A 46-year-old woman lost nearly 100 pounds after being hypnotized into believing she had been fitted with a gastric band.

Janice Rogers had weighed an overwhelming 255 pounds and became desperate to find a solution.

Rogers had trawled the Internet looking for a solution to her problem, and when she looked up weight loss surgery she stumbled upon a website about a "virtual band" treatment that hypnotizes people into believing their stomach has shrunk in size, according to the Daily Mail.

While she had some initial reservations, she ultimately decided to give the "virtual band" treatment a try. She had paid £270 ($430) for a year's worth of sessions with a therapist called Andrew Nelson.

After the first treatment she immediately began losing weight. In just 7 months, she lost a staggering 154 pounds.

She said the treatment made her physically unable to eat unhealthy foods and she stopped eating junk food like chips and fried chicken. She even went on a two-week plan of just liquids.

She said in just the first week of treatment she lost 12 pounds, and has since stuck to a diet of salads, fruit, whole grains and lean, grilled meat.

"I had been overweight for 23 years, since the birth of my son, and tried everything to lose weight," she said, according to the UK paper. "I signed up for weekly weight loss classes but any weight I lost I would just put straight back on."

She said she even started going to Zumba classes with her friends, but nothing seemed to work.

"I knew I needed to do something about it so I logged onto the computer and looked up gastric bands without telling anyone," she said. "I was shocked with the amount of websites I found, but among them was Andrew's which mentioned a hypnotic band."

She said she didn't want to tell anybody because she felt "like a fool" but she was desperate to shed her pounds.

"When I first went I thought it would be a load of rubbish and I felt no different until I went home and tried to eat something but it felt like chewing carpet," she said. "I thought I had better look at the eating plan, which was just liquid for two weeks and then gradually worked up to solid food."

She said after years of eating a lot, she didn't think she could succeed in her diet so easily.

"After eating a lot over the years I didn't think I could do it but I found it so easy and never felt hungry at all," she explained. "The weight came off so fast and in my first week I dropped 12lbs. I still can't believe I have reached a size 12 (size 10 in US) and I sometimes do pick up my old size in the shops."

She said that her partner is really proud of her.

"The virtual gastric mind band is made up of cognitive behavioral therapy, neuro-linguistic programming, and mental preparation," Roger's therapist Andrew Nelson said, according to Daily Mail. "The treatment begins with an initial discussion where I ask people to visualize themselves as they want to be and we talk about healthy eating."

"People eat for a variety of different reasons and once we have realized the cause I then put them under hypnosis and reaffirm what we have talked about," Nelson said.

RELATED STORIES