Need to Lose Weight? Freeze Yourself

If you’re desperate for a new way to lose weight, forget feeling the burn and try feeling the chill, suggests Ray Cronise, an ex-NASA scientist who lost 30 pounds in six weeks by subjecting himself to low temperatures. The theory is simple: Your body wants to maintain a constant temperature, and in cold weather, it has to burn more calories to do that, ABC News explains. As you lose weight, you lose insulation, making cooling down even easier.

Cronise got the idea when he heard that Michael Phelps ate 12,000 calories a day, relying on the cool water to help him burn it off. “I treated my body like a thermostat,” Cronise told the TEDMED conference this week, “to see if I could run up the utility bill and get the furnace (his metabolism) running at full blast." But some experts are skeptical. "Being cold is uncomfortable," one doctor says. “Frankly, if people are willing to be that miserable to lose weight, they might as well try eating well and exercising." (More weight loss stories.)