TikTok loves this exercise trick to lose weight. I tried it.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

When videos featuring vibration plates began to undulate their way into my TikTok feed and thus my consciousness sometime in the last year, I knew what the sensible response was: Pffft. And I had that response, I did. Online evangelists tout these plates as magical machines that help you lose weight (among other health benefits) by simply standing on top of them, and I wasn’t foolish enough to buy into such an obviously dubious proposition—or so I thought.

The more of these videos I saw, the more curious I became. I’ve always, regrettably, had a pretty strong interest in standing around doing nothing, which has frequently been at odds with a parallel desire to be somewhat in shape. If there were a way to achieve the latter via the former, well, that would be a game changer. If it didn’t work, I would lose nothing, beyond a little dignity, and while this was highly probable, what if it did work? Cut to me and my vibration-toned physique shaking off into the sunset.

The basic idea behind these plates is that the vibrations throw off your balance, which causes your muscles to have to work harder to stabilize your body, which in turn burns more calories than you otherwise would if you were just standing regularly. The plates are just the latest iteration of a concept that goes back decades: Maybe you had a Shake Weight 15 years ago, or you remember that Mad Men episode where Peggy is assigned to work on a vibrating weight loss device, a nod to the real-life vibrating belt machine fad of the 1950s and ’60s. All told, enthusiasts and inventors have been experimenting with this since at least the Victorian era, which is kind of a long time considering a lot of people have doubts about whether they actually do anything. (We’ll get to that.)

At-home vibration plates have proliferated over the last 10 years or so, and are now so cheap that you can get a new one for as little as $80. This low price point has no doubt fueled their virality on TikTok, where a relentless zeal for affiliate marketing means creators are constantly looking for new gadgets to hawk. True to form, TikTok has succeeded in making vibration plates sound nothing less than miraculous. According to one woman whose video about hers has been viewed 1.8 million times, “you only have to do this for 10 minutes and it’s like jogging for an hour.” How does she know this? Has it been backed up by any studies or experts? Don’t worry about it! Here’s an abbreviated list of the things I’ve heard other TikTok users say vibration plates can help with: muscle tone, circulation, bone density, lymphatic drainage, cellulite, inflammation, and constipation. What can’t they do!

Many articles have been written casting doubt on these claims: Though there have been a smattering of studies showing slight to modest benefits, there’s little evidence to suggest dramatic results, or results at all. Still, scientists and experts seem to agree that they won’t hurt, and could even help a little, especially if you start from a place of no physical activity whatsoever. Given all this, it’s not that “too good to be true” hasn’t crossed my mind—it’s just being overpowered by wishful thinking.

After all, the notion of a machine that will exercise for you is pretty irresistible—though maybe it’s troubling that I think so. The popularity of these machines comes at a moment when thinness seems to be reasserting its place in the beauty hierarchy, both in the culture at large and on TikTok in particular. But any shame I’m holding onto about wanting to lose weight—the millennial body-image curse, as Mikala Jamison has called it—feels pretty far away on vibration-plate TikTok, where it’s a given that you want to shrink yourself. Or “get rid of inflammation,” which might just be code for shrink yourself. It’s not lost on me that with these plates we’re essentially embracing a new spin on a weight loss gimmick that didn’t work for our grandmothers.

In any case, it was time to see how this all shakes out. I found a lightly used AXV FR-78, one of the vibration plate models I’d seen on TikTok, listed on eBay for $57.99. The seller had very positive reviews, including one from a person who seemed thrilled with the dog wheelchair they’d purchased from them. I hit buy. When it arrived, in both size and look it resembled one of those steps used in step aerobics, to invoke another once trendy fitness accessory. The difference was that it plugged in and had a little control panel on it for turning on the vibrations and setting their level of intensity. When I finally stood on it and pressed start, it worked like a much faster miniature seesaw: right foot goes up while left goes down, left foot goes up and right down, repeat. It wasn’t difficult, balancing on it, but it was more difficult than not standing on a rocking platform.

Was I really supposed to just stand on it? I set it up in front of the television and got some shakes in while I watched Bravo. Scrolling on TikTok while standing on a crappy device you bought because you saw it on TikTok also had a certain appeal, that of just fully embodying TikTok brainrot. But it also gets old. The plate had come with some sparse materials, like an instruction manual suggesting poses that could be done on it. I could do a plank, where my feet were on it instead of the floor. “The device works best in stress-taking positions like squats,” the manual noted. But how long was I supposed to stay in a squat for? One of the positions, I noted skeptically, was “Sitting Posture I,” which consisted of simply sitting crisscross applesauce on the thing. To be fair, it sounds like this could have some applications for people with mobility or other issues. But the idea that it would help me in my weight loss journey seemed like more magical thinking. The more immediate problem was that I could barely fit my butt on it.

I discovered my vibration plate had a Bluetooth speaker in it one day when it started talking to me out of the blue like a possessed Furby. I’d hear a few words of something—a phone conversation, or a radio station?—and then it would stop, only to start up again a few seconds later. Could they hear me? It would serve me right if I got spied on through a vibration plate. I never did figure out how to disable the speaker. Eventually I just unplugged the whole thing. It sat unused for days. I was over it. I had already set my sights on something else.

Though I was introduced to vibration plates via the cheapest ones available on TikTok, I had discovered in the time since that there were much, much nicer models out there. Some fancy gyms and doctors’ offices even had them on site, which sounded unimpeachable to me. When you’re a journalist, you can do things like go on an Austrian retreat to quit sugar or train to be a Benihana chef for no real reason other than that you want to write about it, so there was nothing stopping me from finding a way to try out a high-end vibration plate. I would have been satisfied with a day pass to Equinox, but before I knew it, a company called Power Plate was offering to ship me a demo unit as a loaner. Would I like the Personal Power Plate, which retails for $1,995, or the Power Plate Move, which retails for $3,620? The Move seemed like the move.

