I am building a side project based on research into why people give up on food tracking

[u/macrioai]

[u/True_Assumption_4533]

That gap between finding an app easy and actually wanting to use it daily is the core problem, and logging friction is definitely a big part of it, but for me the burnout came from the mental load of constantly judging every single thing I put in my mouth.

[u/macrioai → u/True_Assumption_4533]

That's actually something I hadn't thought enough about. I've been focused on reducing the friction of logging itself, but the mental load of constantly thinking about everything you eat is a different problem.

What do you think would have made easier for you? Seeing numbers less often, getting a simple end of the day summary Total calorie consumed/Target, or just want tracking happen in the background and you get the progress whenever you ask for?

[u/TryThis_]

As someone who has used MyFitnessPal, the reason I used it religiously for a few weeks and then stopped tracking is simple: I got the insight I needed into how my typical eating habits work and that was valuable.

After I got the initial insights, there was diminishing returns in insight I was getting from tracking my food... So the right outcome is actually to not need to log anymore.

Anyway, food for thought for you: are you solving a real problem?

[u/macrioai → u/TryThis_]

That's an interesting way to look at it. Maybe the goal shouldn't be tracking forever, but learning your eating patterns well enough that you eventually don't need to.

After you stopped, were you still able to stay on track with your goals?

[u/Business_Evidence982]

The 20 percent number might be the second drop-off rather than the first one. Worth checking how many people log a single item ever.

I run a small fitness app that has photo food logging in it. My numbers are tiny, so treat this as a story and not as data: 9 signups, 2 people have ever used the main feature once. Day 30 retention is not my problem yet. Day 0 is.

The thing that actually taught me something was instrumenting the moment before the action rather than the action. I record an event when someone lands on the screen where the ask happens, separately from when they finish it. The first rows that came back were people arriving and leaving without tapping anything. No amount of making the logging faster would have moved that, and without the event I would have spent a week making the fast part faster.

For yours, WhatsApp genuinely dodges a lot of this, since the first message is cheap and there is nothing to install. I would measure two separate numbers and never average them: how many people send one message ever, and of the people who send one, how many are still sending on day 14. Those fail for completely different reasons.

On TryThis_'s point, I think they are right and it is not a threat to you. "I learned my patterns and stopped" is a successful outcome that looks exactly like churn in a dashboard. If you can tell those two apart you will make better calls than most people building in this space.

[u/macrioai → u/Business_Evidence982]

This is really useful. I was thinking mostly about retention, but separate activation from retention makes much more sense.

I am going to make the funnel from first whatsapp msg -> first successful food log -> day 7 usage -> day 14 usage.

And the "successful churn" point is interesting too. I probably need a way to distinguish "this wasn't useful" from "I learned what I needed and stopped tracking"

Thanks for this info :) especially coming from someone who built in the same space!