The 5 Ways TV Is Making You Fat

Have you ever noticed that there's a load of stuff on TV that's, well, rubbish? 
And watching Big Brother - even though you may never admit to it - poses a greater threat than mind-numbing tedium. Sure, some TV is worth investing effort in, but wasting precious time and brain cells on telly drivel could be making you fat. 

5.You are subject to rogue food advertising

The food industry has an advertising budget matched only by the cash behind the automotive industry. For every advert promoting the benefits of organic veg, there are about a thousand others spinning jingles like “I’m lovin’ it!” round your head.

Maybe that’s why television is shown to result in increased meal frequency and high television watching is directly linked to obesity. Your brain is constantly inundated with messaging about high-calorie rubbish food, so it's only natural that it makes you more inclined to crave it.

4.Watching TV makes you eat more

Let alone the psychology of food advertising, merely eating while watching TV can make you plumper.

You actually are prone to eating more while watching television. It's easy to fall into the trap of eating absent-mindedly, even if you’re not hungry - and you’ll overeat. When you eat at a table, you are more conscious of the food that goes in your mouth, but TV serves as a distraction of what and how much you’re eating. According to the above linked study, “Television viewing induced a significant stimulation of [food] intake.”

Basically, the longer you sit trying to develop your winning Deal or No Deal strategy, the more pounds of the unwanted kind you'll start collecting.

3.Watching TV slows your metabolism

Did you know that 20% of your resting metabolic rate comes from brain function? Now think about how much brain work you're doing while watching your typical Sunday night fare.

One study determined that “television viewing has a fairly profound lowering effect of metabolic rate and may be a mechanism for the relationship between obesity and amount of television viewing.”

Even just spacing out without a television switched on burns more calories than watching TV does, because your brain is more active when it has to take on the job of entertaining you. Plus, you’re likely to fidget more without something to watch.
That's not to say that you should sit staring into space instead - but watching TV does shut you down. The whole practice combines decreased brain activity with decreased movement. All this adds up to fewer calories burned and more unwanted pounds gained. 

2.Prolonged sitting is really bad for you (and makes you fat)

This frightening, yet well-researched graphic points out that sitting causes: 

- Electrical impulses in the legs to shut off.
- Metabolism to dramatically drop.
- The enzymes involved in breaking down fat to drop 90%. 
- Insulin effectiveness to drop and increases the risk of type 2 diabetes.
- Those who watch three or more hours of TV a day to have a 64% higher risk of dying from heart disease.
- Each extra hour of TV watching = an 11% increase in risk of death.

Unless you’re on a treadmill or doing jumping jacks while watching TV, you’re  more likely to die sooner, or at least chubbier. Forget The Apprentice and do some headless-chicken-running-around yourself, forget Total Wipeout and set up an obstacle course in the garden... or just work out while you watch telly.

1.It's a time drain

It may sound glaringly obvious, but the number one reason people don’t exercise is because of a lack of time. Everyone is so over-scheduled with work and other family duties that they can’t find time for getting fit, yet they still manage to pencil in time for TV. The average British man watches 28 hours of television a week, compared to the 50 minutes a week which the average UK adult spends exercising. Staying up late to catch up on Mock The Week could be cutting into the perfect exercise time.

Barbara Brehm is a professor of exercise and sport studies at Smith College in Massachusetts, and in her 2004 book,Successful Fitness Motivation Strategies, she outlines how self-control is a limited resource and that the stress we experience during the day gradually erodes our willpower to exercise. "People who exercise early in the morning have the highest adherence rates; they have not yet expended time and energy overcoming the barriers that inevitably develop during the day," she states. And we all know how much more tempting the pub can seem after work than a gym session.

The trick to combat this is by skipping TV and going to bed earlier, so you can get up early to exercise. Easy.