Too Much Television

   Scrolling through my files, I stumbled across a column from 2015 by Drs. Oz and Roizen on the health-related problems of watching too much television.
    I much prefer the radio to television. It's easier to multi-task to, and, frankly, I usually find it more interesting. Sports, talk radio, or music, it can entertain me all day while I do other things like read, wax my car, work on the lawn, or exercise. My family makes fun of my "old man" Walkman, but it does the job - Rutgers football game,, WFAN, or rock' n' roll.
    If I want to modernize, I can go with the Sirius XM with a pair of ear phones, and my son, while landscaping all summer, educated himself with various podcasts all day.
    When I do have the television on, I'm usually reading the newspaper while a sporting event drones  in the background. The only time I pay attention is an hour of the news after dinner.
    Don't get me wrong, the television has it's purpose. When the kids were younger, we'd watch American Idol or Who Wants To Be a Millionaire as a family, and it has it's social bonding elements. The Super Bowl, for example, is a huge holiday, really, with the commonality of the television the gathering force. And who hasn't fallen asleep to football after the Thanksgiving meal?
   Still, the article points out that the average American  watches five to seven hours of television per day. That's sedentary time, by and large, which slows your metabolism and raises risks for heart disease, diabetes, and colon cancer, according to several studies cited. The risks increase more if your losing sleep to watch more television, as sleep deprivation has ties to both obesity and diabetes.
  Snacking in front of the TV makes it even worse. It's often salty or sugary snack food, empty calories, essentially. It's also hard to gauge exactly how much you ate picking out of a bowl. The doctors suggest some cut up vegetables in front of you - keep the chips out of sight.
   One suggestion they made for exercise adherence makes sense. If you love Meet the Press on Sunday mornings, make that a time you are at the gym on an elliptical, or at home on the treadmill, watching that show. If its' the local news every night between 5-6, even better! Shower up, and eat dinner at 6:30. You've revved up a healthy appetite, will desire nourishing food, and fed your brain by catching up on the world. And the endorphins released by your workout will make the news slightly less depressing - I hope!