Does It Work?

Does Hypnosis for Weight Loss Work? The Best Trial Ran a Year and Missed

Not as a weight-loss treatment, no. The best trial ever run on it followed 120 people with severe obesity for a year and found no difference on the scale. I sell hypnosis recordings and I would rather you read that sentence here than find it out after you have paid.

The short answer, on the first screen.Hypnosis has not been shown to be a treatment for weight. The strongest study of it lasted twelve months, was properly powered, and missed its main outcome. Some of its other measures did move, and that is the interesting part — but none of them was the number on the scale.

Where the evidence points is at eating behaviours: the evening, the second helping, the walk to the cupboard. That is a narrower claim than the one you were sold, and it is the only one I will make.

Ernest McLeod, clinical hypnotherapist, Adelaide

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, and nothing on this page is a weight-loss product. Read it and then decide whether I have earned anything at all.

What did the best trial actually find?

Bo and colleagues published it in Obesity in 2018, and it is the study anyone arguing about this should be arguing about. One hundred and twenty adults with severe obesity, body mass index between 35 and 50. Everyone got the same dietary and behavioural programme. Half were also taught self-conditioning techniques, which is to say self-hypnosis. Then it ran for a full year, which almost nothing in this field does, and it was powered to detect the difference it was looking for.

The hypnosis group lost 6.5 kg. The other group lost 5.6 kg. The difference was P = 0.79, which in plain English means the gap is indistinguishable from chance. The primary outcome was missed, and it was missed cleanly.

Now the half that the sceptical version of this page usually leaves out. Several secondary measures did favour the hypnosis group: C-reactive protein, an inflammation marker, came out lower at P below 0.001; reported satiety was higher at P = 0.001; quality of life was better at P = 0.01. Secondary outcomes are weaker evidence than primary ones, and a trial that misses its primary outcome cannot be written up as a success. But they are not nothing, and they point in a consistent direction: the people reported feeling differently about food and about their lives, while weighing much the same.

Hold both halves of that at once.“It did not work” and “nothing happened” are different sentences. What the best trial we have says is that the hypnosis did not shift the weight, and may have shifted how the year felt. If someone sells you the second as though it were the first, that is the whole trick.

The 9.6 kg figure, and how to read it

Inside that same trial sits the number the industry actually quotes. Participants who used the technique habitually lost around 9.6 kg. You will see it on sales pages with the trial’s name attached, which makes it look like a randomised finding.

It is not. It is a regression finding on a non-randomised subgroup: the people who used it a lot, compared with the people who did not, sorted by their own behaviour rather than by the toss of a coin. That comparison is correlational and it cannot carry a causal claim.

Here is why it matters, and it is worth more to you than any number on this page. People who are already succeeding keep using things. Someone whose year is going well keeps listening. Someone whose year has fallen apart stops. So the habitual users would look better than the rest even if the recording were an audiobook about trains. Whenever you read that the people who stuck with something did better, ask whether sticking with it caused the result or the result caused the sticking with it. In this literature the honest answer is usually that nobody can tell.

That single statistic is the most misused one in this corner of the market, and it comes from a trial whose actual headline was a null result. Both facts are in the same paper.

What about the three-week audio study?

Antoun and colleagues, PeerJ, 2022. It gets cited constantly, in both directions, and it settles nothing in either. I want to be precise about it, because the closest thing to it on the market is exactly what I sell: a fifteen-minute recording, used alone, at home.

It was a double-blind randomised pilot at the American University of Beirut. Both groups received a fifteen-minute audio from the same hypnotist, and the control audio carried direct lifestyle-change messages of its own, so what was being tested was the hypnotic framing rather than audio against silence. That is a harder test than it looks.

The primary outcome was a step up through the stages of change, not weight; weight was secondary. Both were null. And the trial was planned for 160 people, enrolled 65, and finished with 46, which left it at 49 per cent power against a planned 80 per cent. The authors are clear that underpowering is the limitation, and they recommend a larger study. They do not say three weeks was too short, and I am not going to put that argument in their mouths.

So: a trial too small to detect a modest real effect, reporting a tiny point estimate anyway. Weak evidence of absence. It is not proof that audio hypnosis does nothing for eating, and it is certainly not evidence that it works. If a page cites it as settling the question, that page has not read it.

