Summary: Traditional diet-and-exercise weight loss approaches often fail long-term, partly because they don't address the psychological drivers of overeating, so this pilot RCT tested whether an eight-week online emotional freedom techniques (EFT) program could improve food cravings and weight management. Participants — mostly women aged 41–60, many with obese-range BMI and daily craved-food consumption — were randomly assigned to the EFT intervention or a waitlist control, with measures spanning food cravings, dietary restraint, subjective power of food, weight, and somatic, anxiety, and depressive symptoms.
The EFT group (n=314) showed significant improvements across all measures with moderate-to-high effect sizes, while the waitlist control (n=137) showed no significant change. After the waitlist group crossed over into treatment and was combined with the original EFT group, gains held at 6-month (n=216) and 12-month (n=145) follow-up. The authors conclude these findings offer preliminary support for online EFT as an accessible tool for managing food cravings and body weight.
Citation and Link: Stapleton, P., Roos, T., Mackintosh, G., Sparenburg, E., Sabot, D., & Carter, B. (2019). Online delivery of Emotional Freedom Techniques in the treatment of food cravings and weight management: A randomised controlled trial. OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine, 4(4), 065. https://doi.org/10.21926/obm.icm.1904065
Read the Original Study at OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine