Engagement with MyFitnessPal in eating disorders: Qualitative insights from online forums

Using calorie-counting and fitness-tracking technologies is concerning in relation to eating disorders. While studies in this area typically assess one aspect of use (e.g., frequency), engagement with a device or application is more complex. Consequently, important relationships between the use of these technologies and the eating disorder symptomatology might remain undetected. The current study therefore used comments from online eating disorder-related forums to generate comprehensive qualitative insights into engagement with a popular calorie-counting and fitness-tracking application, MyFitnessPal.

First, we extracted every comment mentioning MyFitnessPal made on three eating disorder-related forums between May 2015 and January 2018 (1,695 comments from 920 commenters). Then, we conducted an inductive thematic analysis using these comments to identify important aspects of engagement with MyFitnessPal.

The analyses resulted in three themes: Preventing misuse, describing ways in which MyFitnessPal attempts to prevent pathological use and actions taken by users to circumvent its interventions; Accuracy, outlining distrust of MyFitnessPal's accuracy and ways in which perceived inaccuracy is reduced or compensated for; and Psychosocial factors, comprising cognitive, behavioral, and social factors that influence, or are influenced by, engagement with MyFitnessPal.

The qualitative insights provide a detailed overview of how people with high levels of eating disorder symptomatology likely engage with MyFitnessPal. The insights can be used as a basis to develop valid, quantitative assessment of pathological patterns of engagement with calorie-counting and fitness-tracking technologies. The findings can also provide clinicians with insight into how their patients likely engage with, and are affected by, these devices and applications.