The finding in it nobody quotes

Buried in that paper is the most useful number on this page for anyone about to spend money. Across the three weeks, only 32.6 per cent listened daily, and 20 per cent never listened again after the baseline visit at all. One in five bought into a free, supervised, three-week trial and pressed play once.

That pattern is not unique to hypnosis and it is not a criticism of the people in the study. A 2023 evaluation of an app-delivered hypnotherapy programme opens its own conclusion with the words “adherence… was low”: 2,843 people started the free sessions and 253 completed the full programme. Whatever a recording can or cannot do, it does none of it in a folder you never open.

Before you buy anything from me, work out when you will listen and where. Twenty minutes, most nights, for a fortnight. If you cannot name the hour, the honest prediction is the file joins the other things you meant to use.

Is there anywhere hypnosis does fit?

CHOICE, the Australian consumer body and not a party with anything to sell, lands about where the trials do: some people benefit when hypnosis is used alongside conventional weight-loss treatment, rather than as a one-off session that replaces it. That is a modest position and it matches Bo’s trial exactly, where everybody got the dietary and behavioural programme and the hypnosis sat on top of it.

It is also the opposite of how this is usually sold. The one-session cure, the guaranteed programme, the price that goes up if you hesitate: none of that is what the evidence describes, even at its most favourable.

Fewer people are asking this question than a year ago

Worth naming, because it shapes what you will find when you search. In Australian search data this question is asked around 320 times a month, and that is down about 21 per cent year on year. The landscape has changed underneath it: prescription weight medicines now sit in the middle of the conversation where they did not five years ago.

I have nothing to tell you about those medicines. Not whether they work, not whether they are safe for you, not which one. That is a conversation with a doctor and I am not one. I mention the shift only because it explains a market: as the mainstream option moved, a lot of hypnotherapy marketing moved to sound like a gentler alternative to it. A gentler alternative to a treatment is still being asked to do the job of a treatment, and it has not been shown to do that job.

What I am allowed to say, and what I will not

Under Australian Consumer Law, a representation about a future matter is treated as misleading unless the person making it had reasonable grounds. The onus sits with me, not with you. I could not discharge it, so I do not make the claim: nothing on this site will cause you to lose weight, and I will never tell you otherwise.

What I can describe is what a recording is. Twenty-odd minutes of guided attention aimed at one specific behaviour, for US$18.95, about A$27, with ninety days to get your money back. An Australian hypnotherapy session is $150 to $280 with no Medicare rebate. The recording is the cheap version, and the two studies that put recordings head to head with a clinician both had the recording come out lower, not equal.

Where the sessions honestly belong: the behaviour, not the scale

Everything above points the same way. The measures that moved in the good trial were about satiety and how the year felt. The things a recording can plausibly work on are the moments, not the outcome. So the catalogue on this site is sorted by what a person does, in a room, at an hour — and none of it is named for a body.

The whole category, with the free steps that come before any of it, is at hypnosis for eating habits. If you arrived here typing the word weight and leave having picked a behaviour instead, this page did its job.

And if your eating has taken a shape that frightens you — eating past full and unable to stop, eating in secret, making up for it afterwards — that is an appointment with a doctor, not a purchase from me.

Is it safe to listen to?

Bollinger’s 2018 count of adverse events in hypnosis clinical trials found serious adverse events attributable to hypnosis at zero per cent and other adverse events at 0.47 per cent. The author names the catch himself: those trials used hypnosis for medical conditions rather than psychiatric ones, and he calls for harms to be assessed “especially when tested in samples with mental health disorders”.

Victoria’s Better Health Channel advises avoiding hypnosis with severe depression, psychosis, or a drug or alcohol problem, and says plainly that it does not work for everyone. And the ordinary one: never listen at the wheel, or anywhere else that needs your attention.

If things are heavier than this page can hold

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Common questions

Does hypnosis for weight loss work?

