If you like to exercise to music or while watching TV, don’t stop. It’s probably good for you
Too much time spent viewing TV and digital devices leaves less time for exercising and makes us want to eat more, studies show. But new research suggests there’s an exception – watching, or playing music, while working out
Nearly everyone has heard the bad news regarding screen use, personal fitness, and weight management. Too much TV, smartphone, and other digital involvement has decreased our exercise time and increased our calorie consumption. It comes as a surprise, then, to learn about a new paper that’s got something good to say about screen time and exercise.
A team from the University of Ottawa in Canada measured the post-exercise food intake and movement patterns of teenage boys who exercised while watching TV, listening to music or receiving no other stimuli. No previous experiment had looked into the effect of screens or music on subsequent food consumption and physical activity. The findings were published in the journal Appetite.
The Ottawa research team asked 24 male teens (average age just under 15) to do a slow jog on a treadmill for 30 minutes at mid-morning while watching the Netflix show of their choice, listening to the digital music of their choice, or receiving no stimuli.
The subjects performed each 30-minute exercise session, with a week between workouts. Afterwards, the investigators measured how much the teens ate at lunch and for the rest of the day. They also monitored how much the teens moved during the rest of the day.
Similar studies with sedentary subjects have often shown that calorie consumption increases after a period of sedentary TV watching or music listening. Also, some exercise studies indicate that subjects “compensate” for their workouts by moving less the rest of the day, diminishing the exercise benefit.
