Chuck Norris helps football fans avoid 'coffin corner'

Well, the big game is over.

The final score: A record 114.4 million people watched some or all of the coverage of the football finale. On Sunday, Americans were said to have powered down more pizza than on any other day of the year and downed more beer than on any day other than July Fourth. Americans were projected to eat 1.25 billion chicken wings during the game. This count is still under review. People who watched the game were estimated to take in, on average, 2,400 calories. This intake makes Super Bowl Sunday the No. 2 day of the year in calorie consumption, surpassed only by Thanksgiving – but with a big-game difference.

According to researchers at Cornell University, the food that people buy during the days leading up to the Super Bowl is considerably less healthful than what they buy during the days leading up to Thanksgiving. The result is that many health experts are dubbing Super Bowl Sunday the least healthy day of the year.

Don't get me wrong; I'm a football fan. I've been known to indulge in a guilty pleasure here or there while viewing America's game. And it's easy to get carried away, especially when there is so much time spent in front of the TV before the game even starts.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the average amount of uninterrupted time the ball is in play during a typical NFL game is a tick or two under 11 minutes. Nearly half the game coverage is devoted to replays. And the rest?

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We are subjected to an aerial assault of multimillion-dollar beer, cola, fast-food and candy-bar ads, among the car and insurance ads, in a battle for viewer favor. It is a serious game that is much fiercer and more competitive than what goes on down on the field. No wonder Weight Watchers chose to step in with a Super Bowl ad of its own in the middle of this processed-food slugfest.

Amid the clamor of Madison Avenue product play calling, health experts plead for moderation, an appeal so faint it might as well be coming from the stadium cheap seats.

While I was reading a quarter-by-quarter sports-page recap of the changing plans and coaching strategies of Sunday's game, it occurred to me that something's missing – a parallel game plan. A game plan of moderation and health we might want to consider implementing in the days and months before our senses are once again battered by the spectacle of Super Bowl L and its excesses.

1st Quarter: Go Long

So many of us spend most of our days parked in a chair, watching television, on the computer or driving. According to a study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine, when we do this for an extended period of time – for example, watching three-plus hours of football – we put ourselves at increased risk for kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer, not to mention obesity.

When you sit for more than 30 minutes at a shot, your body begins to deposit sugar into your cells, which makes it much likelier that you'll be overweight. Whether you're watching TV or at your desk, it is recommended that you get up at least every 30 minutes to walk around. But do any of us really do that?

It is easier said than done as we, as a people, become progressively more sedentary. According to a 2013 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 50 percent of adults in the United States report leading clinically sedentary lives, with older women spending approximately 10 hours a day inactive.

Exercising regularly helps to prevent health problems and keeps you living longer. According to the British Journal of Sports Medicine study, participants who exercised 150 minutes or more a week lived 10 to 13 years longer than the inactive bunch.

People with chronic health problems generally resign themselves to lives of little or no activity, thinking vigorous exercise is unsafe or that they lack the stamina for it. But recent studies are proving just the opposite. Today there exists an expanding array of movement therapies gaining in popularity as antidotes for a variety of chronic diseases, including Parkinson's disease.
It is recommended that we start by getting outdoors. In various experiments, people have reported experiencing less fatigue, more vitality and greater pleasure after walking outside compared with on an indoor treadmill.

2nd Quarter: Sleeper Play

Research has shown that skimping on sleep is linked to a shorter life span.

In addition to heart disease, diabetes, obesity and depression, new research has drawn connections between bad sleep and Alzheimer's disease. A study released last year showed that the better 700 participants slept the less likely they were to develop Alzheimer's over the next 3 1/2 years.

Mark Rosekind, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board and a psychologist who has spent his career studying the consequences of exhaustion on performance, says, "If we want to thrive, we have to start valuing sleep."

Seven hours or a little more seems to be a good rule of thumb.

Halftime

There will be no marching bands.

I will be behind closed doors at the blackboard, diagramming plays for next week's second half. In sizing up the opposition, I know that not all calories are equal, just as all players are not equal. One we need to run an isolation play on is sugar. It makes up 25 percent of the total calories we consume and can be incredibly harmful. Excess sugar, as well as salt, can contribute to obesity and elevated blood pressure in both children and adults. We have got to figure out a way to drive it to the bench and drastically cut back its playing time.

Write to Chuck Norris with your questions about health and fitness. Follow Chuck Norris through his official social media sites, on Twitter @chucknorris and Facebook's "Official Chuck Norris Page." He blogs at ChuckNorrisNews.blogspot.com.