Application of three different coaching strategies for people with emotional eating 89 4 Common elements in all these groups were the cultivation of more positive emotions to reduce negative emotions, and learning to gain insight into one’s own feelings. Discussion The objective of this study was to get a clearer view of what kind of coaching strategy is preferred by people with emotional eating when “experiencing cravings” or “after losing control to emotional eating”. The main findings were that participants identified themselves with the personas and that they valued both the validating coaching strategy and the focuson-change strategy. At the same time, they indicated that a combination of validation and focus-on-change – the dialectical coaching strategy – was appreciated the most. Below we present a summary of results related to literature and conditions for tailoring the virtual coach to the needs of individuals with emotional eating tendencies (Fig. 3). Figure 3 | Overview of found themes per condition (“When experiencing cravings” and “After losing control to emotional eating”) translated to topics in the Discussion Gaining insight into emotions and the process of emotional eating Participants in our study indicated having difficulties identifying and describing their feelings and communicating these feelings to others. This is in line with earlier research establishing an association between emotional eating behaviour and alexithymia [57-62]. Participants also pointed out their need for deeper insight into the entire process of emotional eating. A possible way for participants to have a better comprehension of the possible triggers and causes of their individual bouts of emotional eating could be by
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