Weight & Eating
Hypnosis for Weight Loss: The Best Trial Changed How People Ate
In 2022 a randomised trial of hypnosis hit its primary outcome in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. That outcome was eating behaviour. In the same trial the weight figure missed significance at P = 0.052. Both halves are on this page, in that order, because that order is the honest one.
What this page will and will not claim.Hypnosis has a randomised, primary-outcome win behind it — on disinhibited eating, the loss of control that turns one biscuit into the packet. That result is real and it is properly published.
It does not have a win on the scales. Not once, in any trial designed to test it. So everything below is sold as work on eating behaviour, and nothing here is a weight-loss treatment. If a page promises you kilograms, ask it which trial.
Written by Ernest McLeodClinical hypnotherapist. An Adelaide practice, seeing clients across Australia by video. Fourteen years in practice. About Ernest →
I earn a commission when someone buys a session through this site. Every figure below is one you can look up, and I have put the number that goes against me in the same paragraph as the number that helps.
What is the best trial of hypnosis for weight loss?
Delestre and colleagues randomised 82 people and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition — a serious nutrition journal, not a hypnosis one. The trial was registered before it ran. Its primary outcome was food disinhibition: the measured tendency to keep eating once eating has started, past the point you meant to stop.
It met that outcome. Disinhibition improved by 4.2 points [2.8 to 5.5], P < 0.001 against the control group. Put in people rather than points: 67.7 per cent of the hypnosis group moved into the normal range for disinhibited eating, against 11.1 per cent of controls, P < 0.0001. Measured hunger also fell, by 2.2 [1.0 to 3.3], P < 0.001.
That is not a soft finding dressed up. It is a pre-specified primary endpoint, randomised, and it cleared its bar by a distance. If you have ever wondered whether the thing hypnosis is supposed to act on — the pull toward the food, the going-on-past-full — can be shifted in a controlled trial, the answer is that it has been.
And in the same trial, the weight.Body weight differed by 1.8 kg [−0.1 to 3.7], P = 0.052. That did not reach statistical significance. The confidence interval crosses zero, which means a true effect of nothing is still compatible with what they observed.
It is close. Close is not the same as shown, and I am not going to sell you a near-miss as a result. The trial changed how people ate. It did not demonstrate that it changed what they weighed.
One more thing about HYPNODIET that matters on a site selling recordings: the intervention was eight sessions delivered by a therapist, in person. Not an MP3.
Does hypnosis work better added to something else?
This is the most defensible sentence in the whole field, and it comes from Ramondo and colleagues’ 2021 meta-analysis in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. They pooled 48 post-treatment comparisons covering 1,928 people, and 25 follow-up comparisons covering 1,165.
The comparison was not hypnosis against nothing. It was CBT with hypnosis added against the same CBT alone — the hardest test you can set, because the control group already gets the working treatment. Adding hypnosis produced d = 0.25 to 0.41 at the end of treatment, and 0.54 to 0.59 at follow-up.
The detail that belongs on this page in particular: the follow-up advantage was specific to obesity. Of everything Ramondo measured, the place where hypnosis added most to another treatment over time was this one. The effect got bigger after the sessions stopped, not smaller.
Read what that is and is not. It is evidence that hypnosis is a good addition. It is not evidence that hypnosis on its own does anything. Every one of those comparisons had a real programme underneath it.
What happened in the trial that ran a year?
Bo and colleagues, in Obesity, followed 120 people for a year. Their primary outcome was weight, and it came out null: −6.5 kg with hypnosis against −5.6 kg without, a difference of −0.45 kg [−3.78 to 2.88], P = 0.79. Both groups lost weight. The hypnosis part added nothing detectable to it.
The secondary outcomes went the other way, and they are the ones worth your attention. Satiety improved, P = 0.001. Quality of life improved, P = 0.01. C-reactive protein — an inflammatory marker, measured from blood rather than reported on a questionnaire — improved at P < 0.001.
So the pattern repeats. Twice now, in two separate randomised trials with different designs, the eating-and-feeling measures moved and the scales did not. That is a consistent story, and it happens to be the story this site is in a position to sell honestly.
You will see a much larger loss attributed to this trial on other sites. Do not accept it. It comes from a post-hoc subgroup of people who chose for themselves to keep using the recordings, which measures who was motivated rather than what hypnosis did. The trial’s actual answer on weight is the null one above. Bo’s sessions were also therapist-led.
