Fitness and calorie-counting apps can impact wellbeing, study suggests

Fitness and calorie-counting apps can place an emotional strain on users, potentially undermining health and wellbeing, a new study suggests.

A team of researchers at University College London (UCL) and Loughborough University examined nearly 60,000 posts on X (formerly Twitter) about five popular fitness apps, and found that almost a quarter of people described feelings of shame, disappointment and demotivation.

The findings, published in the British Journal of Health Psychology, reveal that many fitness apps emphasise rigid calorie counting and exercise quantification. The researchers are calling for a move away from this type of tracking to a more holistic approach focusing on wellbeing.

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Social media provides a huge amount of data that can be used to understand the effects of using fitness tracking apps. Using machine-assisted topic analysis, the researchers were able to undertake a ‘social listening’ study, analysing 58,881 posts on Twitter (prior to the platform becoming X) and identifying those with negative sentiment. All the posts referred to one of five of the most profitable fitness apps, including MyFitnessPal, Strava, WW (formerly Weight Watchers), Workouts by Muscle Booster, Fitness Coach & Diet and FitCoach.

Of the posts examined, 13,799 contained negative sentiment related to fitness app use. Most of the posts (8,464) related to MyFitnessPal, with Strava and WW also accounting for a large portion of the posts (2,264 and 2,902, respectively).

Broad themes emerged, including frustration at the complexity of tracking calories, technical faults and challenges leading to data loss, and the emotional impact of logging daily activity. The work highlighted some flaws in the app design, which often put users under pressure to continue using the app, potentially leading to negative consequences for their overall wellbeing.

Users reported feelings of shame when logging foods in the apps that were ‘unhealthy’. Some found that the apps set unrealistic, algorithm-generated targets, and a failure to meet these goals led to disappointment and loss of motivation, with some users giving up after failing to meet the app targets.

The researchers found that some apps set unhealthy calorie goals based on the user’s weight loss objectives, rather than adhering to public health or NHS guidelines for daily calorie intake. There was also a lack of personalisation available, with survey respondents reporting that there was no option to input breastfeeding, for example, leading to inaccurate overall calorie counts for each day.

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The apps also put users under emotional pressure through prompts, notifications or ‘streak’ requests, leading users to feel pestered or guilty, with some users disengaging completely as a result.

Senior author Dr Paulina Bondaronek from the UCL Institute of Health Informatics said: ‘Few studies have looked at the potential detrimental effects of these apps. In these posts, we found a lot of blame and shame, with people feeling they were not doing as well as they should be. These emotional effects may end up harming people’s motivation and their health.’

The researchers suggest that instead of focusing on very narrow, rigid measures of success relating to the amount of weight lost, health apps should prioritise overall wellbeing and focus on intrinsic motivation, such as personal satisfaction and enjoyment of health activities. In addition, the apps could bring people together more effectively and improve health through social connectedness.

Dr Bondaronek said: ‘Self-monitoring and action planning are powerful behaviour change techniques. But we overuse them. We need to learn to be kinder to ourselves. We are good at blaming and shaming because we think it will help us to do better, but actually it has the opposite effect.’

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The researchers caution that since they only looked at the negative posts, the study cannot indicate the overall effectiveness of the apps in terms of a person’s wellbeing. Dr Bondaronek added: ‘The apps may have a negative side, but they likely also provide benefits to many people.’