Mya Nelson
Cut out some TV time; burn more calories.
This finding from a study published today is not exactly shocking, but it does suggest that flipping off one of those touching holiday movies every day can help prevent the seemingly inevitable weight gain every year.
Published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, this new study also strengthens AICR’s expert report findings. The report found that sedentary living and watching a lot of TV was linked to weight gain and obesity, which is the big story in cancer lately. AICR estimates found that excess body fat leads to about 100,000 cancers every year in the United States.
You can read the study abstract here.
Basically, this was a small study that first counted how much TV 36 adults watched. All the participants were overweight or obese. After three weeks, they randomly split the participants into two groups: one group didn’t change their TV habits and the other cut their TV viewing time in half (this was enforced by an electronic lock-out system).
After another three weeks, the researchers found that those who watched less TV burned 119 more calories per day during the three-week lock-out period than the observation period. In comparison, the control group burned 95 fewer calories per day during this three-week period compared to the observation period. Participants were wearing armbands that measured physical activity.
About 100 calories per day is the amount researchers estimate we need to either lose or burn in order to avoid weight gain.
Of course, this was a small study, participants were all overweight and they reported a minimum of 3 hours of daily TV watching per day but still, doing something instead of watching TV – or even while watching TV — is logically one way to avoid weight gain or even lose weight.
If you want to take a quiz to see if you are active enough for good health, click here.
