9:29pm September 19, 2014

WARNING FOR THOSE WITH OR RECOVERING FROM EATING DISORDERS, ESPECIALLY ONES WITH OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE HABITS, WHO ARE THINKING OF DOWNLOADING THE IOS 8 UPDATE. PLEASE REBLOG.

The new IOS8 update contains an app named Health which CANNOT BE DELETED.

The app allows you to choose which aspects of your health you choose to monitor, but available categories include “Body Measurements”, which includes body weight, and “Fitness”, which contains sections for calories consumed and calories burned.

While this may be useful for those looking to monitor their fitness, it could be triggering and harmful to those suffering with or in recovery from eating disorders, especially in sufferers with obsessive compulsive tendencies they find it very hard to abstain from, such as calorie counting, body measuring and weighing.

Whilst of course the app cannot force you to use it, it cannot be deleted, so will be present within your apps and can be a source of feelings of temptation to record numbers and of guilt and judgement for not using the app.

If you personally feel you could not emotionally handle the presence of this app, and it would be detrimental to your recovery, please do not download IOS8. I do not know if a new IOS can be avoided permanently (if anyone has any information on this please do add it to the post), but if it cannot then please use the time you have to prepare yourself for the app, and to reinforce reminders that you do not have to calorie count, you do not have to weigh yourself, you do not owe proof of exercise to anyone, person or app.