The Application of Validating and Dialectical Coaching Strategies in a Personalised Virtual Coach for Obese Emotional Eaters: Rationale for a Personalised Coaching System

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 personalised virtual coach ‘Denk je zèlf!’ providing support for self-regulation of emotions for obese emotional eaters. This paper presents a research study protocol on validating persuasive coaching strategies in emotion regulation, based on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, ultimately targeting behaviour change. Our goal is to design a personalised eCoaching framework, allowing us to optimally translate successful behaviour change mechanisms and techniques, such as dialectical strategies, into personalised persuasive coaching strategies.