Why TikTok Is the Best Gym Buddy and Weight Loss Motivator

When it comes to losing weight, motivation seems to diminish with age.

At 34 years old, I'm just starting to feel the pressure of keeping up with my fitness. Time is short and life, in general, is chaotic, so the gym has been bumped down on the list of priorities. Weight gain and loss have been a stressful roller coaster ride and finding a healthy medium has been a struggle.

I knew I wasn't 21 anymore when eating a stack of pancakes made my rear end jiggle for a week. One plate of carbs goes straight to my love handles and a single beer brings on serious gluten bloat like I've never had to deal with before.

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Finding something to keep me on track was hard until I realized what I was already doing on the daily could benefit me.

I found my screen time with TikTok to be mildly concerning and, to make matters worse, I was sitting around like a couch potato packing on the pounds. This year has been the most inactive I've been in quite some time and it started to concern me.

That's when I had an idea that could benefit both my body and my social media addiction: working out while watching TikTok videos.

You might laugh, but the results speak for themselves.

At almost 300 pounds, I was unhealthy and overweight.

By hopping on an elliptical, I could mount my phone hands-free and scroll on TikTok until I was tired. I covered the elliptical clock with my phone to block the time and before I knew it, I was 20, then 30, then 40 minutes deep into my cardio session in the blink of an eye.

The science is simple:

On average, a TikTok video is 60 seconds long (for the most part). That's one minute that seems to fly by when my mind is glued to the app.

My theory: If I can spend a half-hour watching TikTok videos from the couch, I can do the same thing at the gym (using headphones) while doing low-exertion exercise.

Day after day, as long as I made it to the gym, I could easily burn upwards of 500 calories just by watching viral videos made by random strangers all around the world.

Don't believe me? Try it for yourself.

These days, I'll take any type of motivation that presents itself. If TikTok continues to be as entertaining as it has been, after dropping 30 pounds, then that's something I can hang my hat on.