Cowboys: 7 points; You: 7 pounds
By Chris Bynum
NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
Sunday, October 13, 2002
While your favorite football team is gaining yardage, you could be gaining pounds.
And when your team is losing yards, you're probably not losing weight, either. Experts say that sitting on the sofa and watching ensures that expansion will be your fate no matter who wins.
Three hours of television viewing a day "can increase an average couch potato's weight by as much as 7 pounds a year," says Tulane University professor Tom Farley, chairman of the department of community health science.
Consider that the football season attracts a fan to the screen like a moth to flame, throw in chips and beer, and you've got a weighty situation.
An Internet fitness site for men, eFitness.com, figures it this way: The total calorie count for the average guy parked in front of the television who consumes beer, hot dogs, chips, nuts and pizza for two games on Sunday and one game on Monday is 1,181 calories. Multiply that total by 17 weeks of the pro football season per year, plus the playoffs, Super Bowl and college bowl games, and the grand total is . . . well, fat.
"Assuming that a person burns 2,000 calories a day just by living, he's taking in an extra 1,181 calories per week during football season," says Peter Shankman, speaking for the Web site.
The final score, he says, is an extra 8 to 10 pounds gained by the loyal football fan.
Admittedly, these calculations are meant to send the guys to the fitness Web site. But for male or female TV viewers, the numbers can add up.
They especially add up in the fall and winter, when adult Americans put on most of their extra pounds, says Farley, citing a recent New England Journal of Medicine study. (Holidays account for some of the extra pounds, as well as shorter daylight hours during those months limiting physical activity.)
But whether it's due to snack food during football season, pumpkin pie during the holidays or the end of after-work softball games, adults often don't get rid of the weight they gain at this time. Every advancing year is another increase in body weight.
Not to pick on the guys, but Nielsen ratings demographics indicate that men far outnumber women in football television viewing. That's whom the beer commercials target, and how they target them is another factor influencing the poundage pileup.
"Commercials (in general) show men heartily devouring fried chicken or apple pie, while women rhapsodize over the thrill of eating tiny low-calorie cookies," says Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, psychiatrist and author of "Fed Up," a book about people's "relationship" with food. "Ads invite men to savor the experience of eating half-pound steaks or honey-drenched biscuits, while portraying women as angelic for restricting themselves to tiny squares of cheesecake."
"The messages are all too clear: Food is fun for men, dangerous for women," writes Oliver-Pyatt.
The experts are not saying that football season should be void of refreshments. They are saying that the ritual of mindless eating in front of the television is causing unhealthy consumption. Munching in front of the TV, they say, is one of the culprits behind the country's epidemic of obesity.
"I think if, in our society, we made it a rule not to eat in front of the television, we would see rates of obesity decline," says Oliver-Pyatt, whose book advocates replacing dieting rules with lifestyle changes.
She detests rules because restrictions are too much like dieting, but she has one in her house: No eating out of bags. You want chips? You pour some into a bowl (a small one) and eat from the bowl.
Farley, himself a football fan, doesn't eat when he is watching a game. He sees food as something people sit down and enjoy together. He eats meals, not snacks.
Oliver-Pyatt agrees. She thinks families and/or friends should have dinner before or after a game. They should sit down, share food and interact (talk about the game).
Farley says football fans can take some responsibility by not bringing snack foods into the house. And be aware, he says, of just how convenient the junk food industry makes grazing.
"There was a time when you opened a package or popped a top, you couldn't re-close it," says Farley, who says packaging that makes for easy opening and closing invites all-day snacking, rather than eating when hungry and being finished.
So if you're thinking of using the Twinkie defense for the extra pounds you put on this football season, it won't work. The best defense is a good offense. |
