Should We Cut Down on TV?

How much television do you watch each day? According to new guidelines from NICE , if you are trying to watch your weight, then it might be too much.

NICE - or the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence - have updated their guidance on tackling obesity for the first time in eight years, with one of the new recommendations being to limit your TV-viewing to only two hours a day. You could even opt for a whole day free of television at least once a week.

Obesity rates have almost doubled in England over the last ten years, with a quarter of adults and 20% of schoolchildren now obese. That's one of the issues that NICE hope to address with their guidance update, helping people lead healthier lives.

“Obesity rates… continue to be a huge concern for local authorities and the health service in England,” said NICE’s Professor Mike Kelly. He added that while there are already guidelines on tackling obesity, the latest update focuses on ways that individuals can help reduce their own risk of becoming overweight or obese.

Professor Kelly explained that maintaining a healthy weight can be done by making sure our energy intake from food and drink (ie: calories) doesn’t exceed the energy we use through daily activities. The guidelines are a way of giving people advice that is “more specific and based on real evidence”, helping them to keep the weight off after losing it in the first place.

“We all know we should probably take the stairs rather than the lift, cut down on TV time, eat more healthily and drink less alcohol,” he said. He acknowledged that it can be difficult for us to know what the most useful changes to our day-to-day lives can be when it comes to our weight and health.

One of the recommendations is to become more active, such as walking or cycling to work or school, or taking up an active hobby, like swimming, dancing or football. Another is limiting the amount of television we watch, as mentioned before, and not eating our meals in front of the TV.

We should also be making sure we get enough sleep at night and having breakfast in the morning. The first meal of the day kick-starts our metabolism and people who eat a healthy breakfast have been shown to fare better at losing weight than those who forgo the “most important meal of the day” entirely.

The guidelines indicate that we should be indulging in fast-food or takeaways are rarely as possible, as well as cutting down on drinks with added sugar in them, including sports drinks. We should also consider adopting a healthy Mediterranean diet, which you can learn more about here . And let's not forget the old classic: cutting down on alcohol and all of its extra “hidden” calories.

While these suggestions may all seem rather obvious (we have definitely heard them before!), we need all the help we can get when it comes to the fight against obesity. And it can't hurt to try. As Professor Kelly points out: “Following a healthy diet and being more physically active is important for everyone, not just if you are already overweight or obese.”