OK, maybe that headline is a little untrue. As far as I know, there is no TV on the planet that feeds you food while you watch.
But lets be honest. Americans watch more TV than any other country, and America is the most overweight country on the planet. The correlation is there. Take a look at this graph: correlating the amount of hours of TV watched vs obesity rate.
Can’t find the United States on that graph? Take a closer look at the lonely dot on the upper right hand corner.
Replace TV with something Productive
The data is there. Watching TV doesn’t add on calories to your tummy, but it does absolutely nothing to help you burn them. As you sit there, watching your favorite shows, you’re not doing anything for your body to burn those calories you ate today.
A simple remedy for this is to replace an hour or so of TV with something productive. Take a walk, hit the gym, whatever. Just get off your ass and MOVE! If you can’t stand missing your favorite shows, get yourself a Tivo. Reward yourself after a workout by watching your favorite shows without commercials.
As Americans, we’ve fallen into a trance with our TV’s. It’s so bad that the NFL started a program to encourage kids to go outside and exercise. We’re going in the wrong direction with our priorities in life, but heck, it’s been like this for ages.
Studies on happiness have shown that people are not happiest when they are watching TV. It would be safe to assume that we enjoy TV so much that it makes us happy, but that is not the case. There is no interaction with TV, there is no input from us.
Instead, we find ourselves happiest when we challenge ourselves, whether mentally or physically. Replace some TV with working out and exercise and you will reap the benefits.
October 15th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
A TV is only useful for a few things. Hockey is one of them (or insert your favourite sport). That is pretty much all, however a DVD player needs to be paired to a TV, making it very useful. Also, they are great at heating a small room, as the vacuum tube gets quite hot!
Other than this, television sets are barely worth having. The computer replaced them ages ago in my opinion.
October 16th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I couldn’t agree more with this article. Thanks so much for sharing and for the motivation. Let’s turn off our TV’s and get more active (already sold mine)!
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October 17th, 2008 at 4:09 am
Nothing wrong with the title actually. I am agree with the title even before read the articles. Actually, it’s not only with tv, it is also happen to gamers, computer users, and so may more. People nowadays, tend to rest more than needed
(seem like me 
)
October 18th, 2008 at 6:27 am
What a great post! And what a chocking report. Interesting to notice that there is almost no obesity in Japan. Watching tv isn’t likely in there culture.
And if you’re addicted to the tv, try to do at least some workouts in front of it.
October 19th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I would have to agree with you, TV can be quite an addictive force in people’s lives.
Since my serious attempt to get fit I have limited my TV viewing to Friday’s after work, I maybe watch 1 or 2 movies.
Take care,
Andrew
October 24th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I could not agree more, I only watch an hour of TV at night to wind down, and I don’t miss it one bit. Especially on the weekends, not siting in front of the tube has opened up a whole new world I never knew existed.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:35 am
In my opinion anything that is over done is not helpful. I love watching TV, from tv series, news and discovery channel but I do it in moderation and I do exercises everyday.
October 29th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
This is an excellent and thought provoking post – it really started me thinking!
I think what is more intriguing in my opinion, at least from a data perspective, is not the outlier of the United States, but what is happening with the cluster of all the other countries. Analyzing that data actually yields a correlation of near 0, and slightly negative (-0.09, you can pull the data from the graph at the Swivel site).
This implies that the root problem is not television itself, but the choice that are made, or likely not made in this case, regarding diet and exercise (isn’t that always the case?
).
What are American’s doing differently outside of watching TV is the question that needs to be answered. Merely turning off the TV will not necessarily lead to thinner people. It’s what they do once they turn if off that matters.
Will they exercise more? Will they get more sleep?
If the answer to these questions is “yes,” then obesity will fall. However, if they just go from watching TV to playing video games or surfing the internet, then obesity rates will not drop, but rather the US would move more clearly toward the cluster of “no relationship,” with obesity rates still high, but TV hours watched declining.
