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Introduction: Unhealthy eating behavior is a major contributor to obesity and related diseases and may be driven by automatic approach tendencies towards tasty but unhealthy foods. Approach-Avoidance interventions (AAI) have been proposed as a remedy to retrain approach biases and help people to eat in line with their dietary goals. Mobile implementations of AAI might represent a useful, low threshold intervention but its effectiveness has not been established yet.Methods and analysis: Participants with the goal of changing their eating behavior are randomized to intervention or control groups, each completing six sessions of a smartphone-based AAI, in which they push (i.e., avoid) or pull (i.e., approach) personalized food images. Intervention group participants always avoid individualized sets of foods that they want to eat less often and approach foods that they want to eat more often. In the control group, response directions and images are paired equally often. To evaluate contextual and dynamic intervention effects, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is measured throughout, with questions about food intake, hunger, stress, emotions, eating intentions, food craving, and impulsivity twice a day. Additional EMA pre- and post-intervention phases are measured before and after the intervention phase (4 days each) with a one-day follow-up EMA four weeks after the intervention. Multilevel models will examine the temporal covariance between approach bias and self-reported variables as well as short- and long-term intervention effects on approach bias, food intake, and craving.Ethics and dissemination: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Salzburg. Results will be published in peer reviewed scientific journals and presented at scientific conferences.Trial registration: This study was registered at the German Clinical Trials Register DRKS, registration number DRKS00030780, and on the Open Science Framework https://osf.io/4k3q9/?view_only=4db6431fd5ee4148a97f3be7f799ea4a. |
