Television viewing and obesity in adult females.

We measured the relation between time spent watching television per week and obesity in 4,771 adult females. After controlling for age, education, cigarette smoking, length of work week, and weekly duration of exercise, females who reported three to four hours of TV viewing per day showed almost twice the prevalence of obesity (body fat greater than 30 percent), and those who reported more than four hours of TV watching per day showed more than double the prevalence of obesity, compared to the reference group (less than 1 hr/day). Part of the TV/obesity association was a function of differences in exercise duration among the four TV viewing categories.