Portion perfection and Emotional Freedom Techniques to assist bariatric patients post surgery: A randomised control trial

Randomized trial👥 343 participants⚖️ vs. portion-control nutrition plan alone; treatment-as-usualHigher rigor✓ Source-checked📍 Australia

In plain English. Over 340 people who'd had bariatric surgery but were still struggling with weight were split into three groups: a portion-control eating plan, that plan plus an eight-week online EFT course, or standard care. Six months later, the group that added EFT showed the biggest drops in emotional and uncontrolled eating, but the differences between groups mostly didn't reach statistical significance. The authors were candid that these results were less consistent than earlier EFT weight-loss trials, so this is best read as a mixed finding rather than a clear win.

What they found

343

people took part

At six months, the nutrition-plus-EFT group showed the largest improvements in emotional eating (-16.33%), uncontrolled eating (-9.36%), and self-esteem (+4.43%) compared to nutrition-alone or usual-care groups, though most between-group differences were not statistically significant.

How the study worked

Who took partpost-bariatric-surgery adults (BMI >= 30) struggling to lose or maintain weight loss (n=343)

What they didIn a randomized controlled trial, participants were randomly assigned to receive tapping or a comparison condition, then measured and compared.

Compared withportion-control nutrition plan alone; treatment-as-usual

Measured withBMI, emotional eating, uncontrolled eating, food cravings, self-esteem

💡 Where this could help

Picture someone a year after weight-loss surgery, doing everything right on paper but still reaching for food when stressed, embarrassed to bring it up at a follow-up appointment. If the directional trends here firm up in a larger trial, it suggests tapping could give post-surgical patients something they can practice privately and indefinitely on their own — a tool for the emotional-eating relapse that surgery alone doesn't fix, with no need to disclose it at a follow-up visit.

🔬 What to study next

Since most between-group differences here fell short of significance despite promising trends, a larger, adequately powered trial is the clear next step — enriched with objective markers of emotional eating's biology, like cortisol reactivity to food cues or continuous glucose monitoring, to see if the trend toward less emotional eating shows up physiologically, not just on a questionnaire. Testing EFT layered onto standard post-bariatric follow-up, with a longer follow-up beyond six months, would also show whether the effect holds as the post-surgery 'honeymoon' period fades.

The full record

Design	Randomized trial
Participants	343 people
Population	post-bariatric-surgery adults (BMI >= 30) struggling to lose or maintain weight loss
Comparison group	portion-control nutrition plan alone; treatment-as-usual
Outcome measures	BMI, emotional eating, uncontrolled eating, food cravings, self-esteem
Journal	Heliyon
Year	2020
Country	Australia
Language	English
Method	EFT / tapping
Publication type	Study / trial
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Stapleton, P., Clark, A., Sabot, D., Carter, B., & Leech, K. (2020). Portion perfection and Emotional Freedom Techniques to assist bariatric patients post surgery: A randomised control trial. Heliyon. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04058

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping. Explore more studies on Weight & Food Cravings