Over a lifetime, an 80-year-old person would have watched 116,800 hours of television, compared to only 98,000 hours of work. As a nation, adults watch 880 million hours of television every day or 321 billion hours per year. Whew! Imagine what could get done if we all just stopped watching TV. And when we feel overwhelmed, tired, and exhausted we don’t have energy to anything but—you guessed it—watch TV. It is a dreadful cycle. So take a break from TV for a week and see what happens to your life. This could add, on average, about 300 calories extra per TV meal. Now consider that at least 40% of families watch TV while eating dinner. It becomes clear that TV is a big part of the obesity epidemic in the U.S. and that TV, in fact, makes you gain weight. Life is too interesting and wonderful to spend your time either watching TV or recapping television to your friends. Find something interesting to do: volunteer, read, paint—anything but watch more TV. Sitting together and watching TV does not grow a relationship. Turn that TV off and find something to do together—cooking, exercising, taking a walk, anything. But you are not relaxing—your mind is still receiving stimuli from the TV, you are processing information and reacting emotionally. Have you ever found yourself thinking about TV characters? Do you ever dream about TV shows? These are signs that the brain is working hard to process all the TV you have been watching. Watching TV isolates you. Nothing is going to change in your world if you are watching TV. Turn off the TV, go out into the world, talk to people, and see what happens.

using the TV to calm downnot being able to control your viewingfeeling angry or disappointed in how much TV you watchedfeeling on edge if kept from watchingfeeling a loss of control while watching

If the idea of giving up TV for a week is horrifying, you may be addicted to television. Luckily, TV addiction is a habit and not a physical addiction like smoking. You should be able to control it once you are aware of the problem and make a decision to change. If you didn’t know that your iPod could talk to your running shoes, you wouldn’t feel like your current shoes are too low-tech. If you didn’t know about vacuums that never lose suction, your current vacuum would seem fine. Our perception of need is determined by what we see. Need less by watching less TV.