Abstract
Two hundred million people in the US are overweight or obese mirroring a worldwide trend that is associated with high morbidity and mortality rates. Health and fitness mobile technology applications have great capacities for supporting dieters’ life-style changes and could profit from and provide input of health behavior theories. Those theories have been demonstrated with massive clinical evidence to be efficient for fostering healthy lifestyle changes and weight loss. This research reviewed the 100 most popular mobile technology applications from iTunes App Store’s Health and Fitness category in respect coverage of health behavior theories’ concepts und chose 14 of those for a complete analysis. Applications provide good support for athletes’ workouts and have great potential to be extended to serve overweight users as well. Missing features could be easily implemented given the current state of technology. These developments look promising for tackling sustained weight loss in many mobile technology users.
Highlights
Overweight users of health applications face complex daily challenges when trying to change their lifestyle
When using health and fitness applications for supporting these aims, overweight users need to know with confidence why they are doing what they are doing and what the health benefits from those exercises will be
Because the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) integrates components from the other theories, we review here briefly the Health Belief Model (HBM), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and Transtheoretical Model (TTM) only
Summary
Overweight users of health applications face complex daily challenges when trying to change their lifestyle. Often there are knowledge gaps to be filled They may be overwhelmed by the scale of the project, lack motivation, and may need support for coming back on track after relapses. When using health and fitness applications for supporting these aims, overweight users need to know with confidence why they are doing what they are doing and what the health benefits from those exercises will be. Mobile applications can nicely complement those theories because of their computing power, multimedia and communication capacities, and their capacities for tracking daily activities of patients who are seen by their healthcare provider only on weekly or monthly basis. Health applications can support the process of behavior change by providing in time, user- and stage-specific advice and encouragement
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