Video Games and Obesity. How do they relate?

Children are very likely to make poor food choices while they are playing video games. The video games take up their full attention and time. It's easier and quicker to eat snack type foods so you can get back to gaming or eat and play at the same time.

They get involved in what they're doing and because the games are *marketed toward children, it does a very good job of making them come back for more instead of going outside to play for a while or even doing any kind of physical activity that's necessary to stay healthy.

A 2004 study showed that for every hour a child plays video games or watches television their risk for obesity may be doubled!

Another study on video games and obesity showed that children who have higher body weights tend to play video games more than children who have lower body weights. Kids who are overweight or obese tend to choose more sedentary activities and often have fewer friends than children who have healthy body weights. Either way there is a clear connection between video games and obesity.

For the most part, the only thing getting exercised while playing video games is your hands and fingers, which does not use up very much energy. Many times the only movement involved is getting up to use the restroom or grabbing a snack or some soda out of the refrigerator.

The food choices that people make when playing video games typically aren’t the healthiest options. It’s easy to grab a bag of chips and snack away as you play a video game. Even if you pause the game to get something to eat it will often be a quick and easy to prepare meal so you can quickly get back to playing the game.

The solution is easy in theory but difficult in practice.Since there is a link between video games and obesity, try to limit your child’s playtime so that they can also do more physical activities.

It’s also important to encourage your children to play more interactive type games like those offered by the Wii or Wii fit. They can still get the enjoyment of playing a video game, but they will be physically active at the same time.

Spend some time with your children by playing interactive video games with them and make it a healthy activity that the whole family can enjoy!

If you're looking for interactive video games for you kids, there are options for each popular system these days including, Playstation Move games, Wii Fit (and a lot of the Wii games) and Xbox's Kinect addon. The Wii still has the most interactive games available since the system was built with that in mind from the start. Since then though the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 have jumped on the bandwagon with their similar addons.

If you don't have the cash to spend or just aren't interested in those systems or their addons, then plan physical activities for your children every week in place of video games.

At the same time, video game time should be limited to smaller portions of the day. Both of these really need to be done in conjunction if your child already plays a lot of video games.

When their game time for the day is over or before it has begun, make sure you have a plan for physical activity that they can do in place of all the time they previously spent playing video games. If you would like some help on some ideas or plans for that, check out some of our other pages like, Benefits of Physical Activity or Child Health and Fitness.

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