Spending time in front of the television makes you gain weight, but certain programs are responsible for even greater weight gain.
Pour losing weight, you have to put on your sneakers, sports outfit and go burn some calories. It is unlikely that it is by sitting in front of the sofa eating sweets that you can lose weight. And it even seems that we gain even more weight by looking at a certain type of program on television or on the Internet. How is this possible? We explain.
Watching TV makes you gain weight
Several studies have established an indirect, but powerful, link between watching television and weight gain. People who spend more than five hours a day in front of their screen have in fact five times more luck to suffer from overweight than those who only watch it for two hours. Knowing that already after two hours, the risk of being overweight increases by 55% compared to people who refrain from looking for even a minute.
The reasons which explain this link between television and weight gain are also known to doctors. Firstly, there is a sedentary lifestyle which leads to lower calorie expenditure. Once installed on the sofa, the tendency is great to nibble. We then move towards products rich in fat and sugar. Desires which are accentuated by the advertisements broadcast and which rarely praise the benefits of grated carrots.
Watching sports makes you fat
We will have understood that spending time in front of the screen promotes weight gain, but, and this is even more surprising, some programs make you gain weight more than others. It was two French scientists who demonstrated this surprising fact. They invited 112 students to the experimental laboratory at Grenoble School of Management. These people divided into two groups watched videos. 56 students have watched athletes in action while the other half saw videos without any physical activity.
The results are clear. The first group, staring at the people doing sports, consumed more candy than the second group of people studied. These results suggest that watching sports on television causes a vicarious sense of accomplishment that leads to a consumption taking the form of a reward. Another observation led to the conclusion that men ate more sweets that women.
Sports on TV and sweets
When we look at the sport on tvour brain therefore associates the performance of athletes with our body and a transfer takes place, their performance becomes ours. We have the impression of having, we too, carried out an exercise and we are thus more indulgent with ourselves: we more easily allow ourselves a small reward. And who says reward says nibbling and unwanted weight gain.
The two scientists then took their study further by selecting the type of sport viewed. Two groups were formed: those who watched videos of simple sports (running) and others that were more complex (such as long jump or rugby). Their conclusion is clear: “Students who watched the easy sports video ate a lot more candy (30.1 g) than those who watched the difficult sports video (18 g)”.
