Burn calories by watching less TV
United States researchers conducting a randomised controlled trial found that adults weighing above the healthy range could burn more calories by watching less television.
Trial participants who cut their television viewing time in half were more active and on average burned an extra 120 more calories a day.
The study was the work of researchers at the University of Vermont in Burlington, and appeared in the December issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Hatch Funds Act and the National Institutes of Health funded the research.
Lead author, Dr Jennifer Otten, who is now a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, told the press, “taking away time spent in front of the television has the potential to improve a person’s activity levels”.
She said that the more time adults spend in front of the TV, the more likely they are to become obese and suffer from diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
She and her colleagues looked at how reducing the amount of time spent watching TV affected calorie consumption, energy expenditure, body weight, time spent asleep, and the balance between calorie intake and activity in adults who were overweight or obese.
Dr Otten said that the 120 calories a day of energy the intervention group burned off when they halved their TV viewing was the “equivalent to walking more than a mile”.
“We don’t know if these short-term changes will translate, but the results may be similar in a longer term study and could prevent weight gain,” she added.
