The process is called hypno banding, and it's showing astonishing results, with no surgery, no diets, and the simple facts of mind over matter.

Sit back, relax and lose weight with hypno-banding. You hear the sound of surgery - a lap band being fitted to a patient's stomach - but there isn't a scalpel in sight, and it's all in the patient’s head.

At 182 kilograms Brian McNamara was a heavyweight, piling on the pounds to a life of obesity.

• Weight loss surgery
• Weight loss with a balloon
• Overweight family chooses surgery

McNamara says he's tried every diet known to man, but none worked for him. Simply living had become a battle.

“I'd go into the shops and I'd have to take a trolley just to lean on. I'd finish shopping and I'd come out and I'd have to sit on the bench outside the shops just to have a breather, and then go to the car,” he said.

Eighteen months ago, desperate and unable to control his appetite, McNamara tried something a little left field.

Today Tonight's latest diet stories

He contacted hypnotherapist Amber Poole, and she went about convincing him he'd undergone lap band surgery, using his dreams to turn his weight loss into a reality.

“We actually do a virtual gastric banding, so I take the person through as if they're arriving at the hospital, meeting the surgeon and the anaesthetist, being taken down into surgery and having a virtual lap banding placed on their stomach,” Poole said.

“I can hear the sceptics out there howling from the rooftops, and I can understand that, but after doing this for as long as I have, and seeing the results that I see, I have absolutely no doubts about it at all now.”

One of the sceptics is Associate Professor John Dixon from Melbourne's Baker IDI Institute. He claims hypnotherapy isn't scientifically proven and that only one per cent are likely to succeed.

“I don't believe hypnobanding is going to be a long term solution for the majority of people,” he said.

“Anything is better than surgery if it works, but that's the problem. We see people out there that are seriously ill with their weight and they've tried everything - multiple diets, multi programs, hypnobanding, all sorts of behavioural therapies, all sorts of exercise, and it doesn't work. They are the people who need to think about bariatric surgery or lap banding,” he added.

With an 85 per cent success rate Professor Dixon prescribes real surgery - particularly when it comes to keeping weight off long term.

“What happens when we lose weight is we get very, very hungry. Lapband switches off that hunger ,and allows us to keep our weight off.”

For McNamara though the virtual procedure has changed his life, and particularly his diet. He's lost an incredible 63 kilograms in eighteen months, and it all started the moment he left Poole’s practice.

The junk food is now gone, and in fact he grows his own vegetables and counts his calories - a regime he now says he has the mental strength to stick to.

“It worked for me and that's all I can go by.”

• On Your Mind - www.onyourmind.com.au
• Liz Hogan Hypnotherepy - www.lizhogon.com