Celebrities Are Freezing Themselves to Lose Weight, As One Does

In a miniature phenomenon that feels like a combination of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Hills, rich people are freezing themselves to shred pounds and posting photos of the process on Instagram.

This group includes celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Mandy Moore, and they’re going to cryotherapy, where, according to the New York Post, they stand in a six-foot-tall machine that blasts them with air between minus 184 and 292 degrees Fahrenheit. This is supposed to freeze off fat, boost metabolism, melt away 800 calories. Oh, and users feel like they’ve just had a strong puff of… something.

“I left feeling like I drank four Red Bulls and was a Prozac-ed out Disney employee,” says one New York-based magazine editor who tried full-body cryotherapy in May (and asked not to be named).

Cryotherapy was created in Japan in 1978 to help arthritic patients and athletes have long endured ice baths to soothe sore muscles but now cryotherapy is the “hot” thing to do. People of varied persuasions—from Derek Hough to Daniel Craig and Yoko Ono—are doing it, and dropping thousands of dollars a week for the service. Freezing yourself for three minutes costs $90 and a five minute cryofacial costs $45. Kryolife cryotherapy store owner Joanna Fryben, who opened her first New York City spot in 2013, is earning so much money she’s opening a second location in Manhattan this fall.

So what does a doctor say about all this freezing?

“If there was a way to burn 800 calories in three minutes it would be a whole lot more popular than it is,” says Park Avenue plastic surgeon Dr. Steven Levine, “and a whole lot more than the $90 that they’re charging for it.”