A professor from the University of British Columbia (UBC) has received funding to research the connection between fitness apps and overall physical wellness.
Mary Jung is an assistant professor in the area of Health and Exercise Psychology. She said her inspiration for this research is connected to her past occupation as a fitness trainer.
“I was a personal trainer in high school,” Jung said. “To put myself through my kinesiology degree, I continued on in order to pay my way.”
“I study the exercise of humans . . . logical theories that will better predict what will motivate people to begin an exercise program or what will help them stick to that exercise program,” Jung said.
Madison Jolliffe, a second-year humanities student at Carleton University, said she finds apps useful to get back on track.
Jolliffe said the smartphone app “My Fitness Pal” helps her get back into healthier habits when she feels as though she has been “a little too liberal” with her diet.
“What I study is how fitness apps encourage people to self-regulate—so the link between how we self-regulate now and how we can modify that in the future. There is a whole set of skills that we need under our belt in order to actually adhere to something,” Jung said.
Jung is doing her research alongside UBC research coordinator Jessica Bourne and UBC master’s student Elizabeth Voth.
“We are definitely hypothesizing that . . . applications that are theory based or evidence based will be better off adhering to their exercise program,” she said.
Kathleen Simms, a fitness and yoga instructor, said she disagrees with the use of apps as a self-regulation tool.
“All my friends that have used it have done so in an obsessive fashion. It makes it creepy—I’ll go to the gym but I won’t write down how many calories I burnt. It creates a ritualism out of the process,” she said.
However, Jung said if one uses “a really comprehensive [app] that will help people self-monitor, hold them accountable, and there’s some type of individual interaction going on with it, it will probably help.”
