Want Beats Should: The Psychology Behind Habit Formation in Health Apps

Health and wellness apps face a fundamental challenge that most other consumer products don't: they're asking users to change their behavior, often in ways that feel difficult or uncomfortable. The traditional solution has been to lean on guilt and shame as motivators. But Marcus Gners, Chief Growth Officer and co-founder of Lifesum, believes that approach is exactly backwards.

On the Levels Podcast, Marcus shared his philosophy on habit formation and motivation. After 13 years building Lifesum and working with 65 million users, his team has learned that sustainable engagement comes from appealing to what users want, not what they think they should do.

The Problem With "Should" Products

Walk through the health and wellness section of any app store and you'll see a familiar pattern. Apps position themselves as things you should use. You should track your calories. You should meditate daily. You should exercise more. The underlying message is always the same: you're not doing enough, and our product will fix you.

Marcus recognizes this pattern but rejects it entirely.

"A lot of products and services have historically used guilt and shame to fuel sales and often ending up having an approach to the user where you sell products and services that are should products you should use this product but I think we come at it from a more consumer aspect where we think the users motivation to use the products will go up if we appeal to the users want instead of the should."

The distinction might seem subtle, but it changes everything about how you build and market a product. "Should" taps into obligation and inadequacy. "Want" taps into aspiration and desire. One makes users feel bad about themselves. The other makes them feel empowered.

This connects directly to how Lifesum thinks about design. When Marcus talks about design, he's not just referring to visual aesthetics. He means creating experiences that remove the emotional baggage people carry around health and lifestyle choices.

"If we design it nice, we can take the guilt and shame out of lifestyle, which is the struggles that all of us as humans have as we're trying to get through life and improve."

Design becomes a tool for emotional support. When users make progress, the app should make them feel proud. When they slip up, it should help them understand how to get back on track without judgment. The goal is empowerment, not punishment.

Making Users Feel Proud, Not Guilty

The practical application of this philosophy shows up throughout Lifesum's product decisions. Marcus describes their approach simply: make good products and package them in a way that makes users feel proud and cool for putting in the effort to improve their health.

"It's like make good products and package them in a way that makes the user feel proud and cool of actually putting the effort to improve their health and life, not feel guilt for being sort of not where they would want to be but actually things to improve, to feel pride in."

This reframing matters because health journeys are rarely linear. People have good days and bad days. They make choices they're happy with and choices they regret. An app that only celebrates perfection will lose users the moment they stumble. An app that helps users feel good about incremental progress keeps them engaged through the inevitable ups and downs.

The personalization work Lifesum is investing in serves this same goal. When Marcus talks about "hyper-personalization," he's describing systems that understand individual users well enough to provide feedback that feels relevant and supportive rather than generic and judgmental.

The Feedback Loop Problem

Health apps face a unique UX challenge that Marcus articulates clearly: the feedback loop in real life is painfully slow. Make good nutrition choices today and you might see benefits in 20 years. That's not exactly compelling for driving daily engagement.

"The problem with health and wellness has been that the feedback loop in life is pretty slow. And us as humans, we have difficulties identifying ourselves with future versions of ourselves."

This is where design has to compensate for biology. Humans are notoriously bad at delayed gratification. We struggle to connect our present actions with distant future outcomes. Tell someone that eating vegetables today will help them avoid heart disease in three decades and their brain barely registers the connection.

Lifesum addresses this by creating more immediate gratification through their product experience. Users need to feel something positive now, not just intellectually understand that they're investing in their future health. Coming from a gaming background, Marcus understands that engagement requires immediate feedback loops.

"You do something, you get something interesting back and you feel that you progress."

The company is doubling down on this with their upcoming releases focused on hyper-personalization. The goal is radically accelerating the feedback users get based on their actions. Track a meal and immediately understand something meaningful about that choice and how it fits into your broader health picture.

What Health Apps Can Learn From Games

When discussing the future of app design and user experience, Marcus keeps returning to gaming as the model health apps should follow. Games excel at creating engaging experiences despite having no practical utility. There's nothing useful about playing a game, and yet people spend hours deeply engaged with them.

