In a world where there is so much technology to assist people in living a healthy lifestyle, you may consider a nutrition app like MyFitnesspal or a fitness tracker like Fitbit to help with eating and exercise habits. While your initial intention may not start out harmful, if you struggle with your relationship with food or body, an app may turn into an obsessive habit that encourages you to undereat and/or overexercise. According to a recent study, nutrition and fitness apps can cause unintended negative consequences such as fixation on numbers, rigid dieting, obsession, app dependency, high sense of achievement, extreme negative emotions, motivation from negative messages and excess competition.
When a person has a healthy relationship with food and the body, using technology to track food or exercise should not harm mental or physical health. But in our weight-loss obsessed society, it can be difficult to maintain a healthy relationship with food and the body.
How can you tell if a nutrition app is harmful to your health? Here are a few tips:
- You have become obsessive about tracking what you eat.
- You categorized foods as good vs. bad based on calories or grams.
- Eating has become a game of trying to keep numbers as low as possible.
- You feel proud when you receive a badge of hitting a certain milestone.
- Viewing the app leaves you feeling anxious, depressed, ashamed or guilty.
- What's my motivation for tracking? Am I focused on eating enough or worried about eating too much?
- Do you rely on the tracker to tell you what and how much to eat?
- Do you make eating decisions based on an app?
- Do you feel the need to log everything that you eat?
- Do you feel anxious if you aren't able to log a certain food?
- How do you feel on the days when you don't meet your goals?
- Do you use exercise as a way to compensate for something you ate (or to be able to eat certain foods)?