Where the evidence runs out
One section, said properly, and then I will stop.
Antoun and colleagues, in PeerJ in 2022, ran the only randomised trial of the exact format this site sells — an audio recording, with a placebo control. It was null: −0.63 kg against 0.0 kg, P = 0.148. The trial reached 49 per cent of its intended power, so it was underpowered to find a small effect, but an underpowered null is still a null and it is the closest match to what you would actually be buying.
Against that sits the delivery-format evidence, which is genuinely encouraging and almost nobody quotes it. Yim and Derbyshire ran the subgroup analysis in 2026: self-hypnosis, therapist-delivered, taped and therapist-plus-practice all landed in the same band, and the difference between delivery methods came out at p = 0.94. Montgomery and colleagues tested live against audiotape head to head in 2002 and reported no significant differences between methods of induction. Where it has been tested, a recording has performed comparably to a clinician. The subgroups were small, and that work was in pain rather than eating.
Honest summary: the behaviour result is real and therapist-delivered; the format research says recordings have held up where anyone checked; the one audio weight trial was null. You are buying the cheap version of something that worked in a clinic, and nobody has yet run the trial that closes that gap.
Which session should you actually buy?
There are thirty-one sessions in the catalogue filed under weight loss, and the useful way to choose is not by the word “weight” at all. It is by which eating behaviour is actually yours — because that is the thing with a randomised trial behind it. Six of them have a page here.
- Stop Emotional EatingWhen the trigger is a feeling rather than hunger.
- Stop Boredom EatingA habit with a cue. Closest to the disinhibition measure.
- Stop Night EatingIf the day holds and the evening does not.
- Portion ControlIf you stop when it is gone rather than when you have had enough.
- Control HungerHunger was a measured outcome in HYPNODIET. It moved.
- Sweet ToothFor one specific pull rather than eating in general.
Each is US$18.95, about A$27, a one-off instant download inside the publisher’s ninety-day refund window. The whole eating category is here, and the catalogue also carries titles like Stop Overeating, Eat Slowly, Stop Snacking and Stick to Your Diet if your version is narrower than the six above.
Given Ramondo, the sensible way to use one is alongside whatever eating plan you are already following, not instead of it. That is the arrangement the 1,928-person meta-analysis actually tested.
Is it safe?
Bollinger went through adverse events recorded in hypnosis clinical trials in 2018 and found serious adverse events attributable to hypnosis reported at zero per cent, and other adverse events at 0.47 per cent. His own caveat: those trials treated medical conditions and procedures rather than psychiatric ones, so the safety picture is thinnest exactly where people are most unwell.
If your eating involves purging, restricting, or bingeing that frightens you, that is an eating disorder and none of this is the right tool. Ring the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673 and talk to your GP. And never listen to a recording while driving.
Common questions
Does hypnosis work for weight loss?
For eating behaviour, yes, in a randomised trial. Delestre 2022 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition met its primary outcome: food disinhibition improved by 4.2 points [2.8 to 5.5], P < 0.001, with 67.7 per cent normalising against 11.1 per cent of controls. For weight itself, no trial has shown a significant effect. In that same trial weight differed by 1.8 kg at P = 0.052, which missed.
How much weight will I lose?
Nobody can tell you, and anyone who gives you a figure is inventing it. The best trial missed significance on weight at P = 0.052, and the best-powered one-year trial was flatly null on weight at P = 0.79. Buy these sessions for the eating behaviour, which has been shown, and treat any change on the scales as unclaimed.
What is food disinhibition?
The measured tendency to keep eating once you have started — past fullness, past what you intended, often set off by the food being there rather than by hunger. It is a standard research measure, it is what HYPNODIET was built to shift, and it is much closer to what most people mean by “I can’t stop” than any number on a scale.
Does a recording work as well as seeing a hypnotherapist?
Where anyone has tested it, comparably. Yim and Derbyshire’s 2026 subgroup analysis found no significant difference between self-hypnosis, therapist-delivered and taped delivery, p = 0.94, and Montgomery 2002 compared live against audiotape directly and found none. Those subgroups were small and the work was in pain. The two eating trials above both used therapists.
Should I use this instead of a diet or a dietitian?
