The use of dialectical dialogues in a personalized virtual coach for obese emotional eaters: A research protocol for a field study among target group

Contains fulltext : 174371.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)There is a growing number of eHealth interventions aiming at enhancing lifestyle to address obesity. However, the existing interventions do not take the emotional aspects of obesity into account. Forty percent of the overweight population is an emotional eater. Emotional eaters gain weight because of poor emotion regulation, not just due to bad eating habits. We aim at developing a personalized virtual coach 'Denk je zèlf!' providing support for self-regulation of emotions for young obese emotional eaters. This paper presents an eCoaching model and a research study protocol aiming at the validation of persuasive coaching strategies based on behavior change techniques. Ultimately, we aim at designing a personalized eCoaching framework, allowing us to optimally translate successful behavior change mechanisms and techniques, such as dialectical strategies, into personalized persuasive coaching strategies.The Ninth International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine, eTELEMED 2017 (March 19 - 23, 2017 - Nice, France