Why Do So Many People Stop Calorie Tracking?

1 September 20264 min read

A person relaxing on a sofa, casually holding their phone.

It is common for people to stop using a tracking app within a few months, and it happens whether the goal is losing weight or gaining it.

A large review of health-tracking apps found that many users stop within the first few months, and it is rarely because tracking “failed.” The more common reasons are far more mundane, for example, apps that are tedious to log into, food entries that take too long to enter, and guidance that never adapts to the person actually using it.

In brief

Many people stop using health and lifestyle apps within months, according to a large 2024 review; the evidence included one diet-app study as well as other health-app categories.
It's rarely about results. Confusing apps, tedious data entry, and one-size-fits-all guidance are among the most common reasons people quit.
In one small pilot, people who logged most often lost more weight on average, but the study cannot tell us the minimum amount of logging someone needs.
Whether the goal is losing weight or gaining it, the friction that drives people to quit doesn't discriminate by goal.

How many people actually quit, and how fast?

A 2024 review pulled together 18 studies covering over half a million users of health-tracking apps (diet, activity, alcohol, smoking, and mental health apps included) and found a consistent pattern. People tend to abandon these apps quickly after downloading them, then the drop-off slows down for whoever’s left. Among studies that measured 100 days of use, the median abandonment rate was about 70%. One included study looking specifically at a diet app found an abandonment rate of 86%, though that is one study rather than a broad average (so treat it as an example, not a fixed number to expect).

Those are real-world “free-living” numbers, e.g., people using an app on their own with no one checking in. A separate meta-analysis of app-based interventions for chronic disease found that dropout tends to be meaningfully lower inside structured clinical trials, where people get more support and regular follow-up, rather than in everyday real-world use. That gap suggests support and structure matter here too, and not just how much friction the app causes.

A separate, frequently cited review of weight-loss self-monitoring research covers studies that predate today’s tracking apps, found that people who self-monitored more consistently tended to lose more weight than those who didn’t. Its own authors described the underlying evidence as weak, given how the included studies were designed, so it’s not proof on its own, and it sits in some tension with the more forgiving message later in this post. By this review’s own measure, more consistency was linked to better outcomes, not just “enough” consistency. It also doesn’t tell us why some people self-monitor more consistently than others.

What actually makes people stop, if it’s not usually about results?

The 2024 review also looked at why people quit, pulling together 22 distinct reasons from six studies into six broader categories: technical issues, privacy concerns, poor user experience, missing content or features, time and financial costs, and simply outgrowing the app.

A few of those categories show up again and again. Confusing or difficult-to-use design was one of the most commonly cited reasons for quitting across the studies reviewed. Burdensome data entry, literally described by users as the time it takes to log something, was another repeat offender. So was a lack of personalization, apps that gave the same generic experience to everyone rather than adapting to the person using them. None of that is really about willpower. It’s about apps asking for more effort than most people are willing to give indefinitely, which is a design problem more than a discipline one.

Does tracking less actually work as well as tracking everything?

There’s a data point worth looking at here, though it comes with real caveats. A six-month pilot trial of a food-tracking app compared weight loss based on how often people had actually logged, rather than how often they were told to, a comparison added after the fact that the study’s own authors note wasn’t statistically powered to detect a specific difference. The 15 people in the highest-frequency group, who logged on at least 129 of roughly 180 days, lost 6.4kg more on average than the 13 people in the lowest-frequency group, who logged on 42 days or fewer. With a sample that small and a comparison run after the fact, this isn’t strong enough evidence to build firm advice on by itself, but it’s at least a signal against assuming imperfect, inconsistent logging is worthless.

Does this apply if you’re trying to gain weight, not lose it?

Most of the abandonment research above wasn’t scoped to one goal or the other, it was about tracking apps in general, and the reasons people gave for quitting (confusing design, tedious logging, lack of personalization) have no obvious reason to only apply to people trying to eat less. We didn’t find a study specifically isolating people tracking to gain weight, so this is a reasonable inference rather than a directly cited finding, but there’s little reason to assume the friction disappears just because the goal has flipped.

What this actually means for you

If you’ve started and stopped calorie tracking more than once, that’s not a personal failing, it’s closer to the norm than the exception, and the research points at the tool more than it does at you! If the detailed logging is specifically the part you’ve had enough of, it’s worth looking at simpler alternatives to MyFitnessPal before writing off tracking altogether.

This is a lot of what Ori is built around. Instead of asking for a perfect, comprehensive log every single day, it works with whatever you actually give it, and hides the numbers completely if you’d rather not see them, while still telling you what to do next in plain, easy to understand language.

We can’t promise you the outcomes of any specific study, but the underlying idea, that sticking with something over months, even imperfectly, tends to matter more than any single day of perfect logging, is the philosophy the whole app is built around.

Sources

A gentle safety note

Ori supports general wellness. It is not medical care. If you have a history of disordered eating, are pregnant or breastfeeding, take medicines that affect weight or appetite, or have a clinical nutrition need, speak with a qualified healthcare professional before changing your intake or weight goal.

Read Ori's Health Disclaimer