October 30th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I gave up TV a while ago. I now realize how much more I look forward to actually getting out of the house to socialize. It used to be that sitting on the couch at the end of a day in the gym was ‘the thing to do’ when I wanted to chill but now getting out for a relaxing walk or heading over to the girlfriends is what I look forward to.
Sometimes I think about the hours that have been burned away in front of that beast…it’s crazy.
October 31st, 2008 at 3:33 am
Oh yeah! i do agree. it makes people lazy. every person i know when they watch tv they have food beside them. for sure the food they take is not properly digested.
October 31st, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I thinks that’s quiet hard to move from daily habbit like watching TV to another productive activity. People have watched the TV from children to adult, so TV is the most attractive stuff in this world which really hard to leave it out
November 10th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I used to watch a lot of television, but cut back drastically about one month ago and can already tell a difference. Just the act of working in the yard or taking the dog for a walk instead of watching Survivor has been beneficial. I probably won’t stop watching television (especially during football season) but I do plan on buying a treadmill to put in front of a television.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I guess that means you’ve been watching alot of TV lately. HA!
November 13th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
It is so hard to get out of the habit of watching television, but one well worth kicking. You can always TiVo your favs.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I agree that sitting on your butt and doing nothing may contribute to being fat but I know many skinny people who watch way too much tv. I don’t see the correlation in chart. Some coutries have high obesity and low tv time, and vice versa. I think it is all in what you eat compared to what you do. If you don’t eat a lot of calories in a day and don’t do anything active it probably wont matter but if you over eat on calories and sit down all day you are not expending the fuel you are putting in your body.
November 20th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Television is such as waste of time. Every once in a while it is a great way to relieve stress, other than that, much more productive things can be done with your time!
November 20th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I agree there is a connection between watching television and gaining weight. We always feel much better when we take a walk, go hiking or ride our bikes for awhile instead of sitting around staring at the boob tube.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:46 am
I don’t watch TV anymore for the mere fact that it’s a pretty big waste of time. I usually go outside running or swimming. There’s a ton of more stuff to do than just sitting there and watching television.
December 11th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Is the data accurate? How it was gathered? Is it relevant? All these questions need to be made
Otherwise, seems like they just randomly pick data from 2 different, unrelated things and plotted them together. Totally irrelevant most of the time and doesn’t prove relation.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Not only that standing in front of the television sit, but also to sit in front of the computer is for the big responsibility. I can only say: Long live the sport.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
i guess im lucky that im always busy with school, work, and sports to ever be able to sit down and watch tv, except for sunday football games.
-jack
December 17th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
At first I thought that you were kidding about that dot, but you are actually serious. I wonder if the study is really accurate. What if you gave the best TV shows to the French, would they get fat? Maybe there aren’t enough outdoor activities; I am not sure what to think. Either way, the statistics are alarming.
February 4th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
We usually didn’t notice that we spend most of our time in watching our favorite movies, anime series, tv series and other shows on television. With this information, I should minimize watching my favorites shows. I don’t think that too much watching of tv can cause obesity?
February 4th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
This is so true. TV can be such a drain on your life and body. Just take a look around some time and you will see a lot of couch potatoes who are over weight and probably becoming diabetic. You won’t ever lose weight watching Oprah talking about the next best weight loss scam.
February 9th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
I’ve found that as I watch more TV over the years, I have less energy, want to do less things outdoors and just generally feel tired more often. TV is the enemy.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Very informative journal! I have always wondered if we could devote enough time to our health than keeping ourselves busy working online and offline, but now I realize there is a lot of good content being posted online that is worth a read.
I agree that TV can adversly affect our health, especially when we are addicted to eat something while watching TV even when we are not hungry. I guess, we, Americans are quite famous for “leisure eating”, and TV acts as a nice buddy to join in.
August 29th, 2009 at 1:42 am
Damn…I cosider my TV my life line :S
September 10th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I too agree that watching TV the whole day can make us much fatter
December 16th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
I could not agree more! I have seen a lot of my friends getting fatter the minute with television – anything that will not permit you to not use your brain will always make you fat!