Digital Self-Tracking and Eating Disorders: Risks and Opportunities for Athletes

Digital tracking tools like Fitbit, MyFitnessPal, and Strava are transforming how athletes monitor their health and performance. These platforms offer real-time monitoring of calories, training load, heart rate variability (HRV), and body composition, making them valuable tools for optimizing fitness. However, a new study led by Michael Peel (2024) raises an important concern: for some athletes, these tools can worsen disordered eating behaviours, leading to compulsive tracking, obsessive tendencies, and a decline in mental health.

Eating disorders are already more prevalent among athletes than in the general population, particularly in weight-class sports (e.g., boxing, wrestling), aesthetic sports (e.g., gymnastics, figure skating), and endurance sports (e.g., running, cycling). This study investigates how digital tracking may influence these risks, exploring both its benefits and negative impacts.

Methods

This study used a semi-structured qualitative methodology, conducting interviews with experts in three key fields:

• Product design and development (to understand how tracking technologies are created)

• Clinical psychology and counselling (to assess mental health risks and their link to disordered eating)

• Health sciences and kinesiology (to evaluate impacts on training and athlete physiology)

Ten experts participated in in-depth interviews, and their responses were analysed using thematic analysis.

Results

Eight major themes emerged from the interviews:

• Unintended negative consequences – Some athletes develop compulsive behaviours around tracking, feeling obligated to hit arbitrary goals.

• Complexity of health data – Many athletes misinterpret data, which can lead to anxiety and unhealthy behaviours.

• Control, obsession, and addiction – Users become fixated on their numbers, often leading to overtraining and excessive dietary restriction.

• Social media and data sharing – Performance comparison with others can increase pressure, competitiveness, and body dissatisfaction.

• Intuition vs. technology – Overreliance on tracking weakens body awareness, causing athletes to ignore signals of hunger, fatigue, or injury.

• Personalisation for safety – Experts suggest integrating AI-based alerts to detect compulsive behaviours and provide adaptive feedback to prevent eating disorders.

• Early detection and intervention – Future tracking technologies could be designed to identify and respond to individuals at risk.

• Ethical responsibility of developers – Tech companies must balance performance tracking with athlete wellbeing, avoiding features that encourage extreme dieting or overtraining.

Discussion

This study reveals the double-edged nature of digital self-tracking. While these technologies can improve training, motivation, and self-regulation, they also pose risks—especially for athletes with perfectionist traits or pre-existing body image concerns. Experts highlight the need to create safer, more ethically designed technologies, incorporating features such as:

• Early detection of compulsive behaviours with alert systems

• A holistic view of health that goes beyond weight metrics

• Encouragement to take tracking breaks to avoid overdependence

• Direct integration of mental health resources into the apps

Brendan’s Perspective

With the explosion of digital tracking tools in the sports world, we’re witnessing a new paradox: technologies designed to promote health can, under certain conditions, contribute to its decline. This dynamic is especially apparent among athletes, whose drive for performance and control over the body can create fertile ground for obsessive tendencies. In this context, biofeedback and neurofeedback offer a powerful response, grounded in internal awareness and physiological self-regulation—an essential counterweight to the external metrics imposed by apps.

Disordered eating and compulsive tracking behaviours often stem from a disconnection from the body: athletes no longer rely on internal cues but instead use numbers to decide when to eat, rest, or train. This is exactly what biofeedback and neurofeedback aim to rebuild—a physiological regulation based on internal signals rather than external metrics. In clinical practice, this means using protocols that support body awareness, calm the autonomic nervous system, and reestablish mind-body connection.

For example, qEEG-guided neurofeedback combined with HRV biofeedback can be especially effective for these athletes. Training heart rate variability (HRV) with visual or auditory feedback stimulates vagal tone and rebuilds a sense of internal safety. The athlete learns to tune into internal states, recognising signs of overload, anxiety, or hunger without waiting for an app notification. Additionally, neurofeedback protocols focused on enhancing alpha rhythms (8–12 Hz)—particularly in the occipital or parietal regions (e.g., Pz, O1/O2)—can promote mental relaxation, reduce anxious rumination, and lessen fixation on numbers.

For more anxious or hyper-controlling profiles, SMR training (12–15 Hz, especially at C4 or Cz) may also be helpful. Training this frequency band is often associated with better emotional stability, stronger behavioural inhibition, and reduced hypervigilance—effects that are particularly relevant for those who struggle with mistrust of the body and excessive self-monitoring.

Throughout my clinical career, I’ve found that these tools become truly powerful when integrated into a multimodal and individualised approach. Some athletes benefit from neurofeedback combined with psychotherapy (e.g., ACT, CBT, or humanistic approaches), while others respond well to somatic practices like mindful breathing, yoga, or guided interoception. The key is to re-centre the body’s subjective experience in the therapeutic process, giving clients back a sense of authority over their sensory and emotional lives.

One limitation of current research approaches, including Peel’s (2024), is their focus on technology use without proposing real pathways for body reconnection. Including neurofeedback protocols in longitudinal studies on eating disorder prevention in athletes would be a particularly promising avenue for the future. It’s not just about deleting an app—it’s about relearning to trust the body, and this learning can be supported, measured, and guided through biofeedback and neurofeedback methods.

In short, while digital self-tracking has changed our relationship with health, it should never drown out the deeper signals our body sends us. The clinician’s role is twofold: to help athletes manage their relationship with technology, and to offer practical tools—like neurofeedback—that help them rebuild a relationship of trust with their internal experience. It’s in this balance—between data and intuition, performance and self-listening—that real progress lies.

Conclusion

Digital self-tracking tools are shaping the future of sports training, offering unprecedented insight into health, performance, and nutrition. However, this study highlights the importance of thoughtful design and responsible use—especially for athletes who are vulnerable to disordered eating and compulsive behaviours. Future developments must prioritise ethics, personalisation, and athlete wellbeing so that these tools remain a source of progress rather than harm.

Reference

Peel, M. (2024). Digital Self-Tracking Technologies, Disordered Eating Behaviours, and Athlete Populations: Exploratory Research to Inform the Design of Future Technologies. University of Alberta.