A One-Day ACT Workshop for Emotional Eating
Phase: NA
Conditions: Emotional Eating, Eating Behavior
Sponsor: McGill University

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A One-Day ACT Workshop for Emotional Eating 
Study Protocol 
Frayn & Knäuper 
September 16, 2018 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Methodology/Procedures 
 
1. Recruitment: Participants will be recruited through flyers placed on the university 
campus as well as office buildings and community locations such as local gyms and 
doctor’s offices. Advertisements will also be placed in the university’s staff newsletter. 
2. Prescreening: To determine eligibility, interested individuals will be assigned an ID 
number and asked to complete the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire Emotional 
Eating subscale (DEBQ-EE, van Strien et al., 1986) online through SurveyMonkey to see 
whether they are eligible. The questionnaire will also ask them their age to ensure that 
they are over 18, as we are only recruiting adults. All of those who meet criteria for 
emotional eating (score of 3.25 or higher on the emotional eating subscale) will be 
eligible to participate and will be contacted to schedule their participation in the 
workshop.  
3. Baseline assessments: After they have consented to participate in the study, all 
participants will complete a demographics questionnaire, the DEBQ-EE, the Distress 
Tolerance Scale (DTS; Simons & Gaher, 2005), the Food Acceptance and Awareness 
Questionnaire (FAAQ; Juarascio, Forman, Timko, Butryn, & Goodwin, 2011), and the 
Mindful Eating Questionnaire (MEQ; Framson et al., 2009) prior to attending the 
workshop. They will also be asked a series of questions pertaining to values clarification 
and commitment in relation to emotional eating. Finally, they will be asked to complete 
two additional items recording the number of times they engaged in emotional eating as 
well as how much often they were able to stop emotional eating after starting. These 
items were developed by the authors. All questionnaires will be completed online through 
SurveyMonkey. 

4. Intervention: Workshops will be 4-6 hours in length and held on Saturdays. They will be 
facilitated by clinical psychology PhD students. The intervention will be modeled after 
Frayn and Knäuper’s (2016) brief emotional eating intervention, which was derived from 
Forman et al.’s (2013) “Mind Your Health program”. During the workshop, the following 
topics will be discussed, based on the three processes of ACT relevant to emotional 
eating identified in Forman and Butryn’s (2014) review: 
(1) Values Clarification and Commitment 
a. Exploring values and why it is important for participants to reduce their emotional 
eating. Values clarification will be emphasized to allow participants to identify 
that emotional eating is inconsistent with values pertaining to health and wellness. 
This values clarification will set the framework for motivating alternative, value-
consistent behaviours. 
b. Using values to make decisions and to engage in committed action (teaching the 
BOLD technique and walking participants through examples). Participants will be 
asked to brainstorm alternative, value-consistent behaviours that do not involve 
eating. 
(2) Acceptance/Distress Tolerance 
a. Introducing acceptance, specifically acceptance of negative emotions, within the 
ACT model (e.g., use tug-of-war metaphor and dropping the rope to elucidate 
this). Using acceptance in the context of emotional eating to explain that 
participants do not have to respond to their negative emotions by eating. 
b. Introducing the concept of urge surfing, allowing participants to normalize 
cravings that arise as a result of negative emotions. Teaching participants concrete 

steps to employ urge surfing to sit with negative emotions and cravings, rather 
than acting on them by eating.  
(3) Mindfulness/Awareness 
a. Introducing mindful eating. Participants will be asked to participate in an exercise 
where they are taught to mindfully eat dark chocolate. Mindful eating will be 
applied to emotional eating, as emotional eating is typically a mindless 
experience. Participants will be encouraged to pay mindful awareness of their 
hunger/satiety cues, and eat mindfully in a way that is physically and 
psychologically satisfying. 
Following the introduction and application of these three techniques, a discussion will be held to 
review what was taught and to identify which techniques resonate most with participants. The 
facilitator will answer/clarify any questions people may have about any of the concepts taught. 
Towards the end of the workshop, the facilitator will also introduce the concept of habit 
formation and the importance of practicing the techniques such that they become automatic. The 
workshop will conclude with committed action, bringing the discussion back to the commitment 
to values discussed at beginning of session. 
5. At the very end of the afternoon session, a brief discussion will be had to gain 
participants’ insight on the program to qualitatively assess treatment acceptability. 
Workshop facilitators will also be asked to provide their perceptions of how the 
workshop was received by participants. Qualitative discussion prompts will be based on 
recommendations by O’Cathain et al. (2015) for using qualitative data to inform 
feasibility studies. The contents of these discussions will be subject to thematic analysis 
to identify emergent themes pertaining to treatment acceptability. 

6. 2-weeks and 3-month follow-ups: At these time points, participants will be asked to 
complete the same battery of questionnaires they completed prior to taking the workshop. 
The purpose of these follow-up assessments is to assess changes in these variables from 
baseline to 2-weeks and 3-months post-intervention to examine the effectiveness of the 
workshop in the short and long term.  
 

References 
Forman, E. M., & Butryn, M. L. (2014). A new look at the science of weight control: How 
 
acceptance and commitment strategies can address the challenge of self-regulation. 
 
Appetite, 84, 171-180.  
Forman, E. M., Butryn, M. L., Juarascio, A. S., Bradley, L. E., Lowe, M. R., Herbert, J. D., & 
 
Shaw, J. A. (2013). The mind your health project: A randomized controlled trial of an 
 
innovative behavioral treatment for obesity. Obesity, 21, 1119-1126.  
Framson, C., Kristal, A. R., Schenk, J. M., Littman, A. J., Zeliadt, S., & Benitez, D. (2009). 
 
Development and validation of the mindful eating questionnaire. Journal of the American 
 
Dietetic Association, 109(8), 1439-1444.  
Frayn, M. & Knäuper, B. (2016). Weight loss program for emotional eaters: Physician manual 
and participant handouts. McGill University, Montreal. 
Juarascio, A., Forman, E., Timko, A., Butryn, M., & Goodwin, C. (2011). The development and 
 
validation of the food craving acceptance and action questionnaire (FAAQ). Eating 
 
Behaviors, 12, 182-187.  
O’Cathain, A., Hoddinott, P., Lewin, S., Thomas, K. J., Young, B., Adamson, J., Jansen, Y. J., 
 
Mills, N., Moore, G., & Donovan, J. L. (2015). Maximising the impact of qualitative 
 
research in feasibility studies for randomised controlled trials: Guidance for researchers. 
 
Pilot and Feasibility Studies, 7, 1-32.  
Simons, J. S., & Gaher, R. M. (2005). The Distress Tolerance Scale: Development and validation 
 
of a self-report measure. Motivation and Emotion, 29, 83-102.  

van Strien, T., Frijters, J., Bergers, G., & Defares, P. B. (1986). The Dutch Eating Behavior 
 
Questionaire (DEBQ) for assessment of restrained, emotional, and external eating 
 
behavior. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 5, 295-315.