Turn off Your TV
By cutting back on television watching, you may also improve your health and increase your life expectancy.
Here are a few reasons why:
Watching TV excessively makes you inactive and more likely to gain weight.
Sitting for prolonged hours can lead to chronic back and neck pain.
TV can be stressful, mainly if you are a news junkie.
TV prevents quality social interaction and can contribute to anxiety and depression.
All of these things can have a negative impact on your health as well as your longevity.
Can TV Shorten Your Life?
According to the ongoing Australian Diabetes, Obesity, and Lifestyle Study, people who spend an average of six hours per day watching TV can expect to live 4.8 years less than those who watch no TV.
On average, every single hour of TV viewed after age 25 reduces the viewer's life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.
It is a fact that sitting for more than 30 minutes will put your body in hibernation mode. That's when your body will slow down the calorie-burning functions and prepare the body for sleep. If you're not sleeping well, not getting 7 or 8 hours every night, you might be spending too much time sitting after dinner. You passed the point of sleep, that's when the body is ready to fall asleep, and you are forcing yourself to stay awake to finish what you're watching or reading.
I can remember the late 1940s and the 1950s when I lived at home. My mother's parents, my parents, and my brother and I lived in a farmhouse on a small farm. I can remember those times as some of the best times of my childhood. My father had a job in the city. The rest of us worked at the farm. My brother and I were too small to really do any work, but we were learning how to weed the garden and pick fruit from the apple trees.
The point is that my mother and grandparents worked all day. We had a chicken farm and at the high point, we had about 400 chickens. My grandparents were constantly working, sitting only to eat meals and read for a while after dinner. After we moved back to the city, nothing really changed. There was always work to do, no one sat down except for meals and a short time after dinner to read a book or the paper.
Saturday morning was kid's television, all the cartoon shows came on. Sunday was a time for family television. Usually to watch baseball or football. In the evening the adults would watch a variety show like Ed Sullivan. There were only 2 channels until 1955, after 1955 there were 4 channels. I never watched TV except for sports on the weekends. It wasn't until the 1980s when I began to watch some of the evening shows. Watching TV is a type of mindless activity and should only be done for short periods of time.
The secret to longevity is to stay active and challenge your mind when you're working. You might not realize it, but having a second job isn't really a bad thing. It keeps you off the couch and out of the kitchen. It can keep you engaged with others and that keeps you in a better mode.
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If you want to lose your body fat look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You’ll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books.
There are two e-books. “How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight?” is available at all the online bookstores selling for $3.99. Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find my e-book. This book gives you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans, or meal plans.
Look for my first book at Amazon.com, bn.com, iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.
My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com and other online bookstores. Just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page.
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