Is Your Fitness Tracker Fueling Anxiety, Food Rules, or Disordered Eating?

When “Healthy Habits” Turn into Control: Exploring the Hidden Impact of Fitness Trackers

It often starts innocently. You get a fitness tracker to help you stay active or to improve your sleep. Maybe you download a food tracking app to be more mindful about your nutrition. These tools can be helpful, until they’re not.

For some, what begins as a desire to be “healthy” turns into something more rigid, obsessive, or emotionally charged. If you're reading this and wondering, “Is this me?”, you’re not alone and it’s worth exploring.

Tech-Tracking Culture: Empowering or Controlling?

We live in a world where we’re constantly collecting data about our bodies:

• Apple Watches buzz when we sit too long

• Oura Rings give us sleep "scores"

• FitBits tell us how many steps we’ve taken

• Calorie counting apps assign a number to every bite we take

These tools aren’t inherently bad. But for some, they become a proxy for self-worth, control, or identity.

Red Flags That Your Tracking Might Be Unhealthy

Here are some signs that your relationship with tracking tech might be tipping into unhealthy or disordered territory:

🚩 You feel anxious or guilty when:

• You don’t hit your step goal

• Your sleep score is “bad”

• You eat something that wasn’t logged

• You skip a workout, even when tired or sore

🚩 You ignore your body in favor of what your device says:

• You override hunger cues because your calorie app says you’re “done eating”

• You override fullness cues because your calorie app says you have “extra calories” left

• You exercise even when you feel exhausted

• You question whether you really feel rested, hungry, or full—unless a device confirms it

🚩 You feel like you can’t relax without “earning it”

You might delay rest until your rings are closed or feel like you must "work off" food. Rest and nourishment become conditional, not intuitive.

What This Might Really Be About: Control, Anxiety, and Self-Worth

While many people associate eating disorders with appearance concerns, they’re often rooted in a need for control, especially during times of stress, transition, or emotional overwhelm.

If you find yourself:

• Needing to track everything to feel okay

• Experiencing fear around food, rest, or “missing a day”

• Using numbers or data to validate how you’re doing
  …it might be time to ask if there’s something deeper going on.

These patterns are common among individuals with:

• Disordered eating

• Orthorexia tendencies

• Anxiety disorders

• Perfectionism

• High-functioning stress masking emotional burnout

You Don’t Have to Have a Diagnosis to Seek Support

You don’t need to “look” sick, hit a low weight, or check every box to deserve help. If your relationship with health, food, or tracking feels rigid, exhausting, or consuming, that’s enough of a reason to explore it.

Healing doesn’t mean throwing out every piece of technology. It means reclaiming your inner voice, the one that tells you when you're tired, hungry, full, or overwhelmed.

How Therapy Can Help You Reconnect with Your Body

At Naturally You Counseling & Wellness, I work with teens and adults who want to:

• Rebuild body trust

• Heal from eating disorders or control-based food and movement behaviors

• Learn intuitive eating and self-compassion practices

• Step away from “all-or-nothing” thinking around wellness

We explore your relationship with control, perfectionism, identity, and body image and work toward a life with more flexibility, peace, and presence.

Final Note: You Deserve to Feel at Home in Your Body Again

If you're realizing that your tech tools are controlling you more than helping you, that’s not a failure, it’s an invitation. You deserve support that goes beyond a screen. And you deserve a relationship with your body that’s rooted in trust, not numbers.

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, consider reaching out to a trusted professional, an eating disorder therapist, or a support network. You are not alone, and help is available. Seeking eating disorder counseling or therapy for mental health can be a transformative step towards healing and recovery.

With Love,

Briana

Visit @naturallyyoucounseling on Instagram for more tips, information, and support.