Fitness apps that are too “demanding” risk discouraging people from exercising. An effect opposite to the desired one.
An instructor who is too demanding risks making you lose your desire to train. Excessively rigid fitness apps could have a similar effect on users who have downloaded them.
According to a study published in British Journal of Health Psychologyusers of some popular fitness and calorie counting apps end up feeling shame, disappointment, and demotivation when faced with unrealistic fitness goals and requests to log food intake. These negative feelings risk driving away the desire to play sports, or pushing you to train for the wrong reasons.
Discontent runs on social media
A group of scientists from University College London and Loughborough University (UK) analyzed over 58,800 Twitter posts (which had not yet become X when the study was conducted) relating to 5 popular fitness apps. With artificial intelligence, the researchers selected around 13,800 posts containing negative expressions, which they then grouped by thematic affinity.
Like a thermometer of users’ mood, the posts revealed a sense of embarrassment felt at the apps’ requests to record the unhealthy foods eaten during the day, irritation at the invitation to abstain from sweets, disappointment at not having achieved unrealistic fitness goals set by the algorithms.
Some users complained of frustration with calorie counts that were too complex or not customizable, which easily lost data or did not allow – for example – to specify whether they were breastfeeding or whether they were performing other activities that lead to large energy expenditure. In general, the feeling of inadequacy compared to too rigid standards was palpable.
The power of kindness
«Self-monitoring and action planning are powerful behavioral change techniques. But we abuse it. We need to learn to be kinder to ourselves,” explains Paulina Bondaronek, psychologist and digital health expert who coordinated the study. The risk is that this wave of negative sensations ends up undermining the motivation and intrinsic pleasure of doing physical exercise (perhaps in company, and not alone in front of a screen). And instead we are reduced to doing sports because we are driven by a sense of guilt, or out of the pure desire to burn calories.
It is known from previous research that feeling guilty or bad about yourself does not promote long-term positive changes. It is therefore necessary, the authors suggest, to make the objectives of fitness apps less rigid and more focused on overall individual well-being.
Also because, the suggested weight loss goals are not formulated based on scientifically approved guidelines, but on the ideal weight desired by users.
