to eat, but not enough to satisfy their appetite) and lots of vegetables. As they get involved in the show, they might mindlessly consume the vegetables too. Maybe it would get them used to eating more vegetables.

As for the linked article, correlation doesn't equal causation, and they're studying children. Children being allowed to watch more TV might indicate less successful parenting in general.