No. The strongest evidence — Ramondo 2021, pooling 1,928 people — is for hypnosis added to an existing treatment, where it produced an extra d = 0.25 to 0.41 at the end and 0.54 to 0.59 at follow-up, with the follow-up advantage specific to obesity. It is an add-on with real numbers behind it, not a replacement.
Why does this page avoid the big percentages other sites use?
Because they do not survive checking. The famous 1995 obesity effect size was corrected downward to non-significance the following year. The success rates quoted across the industry trace to uncontrolled case series or to no primary source at all. The big kilogram figure attached to Bo 2018 is a self-selected subgroup. Everything on this page is a published primary result with its comparator attached.
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Where these numbers come from
- Delestre F, Lehéricey G, Estellat C, et al. Hypnosis reduces food impulsivity in patients with obesity and high levels of disinhibition: HYPNODIET randomized controlled clinical trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2022;115(6):1637-1645. doi:10.1093/ajcn/nqac046
- Ramondo N, Gignac GE, Pestell CF, et al. Clinical hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive behavior therapy: an updated meta-analysis. Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2021;69(2):169-202. doi:10.1080/00207144.2021.1877549
- Bo S, Rahimi F, Goitre I, et al. Effects of self-conditioning techniques (self-hypnosis) in promoting weight loss in patients with severe obesity: a randomized controlled trial. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2018;26(9):1422-1429. doi:10.1002/oby.22262
- Antoun J, El Zouki M, Saadeh M. The use of audio self-hypnosis to promote weight loss using the transtheoretical model of change: a randomized clinical pilot trial. PeerJ. 2022;10:e14422. doi:10.7717/peerj.14422
- Yim TH, Derbyshire SWG. A systematic review of hypnosis for clinical pain relief. Eur J Pain. 2026;30(8):e70369. doi:10.1002/ejp.70369
- Montgomery GH, David D, Winkel G, et al. The effectiveness of adjunctive hypnosis with surgical patients: a meta-analysis. Anesth Analg. 2002;94(6):1639-1645. doi:10.1097/00000539-200206000-00052
- Bollinger JW. The rate of adverse events related to hypnosis during clinical trials. Am J Clin Hypn. 2018;60(4):357-366. doi:10.1080/00029157.2017.1315927
- Kirsch I, Montgomery G, Sapirstein G. Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy: a meta-analysis. J Consult Clin Psychol. 1995;63(2):214-220. doi:10.1037//0022-006x.63.2.214
- Allison DB, Faith MS. Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy for obesity: a meta-analytic reappraisal. J Consult Clin Psychol. 1996;64(3):513-516. doi:10.1037//0022-006x.64.3.513
- Better Health Channel (Victorian Government Department of Health). Hypnosis [Internet]. Melbourne: State of Victoria; [cited 2026 Sep 24]. betterhealth.vic.gov.au
Related
- Every eating sessionThe full category, sorted by behaviour rather than by kilograms.
- Does hypnosis work?The whole evidence base in one place, good and bad.
- All sessionsThe complete catalogue with prices and running times.
- The case against, in fullThe year-long trial where weight did not move. Read it before you buy.
The trial that worked measured how people ate. Buy that, use it alongside whatever plan you are already on, and let the scales be whatever they turn out to be.
The five sessions on this page
Every one is an instant MP3 from the publisher at US$18.95, about A$27, with ninety days to change your mind. I earn a commission; it changes neither what you pay nor what I list.
Stop Emotional Eating
For eating that follows a feeling rather than hunger.
Control Hunger
For the hunger that arrives whether or not you have eaten.
Portion Control
For when the problem is how much, not what.
Sugar Addiction
For the specific pull of sugar.
Boredom Eating
For eating that fills time rather than a stomach.
These are self-help audio sessions, not medical treatment, a diagnosis, or a substitute for professional care. No weight-loss outcome is claimed for any session sold on this site, and no trial of hypnosis has demonstrated a significant effect on body weight. The randomised evidence described here concerns eating behaviour and was delivered by therapists in person. Disordered eating — bingeing, purging or restricting — needs a clinician: Butterfly Foundation 1800 33 4673, or your GP. Better Health Channel advises avoiding hypnosis with severe depression, psychosis, or a drug or alcohol problem. Never listen while driving or operating machinery, and do not stop prescribed medication without your doctor’s approval.