Most people have no idea how many hours they spend glued to the TV each day. If you think there are only 24 hours in an entire day then a report by the Nielsen Company which suggests the average US citizen watches about 34 hours of TV per week is shocking. I realize the big flaw in those figures is that they are averages, so some people will watch far less than that, but that also means some people watch far more to balance it out.

I think it is the fact that LCD TVs flooded the market and drove prices down while taking up much less space that has driven the viewing figures up. Before the came onto the market a television was a huge, unwieldy and expensive item. No longer do kids have to put up with what their parents are watching in the living room, instead they all have their own TVs and can watch whatever they like. Plus the main TV of the household, which used to be anything from a 32 inch to a 42 inch LCD TV has started to go up in size and people have huge 60 inch TVs now in rooms that really aren’t big enough for them.

In the Western world we now have access 24/7 to cheap processed food which is laden with a calories and unfortunately not laden with nutrients, combine that with the amount of TV we watch which has us sat down all night and probably eating that food, and it is easy to see why so many people are obese nowadays. So what can you do instead of watching so much TV?

The first thing that comes to mind is to try and find a new hobby you can enjoy. There are so many different hobbies you can try that there is something for everyone, and even if they don’t get you physically active then at least they get you mentally active. Even if you avoid the more exotic hobbies and go for something like collecting stuff instead then it is still very rewarding. Some people might complain that they don’t have enough time to take up a new hobby though, but based on the figures we discussed earlier then if you cut down how much TV you watch then you could have 30 hours or more a week to dedicate to a new hobby. That is enough time to learn to play a musical instrument, or you could join a hiking club and go out with them, or even start learning to speak a foreign language.

Or if you don’t fancy any of that then you could go back to college. If you want to get a better or even just a different job then with all the extra time you’d have from not watching TV you could take night classes in something to get new qualifications. If you hate the idea of actually attending classes then you can’t use that as an excuse to get out of it, you can do courses through distance learning now instead. So I don’t want to hear any excuses about not having time to do interesting things anymore, you only need at most an hour or two per night to watch your favorite shows, anything after that is just you being lazy!