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Putting the fear of death into people could be the best way to get them to exercise, according to a study.
Researchers measured people's motivation to exercise after reading five different messages.
Warnings about illness and even death from a lack of physical activity were the best performers, results showed.
The morbid messages beat similar warnings about getting fat, social stigma from being unfit, or the cost of medical treatment to taxpayers.
This graph shows that messages warning of illness and death from a lack of physical activity were the best performers for motivating both men and women to exercise. The cross represents a neutral reaction to the messages
Study author Dr Kiemute Oyibo, from the University of Waterloo in Canada, said the findings will help improve exercise-related communication for fitness apps.
'The findings provide a basis for fitness app designers to leverage more of illness- and death-related health messages as a persuasive technique to motivate behavior change,' he said.
In the study, 669 people were asked to rate five messages on how they encouraged them to exercise with a fitness app, doing things like push-ups and squats.
These messages were based on five different categories, financial, obesity, deaths, illness and social stigma.
The author of the new study set out to find if negative messages about exercise could help motivate people to keep fit
