Key Takeaways
- A peer-reviewed study supported by MyFitnessPal and conducted by researchers at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine has been published in Nutrients, examining behavioral and dietary predictors of weight loss success among MyFitnessPal users.
- Nearly half of participants achieved clinically significant weight loss within 120 days—defined as losing at least 5% of body weight.
- Daily app engagement was the single strongest predictor of success, outperforming dietary and demographic factors.
- Adults 60 and older achieved the highest success rate of any age group at 74.6%.
Why We Partnered with UCLA
In 2023, MyFitnessPal partnered with Dr. Zhaoping Li, MD, Director of the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, to answer a question that sits at the center of everything we do: what actually makes people successful at reaching their health and nutrition goals?
Dr. Li and her team at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine brought the scientific rigor. The result is a peer-reviewed study, now published in Nutrients, that offers clear evidence on what drives real weight loss outcomes.
About the Research
The study followed 1,359 MyFitnessPal users who set weight loss goals over a 120-day period. Researchers examined app engagement patterns, dietary intake, and demographic factors to understand what distinguished users who achieved clinically significant weight loss, which is defined as losing at least 5% of body weight, a threshold supported by NIH guidelines, from those who did not.
The Findings
Nearly half of participants (48.5%) achieved clinically significant weight loss within the study period, with that figure rising to 60.1% among users who logged food consistently throughout. Across every analysis the researchers ran, one factor rose to the top: how consistently people engaged with the app. Daily engagement was the single strongest independent predictor of weight loss success, outperforming age, gender, starting weight, and any individual dietary variable. Users in the highest engagement quartile were more than twice as likely to reach their goals as those in the lowest, and each additional daily interaction with the app increased the odds of success by 8%.
Diet also played a role. Among users who logged food consistently, lower carbohydrate intake was independently associated with greater weight loss success. Protein intake showed a similar trend but didn’t reach statistical significance, which the researchers flagged as an area for future study.
One of the more unexpected findings was the pattern across age groups. Success rates were relatively high among younger adults, declined through middle age, and then reversed sharply with adults 60 and older achieving the highest success rate of any group at 74.6%. The researchers noted this U-shaped curve as a finding worth investigating further.
The Case for Showing Up
This research affirms something that has shaped how we’ve built MyFitnessPal from the beginning: that consistent self-monitoring is one of the most effective tools available for behavior change. The features that drive daily engagement, including food logging, barcode scanning, water tracking, and weight logging, aren’t just ways to organize information. They’re the mechanism through which people build awareness of their habits, and the research suggests that awareness is where progress starts.
It’s why we continue to invest in making tracking as easy as possible, from Voice Log and Meal Scan to our AI Coach, which translates daily logging into personalized, real-time guidance. The easier it is to show up, the more likely people are to, and now we have the peer-reviewed data to show why that matters.
Read the full peer-reviewed study here.