Not as a weight-loss treatment. The strongest trial — Bo and colleagues, Obesity, 2018, 120 adults with severe obesity over a full year — missed its primary outcome, with 6.5 kg lost against 5.6 kg and P = 0.79. Several secondary measures did favour the hypnosis group, including satiety and quality of life. Nothing on this site is sold as a way to lose weight.

What about the study where people lost 9.6 kg?

That figure comes from the same 2018 trial, but not from its randomised comparison. It is a regression finding on the participants who used the technique habitually, which is a group sorted by its own behaviour rather than by randomisation. People who are already succeeding keep using things, so that subgroup would look better regardless. It cannot support a causal claim, and it is the statistic this market misuses most.

Didn’t a trial prove hypnosis audio does nothing for weight?

No. Antoun and colleagues, PeerJ, 2022, ran three weeks and found nulls on both stage of change and weight, but it reached only 49 per cent power against a planned 80 per cent. It is too small to rule a modest effect in or out. It settles nothing in either direction, which is precisely what its authors say, and it is routinely cited as though it settled the question.

Is there any situation where hypnosis helps with weight?

CHOICE, the Australian consumer organisation, puts it as some people benefiting when hypnosis is used with conventional weight-loss treatment rather than as a one-off. That matches the trial evidence, where hypnosis sat on top of a dietary and behavioural programme everybody was already doing. It does not support hypnosis instead of treatment, and it does not support a single session.

Which session should I buy if I came here about my weight?

Pick by the moment that keeps repeating, not by the goal. Eating after a bad day, eating through a flat afternoon, eating after dinner and going past full are four different behaviours with four different triggers. The six sessions are listed above and the full category is at hypnosis for eating habits, where the free steps come before any of them.

Will listening to a recording make me lose weight?

I will not tell you it will, and any page that does is making a claim about a future matter it cannot support. What you are buying at US$18.95, about A$27, is twenty-odd minutes of guided attention on one eating behaviour, with ninety days to ask the publisher for your money back. It is a self-help recording, not a treatment.

Where these numbers come from

  • 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
  • Peters SL, Gibson PR, Halmos EP. Smartphone app-delivered gut-directed hypnotherapy improves symptoms of self-reported irritable bowel syndrome: a retrospective evaluation. Neurogastroenterol Motil. 2023;35(4):e14533. doi:10.1111/nmo.14533
  • CHOICE. Hypnosis and weight loss [Internet]. Sydney: Australian Consumers’ Association; [cited 2026 Sep 24]. choice.com.au
  • Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), Schedule 2 (Australian Consumer Law), s 4: Misleading representations with respect to future matters. Canberra: Federal Register of Legislation. legislation.gov.au
  • Forbes A, MacAuley S, Chiotakakou-Faliakou E. Hypnotherapy and therapeutic audiotape: effective in previously unsuccessfully treated irritable bowel syndrome? Int J Colorectal Dis. 2000;15(5-6):328-334. doi:10.1007/s003840000248
  • Snijkers JTW, Bosman MHMA, Winkens B, et al. In-person therapist-delivered hypnotherapy versus smartphone-based self-guided hypnotherapy in IBS: a multicentre three-armed randomised controlled trial. Gut. 2026. Epub ahead of print. doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2026-338385
  • 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
  • Better Health Channel (Victorian Government Department of Health). Hypnosis [Internet]. Melbourne: State of Victoria; [cited 2026 Sep 24]. betterhealth.vic.gov.au
  • Australian search demand and the year-on-year change: keyword data for Australia, pulled September 2026.

Every number above can be looked up, including the ones that cost me the sale. A page about weight loss that quotes a figure without saying where it came from has told you something about itself.

Related

If you leave this page spending nothing, or spending it on a behaviour rather than on a promise about your body, that is the outcome I was after.

These are self-help audio sessions, not medical treatment, a diagnosis, or a substitute for professional care. No therapeutic outcome is claimed for any session sold on this site, and nothing here is a weight-loss treatment or will cause weight loss. Hypnosis has not been shown to be effective for weight loss: the best-quality randomised trial missed its primary outcome. Eating that you cannot stop, eating in secret, or compensating afterwards should be discussed with a doctor. 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.

Written by Ernest McLeod — clinical hypnotherapist, Adelaide, seeing clients Australia-wide by video. Last updated 2026-09-24.