NYT: Click Off the TV, and Burn More Calories

December 22, 2009
The New York Times
Click Off the TV, and Burn More Calories
By RONI CARYN RABIN

Just push yourself away from the television. You will burn more calories.

Overweight adults who cut their viewing in half for three weeks used about 120 more calories a day than a similar group of viewers, who continued watching five hours a day on average, a small research trial has found.

While 120 calories may not sound like much, it is equivalent to the number of calories burned in a one-mile walk, said Jennifer J. Otten, lead author of the paper, published in the Dec. 14-28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

“We need a longer-term study to see if this would be an intervention that would help with weight loss, or even weight gain prevention,” Dr. Otten said. “But if you add it up over time, it’s equivalent to walking eight miles a week. Over a year, it might help prevent weight gain of 12 pounds.”

To carry out the trial, the researchers recruited 36 overweight and obese adults who watched at least three hours of TV a day and randomly assigned 20 of them to cut that time in half. The reduction was enforced through an electronic lock-out device. All of the participants wore armband accelerometers that measured their movements, Dr. Otten said.

Unlike children whose television time is cut, the adults did not eat less. But they spent more time in light physical activities or sedentary activities that burn more calories than watching television does — reading, playing board games or scrapbooking.