Flex: An App that enhances automatic evaluations

Emotion dysregulation is a known risk factor for a variety of maladaptive eating behaviors, including emotional eating. New passive sensing technologies offer the prospect of detecting emotion dysregulation in real-time through measurement of heart rate variability (HRV), a transdiagnostic bio-signal of emotion regulation, which may in turn signal risk of engaging in a maladaptive eating behavior. In the current study, our primary aim was to test whether momentary changes in HRV can be used to detect risk of experiencing an emotional eating episode in an ecologically valid setting using a wrist worn sensor.