"Why are games so good at that? It's because they don't have a benefit of... There is nothing useful really with playing a game. It's kind of pointless. But I think it's like, but they realize like fun beats smart and how do you make it into delightful experience?"

Health apps have historically leaned on their utility as a crutch. They provide useful information and helpful tracking, so they haven't had to work as hard on making the experience truly enjoyable. But as the market matures and competition increases, utility alone isn't enough.

Marcus points out that at their core, health apps are in the business of driving motivation. Users are the ones eating, sleeping, and exercising. The app's job is to influence them to make better choices and feel good about those choices. That's fundamentally about motivation and engagement, which games have mastered.

The future he envisions involves more dynamic, generative UI that adapts to individual users in real time, similar to how games create personalized experiences based on player choices. The technology is evolving rapidly, and health apps that don't adapt will start feeling dated.

From Theory to Practice

Several concrete strategies emerge from Lifesum's approach to habit formation:

Remove friction from positive actions. Lifesum's multimodal tracking allows users to log meals via image, voice, quick text, or barcode scanning. The easier it is to do the right thing, the more likely users are to build the habit.

Close the feedback loop. Don't make users wait weeks or months to understand if they're making progress. Find ways to provide meaningful feedback immediately after actions.

Design for pride, not shame. Every interaction should reinforce that users are capable and making progress, even when that progress is imperfect. Judgment kills motivation.

Appeal to aspirations. Position your product as something users want to use because it helps them become who they want to be, not something they should use because they're inadequate.

Learn from gaming. Fun beats utility when it comes to sustained engagement. Make the experience enjoyable, not just functional.

Marcus also emphasizes the importance of helping users set proper goals in the first place. Most people don't know how to create realistic, meaningful targets for themselves. Apps can play a crucial role in guiding users toward goals that are both achievable and genuinely aligned with their deeper motivations.

The Connection to Mental Health

Interestingly, when asked about mental health, Marcus argues that nutrition might be one of the most effective interventions available. The traditional model treats wellness as four equal parts: nutrition, exercise, sleep, and mental health practices like meditation.

Lifesum doesn't see it that way.

"We don't think we're one fourth we're the entry point of all things with health it's like we make nutrition makes you sleep better it makes you lift heavier weights run faster be more alert at work get more balanced mentally through sort of blood sugar and cortisol control and things like that."

This perspective reinforces the broader point about motivation. When users see nutrition improvements leading to better sleep, more energy, and improved mood, they experience multiple positive feedback loops reinforcing the habit. It's not just about reaching a weight goal anymore. It's about feeling better across every dimension of life.

Building for Sustainable Change

After 13 years in the health and wellness space, Marcus and his team have learned that sustainable behavior change requires a fundamentally different approach than most apps take. Guilt and shame might drive short-term downloads, but they burn out users quickly. Want beats should precisely because it aligns with how humans actually form lasting habits.

The most successful health apps won't be the ones with the most comprehensive tracking features or the most aggressive notifications reminding users of their obligations. They'll be the ones that understand human psychology well enough to make improvement feel rewarding rather than punishing. They'll make users want to engage, not just feel like they should.

Key Points

• Health apps traditionally use guilt and shame as motivators, but this approach burns out users quickly
• Appealing to what users "want" creates stronger motivation than emphasizing what they "should" do
• Design should make users feel proud of their efforts rather than guilty about their shortcomings
• Humans struggle with delayed gratification, so health apps need to create immediate feedback loops
• Games excel at engagement despite having no utility because "fun beats smart"
• Health apps can learn from gaming by making experiences enjoyable, not just functional
• Nutrition impacts sleep, exercise, mental clarity, and mood, creating multiple positive feedback loops
• Helping users set proper goals and understand their deeper motivations is as important as tracking progress

Listen to the full conversation with Marcus Gners on the Levels Podcast to hear more about building health products that users genuinely want to use.