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Every Hours of TV Watched Costs You 144 Steps!

By Cari Haus On March 9, 2009 Under Health Benefits of Walking

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health decided to find out just how much being a couch potato affected the number of steps per day. So they asked 500 ethnically diverse men and women to wear pedometers for five days, and also to track how much TV they watched during that period. The pedometers were masked, so participants couldn’t see how many steps they were taking.

The results, which were published in The American Journal of Public Health, showed that the more time participants spent watching TV, the less likely they were to walk 10,000 steps five days a week (as recommended by the President’s Council for Physical Fitness and Sports).

The participants, many of whom were overweight, reported watching from zero to 14.5 hours of television a day, with an average of about four hours. This would be about right according to the national average, which is four hours per day. (Watching TV is now the most time-consuming activity in the United States, ranking second only to work and sleep).

Dr. Bennett, who headed the study, found that participants walked 144 steps less per day for every hour of TV watched. In other words, individuals who watched 10 hours of TV per day walked an average of 1440 steps less than those who watched no TV.

Of course, this problem could be alleviated by putting the treadmill in front of the TV. If you walked four miles on the treadmill in just one hour, you would have 8000 steps in right there!

While watching TV has been linked to excess body weight among children and adults, walking promotes weight loss. Walking doesn’t have to be time-consuming. There are many ways to fit a few extra steps into your daily routine. For example, you could:

• Take the stairs as often as possible, at home, at work and in stores.
• Walk to do shopping or other errands.
• Park several blocks from your destination and walk the rest of the way.
• Park at the rear of a well-lit shopping center parking lot or at the opposite end of the mall from where you need to shop.
• Walk your dog, or
• Walk with your child.

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