NCT04457804

A Brief Virtual ACT Workshop for Emotional Eating

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 30 (actual)
• Sponsor: McGill University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Emotional eating is a behaviour that has been linked to weight concerns, mental health concerns, and disordered eating. Effective interventions have been developed to treat emotional eating, however these exist solely in the context of promoting weight loss. Emotional eating is not exclusive to those who struggle with weight and thus interventions are needed that target those who engage in emotional eating regardless of their weight status. The present study aims to do so through the implementation of a brief online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) workshop for emotional eaters.

Detailed description

Emotional eating is defined as increased food consumption in response to negative emotions, and has been linked to weight concerns, mental health concerns, and disordered eating behaviours. Effective interventions have been developed that address emotional eating, namely to improve weight loss. Such interventions are based in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which encourages tolerance of internal cues, such as emotions, and external cues, such as food. Previous studies have found that brief ACT interventions are effective for the reduction of emotional eating. Our laboratory has recently developed and pilot-tested a one-day ACT workshop intervention for emotional eating, which was found to be effective for reducing emotional eating and deemed feasible and acceptable by participants. The present study was developed with the aim to adapt the above mentioned workshop intervention to an online format in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The study aims to test the efficacy, feasibility and acceptability of a brief, online version of the above mentioned one-day ACT workshop for emotional eating. The workshops will be delivered through the Zoom online platform.

Conditions

• Emotional Eating
• Eating Behavior

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Virtual ACT Workshop for Emotional Eating	This is a brief online intervention using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) technique to target and reduce emotional eating. The intervention will be modeled after Frayn and Knäuper's 1-day ACT workshop for emotional eating intervention, which was derived from Forman and colleagues' "Mind Your Health Program". During the workshop, the following topics will be discussed, based on the three processes of ACT: (1) values clarification/commitment, (2) acceptance/distress tolerance, and (3) mindfulness/awareness.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-05-18
• Primary completion: 2020-09-25
• Completion: 2020-09-25
• First posted: 2020-07-07
• Last updated: 2021-09-05

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Canada