If the idea of losing weight by having a patch sewn on your tongue seems hard to swallow, well, that’s the point.

The tongue patch is a new cosmetic surgery technique that can allegedly help people lose up to 30 pounds in a month via a postage-stamp-size patch on the tongue.

The rough patch is designed to make eating solid food so painful that patients only consume liquids, MSNNow.com reported.

The material used in the patch is marlex, an abrasive material usually used to repair hernias, and it is secured to the top of the tongue by six stitches.

Side effects include difficulties in speaking and a tendency to wake suddenly from sleep, Time reported.

The tongue patch is the brainchild of Dr. Nikolas Chugay, a Beverly Hills-based cosmetic surgeon, who said all patients are given an easy-to-follow liquid diet that fullfills all nutritional needs while minimizing caloric intake.

Chugay charges about $2,000 for this procedure, which has yet to be approved by the FDA.

There are many critics to the tongue patch, and they include California cosmetic surgeons lDr. Richard Chaffoo.

“With any kind of thing you put in there and suture into the tongue, you run the risk of getting an infection,” Chaffoo said, according to the Christian Post. “You’re going to be drooling a lot, it’s going to be really painful… You could get an ulcer, an infection. It could dislodge and go down your throat and cause an airway obstruction.”

Dr. Chugay said that patients on his diet can only wear a tongue patch for a month at a time because after that, the patch fuses to the tongue surface, UPI.com reported.

Read more: Huffington post