TV, Sleep and Eating Out – Who Knew?

I just read about an interesting study that looked at preventing obesity in children. The 3 characteristics they looked at were the amount of sleep the children got, whether they sat down with their family at home and ate dinner and how much television that they watched. They found that in the families that regularly ate dinner at home together, where the children got 10 hours of sleep and spent less than 2 hours per day watching television (videos, dvds etc) the children were 40% less likely to be overweight.

I have read other studies that have found that adults who eat out more than 3 times per week, watch more than 2 hours of television per day and don’t get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight.

So why is television a culprit? One reason is that when you watch TV your metabolism slows down – more so than if you read a book. Your body goes into a semi-comatose state where your energy requirements drop and your metabolism slows down. Another reason is that there are so many commercials for food that we are driven to eat more! (Interestingly, the foods they are trying to sell us are often highly processed or contain lots of added sugar which we are trying to avoid).

What does sleep have to do with your weight? There are many studies that show that adults need to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. A recent study compared a group of nurses who slept less than 6 hours a night to those sleeping more. The nurses who slept less than 6 hours a night were overweight. Surprisingly, the overweight nurses were significantly more active than their normal-weight peers. The overweight nurses took an average of 13,896 steps per day, compared to 11,292 for normal-weight nurses. The overweight nurses also burned nearly 1,000 more calories per day on average than their normal-weight peers.

The moral of the story is having some weights or a balance ball on hand to play with while watching TV will help us keep moving. Going for a walk after dinner - helps our bodies use the calories better and may improve sleep quality at night. And you might want to consider taking the TV out of your bedroom.