On first impression, the Power Plate was huge compared to my original vibration plate (I could fit my butt on it and then some), but more consequently, it was stronger. I worried everyone else in my Brooklyn building could hear it when it was on, or maybe even feel it. When I put it on any setting higher than the lowest one, my living room shook, and the picture frames on my shelves started to rearrange themselves. How was I going to explain this if an angry neighbor showed up at my door? Luckily, none did, but I almost never dared use any of the higher settings.

Stepping back onto my cheaper vibration plate after using the Power Plate drove home how underwhelming the former was. Where the first one merely wobbled, the Power Plate shook. It made my teeth chatter. I felt it in my voice when I talked while on it. The company arranged for me to have a video call with Power Plate trainer Laura Wilson, who told me that this was because its machine was using a completely different type of vibration than the so-called vibration plates from TikTok: “A lot of them are actually not whole-body vibration training—they’re what I call a wobble board,” Wilson said. Whereas you can see them teetering, the Power Plate doesn’t look like it’s moving at all while moving in three directions, which is what actually triggers a subconscious reaction to activate your muscles, Wilson said.

When I asked Wilson how she recommended I use it, she inquired about what sort of exercise I usually did. When I mentioned yoga, she replied that I should just do yoga on it. I nodded along, but I was confused. Do yoga on it? It was bigger, but nowhere near as big as a yoga mat. She encouraged me to spend some time on the company’s app, which had routines I could follow along with, and I hoped this might help me figure out what doing yoga on a vibration plate was supposed to look like, among other things. When I attempted to gingerly approach the big question I had, about all the people claiming you could lose weight simply by standing on a vibration plate, Wilson surprised me by saying outright that yes, it was possible—not with those other, cheaper vibration plates, but with this one, yes, that was a true thing; she said some studies have shown Power Plates can help one with NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. There’s reason to be skeptical about this: She is employed by Power Plate, for one thing, and you can also achieve NEAT through, like, breathing. But still, that was the thing I’d been hoping to hear.

It turns out there’s nothing that will get me to commit to a little exercise like someone validating my fantasy of weight loss via the littlest possible effort. I found myself stepping onto the Power Plate way more than I had ever managed to use my AXV. Pressing start once would set the timer for nine minutes of vibration, so I tried to do nine minutes in the morning and nine more in the evening most days. I downloaded the app as instructed, and while it has considerably fewer bells and whistles than, say, the Peloton app, its videos demystified for me what doing yoga on a Power Plate might entail: I could put my hands on it for Downward Dog, for example, or I could put my front foot on it for Warrior I or II. This was challenging, and sometimes made me feel like I was going to fall off and die, which is actually quite different from my original dream of just standing there, but there I was, doing vibration-enhanced yoga. Sometimes I watched the instructors demonstrating increasingly difficult exercises and wondered conspiratorially, Are their Power Plates even on? You can also just drape your body parts onto it in various positions for “recovery,” and I tried some of that, too.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz

There’s One Thing We Love to Argue About When It Comes to Alcohol

Read More

Even though it was the idea of a do-nothing workout that had originally captured my imagination, any time I took the trouble of stepping onto the Power Plate, I almost always figured I might as well do something. Before long, I developed my own little routine of nine minutes of stretches and moves, and this was often enough to get me a little sweaty. Was there some truth to the “10 minutes of vibration is like an hour of running” thing after all? Wilson told me something similar, and while I don’t totally buy it—if I were truly doing the equivalent of two 45-minute workouts a day for the last few weeks, I think I’d have noticed—I do buy that I might have been getting a little more mileage out of those 10 minutes than usual. I did a bunch of guided workout videos via the app that felt pretty effortful to me, though maybe I would have been nearly as tired without the plate under me. The best workout is the workout you will actually do, and I was proving to myself that having limited-time 24/7 access to a very expensive piece of workout equipment was if nothing else inspiring me to use it sometimes.

1. This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only

   This Year, We All Realized That Kids Aren’t Reading Books in School. Only the Right Is Offering a Solution.

2. The Obsession With Mummy Pig’s Pregnancy Has Officially Gone Too Far

3. Honestly, I Am So Sick of Hearing Democrats Apologize for Their Joe Biden Mistake

4. An Aggravating New Barrier Is Making It Harder Than Ever to Land a Job. Candidates Are Pissed.

And now, the moment of truth: Have I lost any weight? Probably not because of the Power Plate on its own, but at some point over the last few weeks I did manage to jolt myself out of the magical thinking phase and into a real diet. I’m counting my calories again, which is the only way I’ve ever actually been successful at shedding pounds, and the plan is to stick with it for the many months it will unfortunately take to slowly get in better shape. I wouldn’t say I’m exercising a lot, but I’m definitely exercising more, and I’ll miss the Power Plate when it’s gone. Taking up so much space in my apartment meant it took up space in my mind, and while I could arguably achieve the same thing by, like, putting up an inspirational sign, I’m worried that my motivation will disappear when it does. Can I just do my little nine-minute stretch routine without a hulking platform shaking beneath me? Yes, but will I? We’ll see. I do credit vibration and the Power Plate at least partly with shaking me out of my complacency. Consider me shook.

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.

No Byline Policy

Editorial Guidelines

Corrections Policy

Source