A woman who was 'addicted' to fizzy pop has now given up the sugary drinks and said she looks 'completely different' - as she's lost half her body weight.
Clair Jones, 49, would get through ten cans of fizzy drinks each day and could barely manage to walk from her car to her front door, so she decided to make a change.
She ditched sugary drinks, and snack food like crisps and sweets, in an effort to slim down from 23st 1lbs - and joined a Slimming World group for the motivation.
Now she's down to a svelte 11st 1lbs and is competing as a cheerleader alongside her daughter, 22-year-old Ellie - but on the parents' team.
Clair, from Rhondda Valley, South Wales, said: "I honestly thought I was going to be big for the rest of my life. The word 'diet' scared me. I love food, I was quite greedy and I'm still quite greedy.
"I just accepted I would be big forever. I hadn't always been that big but I gained 6st 5lbs when I was having my first child. I thought I was eating for two and it went from there really.
"I was never a small child and was always a bit bigger than my friends. You picture a diet as meals with salad and I don't eat salad or veg.
"My very first week when I joined, I ate silly diet food and didn't lose weight the first week so I said 'I'm not doing this'.
"I was a big sweetie and crisp person and I would drink coke until it came out of my ears. I got rid of all that in the first week, I deprived myself of everything.
"My consultant said I could eat nicer food and lose weight.
"I ate food that I actually like the second week and lost some weight so I thought 'it is working and I'm not just eating salad'."
After piling on 6st 5lbs during her first pregnancy, Clair accepted that she'd always be overweight as she hated vegetables but loved sweets, crisps and pop.
She knew that her loving husband, Darrell, 60, was happy with her size as long as she was.
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"Darrell is over the moon" Clair added. "He was happy with me before, he was happy if I was, but he knows I can do so much more now.
"I feel like a completely different person. I haven't worked for 25 years because I was overweight, my weight stopped me doing everything.
"I've been a cheer mother for 14 years. We started up a parents' team last year and obviously, I was just cheering them on but this year they persuaded me to join because I was small enough.
"I'm 50 this year so I thought I'd give it a go. My daughter cringed a bit at first but she came to watch me in the competition and said I wasn't as bad as she thought.
"The competition was amazing, it's great fun and I give it my best.
"I would never have been able to do it before, I could barely walk from my car to my house.
"It was hard work at first. I've got two left feet and no rhythm but we have a laugh, which really helps.
"My kids never in a million years thought they'd see me doing something like this. Even our cheerleading coach never thought they'd see me doing it.
"They used to say 'are you sure you should be eating that at this time in a morning?' in a nice way. They're really happy."
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