Do Diet and Fitness Trackers Actually Promote a Healthy Lifestyle?
By Fee Teng Liew
Trigger Warning: Sensitive topics including eating disorders and exercise addiction will be discussed so please close this article if you think this may be triggering for you.
In an attempt to promote healthier lifestyles and greater levels of physical activity, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has proposed the use of digital or mobile platforms. Moreover, backed by psychological research in health behaviour change, specific behaviour change techniques have been recommended, which include self-monitoring, goal setting, and social support. Consequently, countless fitness watches and apps like MyFitnessPal and Strava have adopted exactly these to encourage behaviour change.
Diet and Fitness Trackers
Much like social media, these apps have been engineered in a way for us to engage with them as much as possible, which can often lead to compulsive behaviours. So, whilst they may well have increased levels of physical activity and aided weight loss, is it actually in a healthy or sustainable way?
Gamified features, continual reminders, and the ease of tracking have made engaging in exercise and diet tracking widely accessible for all. Through the main feature of self-monitoring, users have an objective measure of their diet or activity levels and gain greater self-awareness, thus will be more likely to alter their diet or exercise to reach their goals.
Daily, weekly, or monthly goals fill the apps to motivate users to continue completing all their badges or reach their proposed targets. In addition, having a sense of community where you can receive positive feedback and encouragement further boosts motivation to continue. The combination of these features is therefore scientifically proven to change behaviour, and can often lead to phrases such as ‘If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen’.
But what about mental health?
Despite engaging more users in the apps and therefore physical activity, if the aim is to promote health then these apps have seemingly failed to consider the mental health of users, and the potential risks the apps may bring, particularly for those at risk of eating disorders or exercise addiction. For example, Eikey (2021) interviewed individuals who had experienced an eating disorder and identified eight negative consequences of using these apps. In summary, the quantification of all aspects makes it seem like weight loss or calories is a proxy for good health. It became a numbers game where users became obsessed with ‘beating the app’. Rather than educating users on how to have a healthy relationship with food and exercise that is sustainable, these apps were actually rewarding users for sustaining their eating disorders, by informing them how much weight they would lose in a certain number of weeks if they were to continue eating the way they are. Consequently, rather than users feeling in control, the app, food, and exercise were controlling them.
Individuals felt extremely rewarded for undereating and sustaining their eating disorder which was shown through green visualisations and positive feedback. Subsequently, when users exceeded their calories, extreme negative emotions such as guilt, shame and embarrassment incurred, which was exacerbated by red visualisations on the app. Whether users were 1 or 1000 calories over, red visualisations would appear, which many of us would automatically associate with failure and negativity. Further, using the apps even led some users to having anxiety attacks and engaging in OCD behaviours.
A few things to consider
All of this may bring to question…
Have we lost sight of the enjoyment in eating and engaging in exercise?
Are we increasingly unable to engage in exercise without tracking it?
Are we even aware of the multitude of physical and mental health benefits that nutrition and exercise can bring?
Whilst these app features may be a ‘quick fix’ for the initial adoption of exercise, it has been shown that they also leave users focusing solely on numbers and engaging in diet and fitness tracking for the wrong reasons.
Perhaps there needs to be a much greater focus on health (both mental and physical), most importantly incorporating a central component of education and psychology to enable healthy, sustainable relationships with food and exercise.
References
Eikey (2021) - Effects of diet and fitness apps on eating disorder behaviours: qualitative study: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2021.1011