Intervention where and when you need it: I-CRAV

Managing food intake can be challenging, especially when cravings for unhealthy, high-calorie foods take over. These cravings often lead to unhealthy choices, even when we try to make better decisions. The I-CRAV project aims to tackle this problem by using smartphone-based interventions to help people resist cravingsparticularly when they are strongest. Food cravings for unhealthy options can often override our best intentions. One promising method to address this is called Approach-Avoidance Intervention (AAI), where people are trained to associate unhealthy foods with avoidance instead of attraction. This has shown success in lab settings, but it hasnt been tested in real-life situations. Our project aims to bring AAI into everyday life by delivering these interventions through smartphones when cravings are most likely to occur. The goal of I-CRAV is to test whether smartphone-based AAI can reduce unhealthy eating by targeting cravings in real-time. We will explore how cravings affect the effectiveness of these interventions and find the best times to deliver them. Additionally, we will use machine learning to predict when cravings are likely to happen, so we can deliver AAI before they even start. What makes this research innovative is how it combines two emerging fields: using smartphones to change eating behavior and using technology to predict the best time for intervention. By anticipating cravings and delivering AAI at the right moment, we hope to help people make healthier food choices more consistently. This could lead to more effective, personalized strategies for managing eating habits. Ultimately, the I-CRAV project aims to create a practical tool that can help individuals make better food choices in their daily lives, which could contribute to better health outcomes.

No additional funding sources recorded.