Application of three different coaching strategies for people with emotional eating 93 4 Even though participants had a negative attitude toward themselves, a vast majority felt positive about the validating coaching strategy. The fact that their true feelings and emotions were expressed by the coach could be considered as meeting expectations that lie in their unspoken needs. The coach describes emotions and reveals what is considered as “terra incognita” for the participants. The majority of participants disapproved of validating the eating behaviour “after emotional eating”, which concerns the comforting aspect of eating. At the same time, this study has made it clear that participants showed gratitude for not being judged on their eating behaviour. This may indicate an unspoken need for a counterargument, something they aren’t able to give themselves. Validation of their behaviour yielded an opposite point of view, and can teach them to be more lenient in judging their own behaviour. According to Swales [101], “Acceptance implies an acknowledgement of what is rather than approval or agreement” (p.166), and “Validation helps clients tolerate the extreme difficulty of change”. The virtual coach can meet the need to enhance self-compassion by providing validating coaching strategies for selfimage. Participants appreciated the straightforwardness and practical approach of the dialectic coaching strategy. It not only validated their emotions and behaviour – the approach made them feel accepted for who they are. At the same time they received solutionoriented advice on the best thing they could do in that specific situation. Although the effectiveness of DBT in both BED and emotional eating behaviour has been extensively published [33, 64-70, 102], little is known about the effect of the specific coaching strategies that are a part of this therapy [43, 102]. Further research is needed on which type of validating or dialectical coaching fits best with which situation. When combining the needs articulated in our study with the two most important situations for people with emotional eating (“when experiencing cravings” and “after losing control to emotional eating”), we propose the following scheme to plan and design exercises tailored to specific situations and personal coaching needs (see Table 4).
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