A Glengormley woman has said her "life started at 40" after she dropped a remarkable eight clothes sizes in just four years.
Clare McIvor, 43, was spurred on to lose weight as she wished to become a good role model for her two children, after seeing her young daughter following a similar journey to her with weight gain.
Once weighing 23 stone and living with a food addiction, Clare has lost eight stone and since channeled her energy into developing an active lifestyle which she said has changed the lives of her and her children.
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After joining her local Slimming World group in 2014, Clare became a consultant in 2017 and reached her dream weight in 2018.
Now, she's celebrating three years in her new premises on the Ballyduff Road, where she continues to inspire the 250 members that walk through the door each week.
"I still have to pinch myself sometimes to think of how far I've come," she told Belfast Live.
"A friend of mine said about Slimming World and when I joined the class I was told in the very first session I could eat my favourite food, pasta, and lose weight - that was me. When I got my first award, I got hooked on that success of helping myself.
"Slimming World taught me how to have a healthy relationship with food again, using the support of a group and the freedom of its Food Optimising plan. The freedom to eat the foods I enjoyed but learning how to control the destructive foods that caused me so much pain.
"I'd written myself off a long time ago. It was only when my daughter started putting on weight at 13 that I decided to make that change. I panicked, because I thought she was about to live the life that I'd just lived. That's what made me step through the doors. I'd tried everything.
"When you have a bad relationship with food, it isn't just a matter of reducing your calories and moving more. When it's going on for years, there's a lot of things to heal.
"That addiction is still there, I've just transferred it on to other things now. I think when you have an addictive personality it stays there, but mine is now on exercise and bettering myself."
As a way of combating her former food addiction, Clare makes sure to keep herself busy and active with activities such as running, cold water swimming, yoga and attending the gym.
She added: "I got to my target weight a week before my 40th birthday, I took my certificate with me on holiday to Spain that year. Life just took off. When they say life begins at 40, it genuinely really did for me."
As well as running her Slimming World group, Clare will soon be opening a wellness centre called 'YOU', which she hopes will help people look at living more holistically.
"It's all about YOU, what YOU want, and investing in yourself," she added.
"It will focus on mental and physical health, with Yoga classes beginning in June and other therapies and sessions tailored for those who are intimidated by conventional exercise in the near future.
"I know only too well how it feels when your self esteem is so low. You desperately want the help but are too afraid to ask. I am excited to be able to work in two environments, with two careers that have the same ultimate aim. To help people be the best version of themselves they can possibly be. To live a healthy fulfilled life.
"We all really need to focus on bettering ourselves. You need to be doing something during the week to make you feel good, to help keep you going through those next seven days."
After enduring a bad marriage followed by an abusive relationship, the 43-year-old attended a course at Women's Aid and fought hard to keep going with her weight loss journey.
"My biggest worry was those feelings would bring me back to the place I was before, but it didn't," Clare said.
"If anything, what I've learnt through those four years of losing weight gave me the strength to ask for help. There's nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it.
"Why we are overweight can often be due to a trauma. I know where mine stemmed from, but it wasn't really until I went to Women's Aid I started to heal my mental health. Due to this help I am blessed to have finally found love for the first time, in a healthy happy relationship.
"I then went to counselling because I had bad body dysmorphia. Even though I was a size 10, I was still looking at my body in the mirror as being that larger girl.
"I started to have a bad relationship with my physical body, mostly during lockdown because of what it was doing with everybody. Not being able to go to the gym, starting to put a bit of weight on. It took all of my crutches away, so when the gym came back it was the first place I went to. My sanctuary!
"I realised how much people need activity, how much it gets you out of a hole. Those dark clouds will always be there, but it's what you do to distract yourself to get out of that."
The 43-year-old said she was always exhausted, ate unhealthily and struggled to stay awake at work, and grappled with barriers being in place in public spaces.
"I wouldn't go to the toilet on any flight because I was petrified of walking up and down that middle aisle," Clare added.
"It wasn't about the fear of flying, it was about the aisle not being wide enough for me to not bang into every person on the way down and to be stared at by a whole flight.
"There are so many barriers. I didn't have a job promotion throughout my career until I lost weight. That couldn't be a coincidence. I was always outgoing and bubbling, that was my mask, I had to have something.
"I wasn't more confident when I lost weight, I was the same person, but they saw me as being more presentable for the firm. People who are overweight, especially morbidly as I was, as big as you are you're invisible. You're left out of everything, you're last for everything - no wonder your self-esteem is at the floor."
Early into her weight loss journey, Clare was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis. But due to changes she has made since, she's been able to keep her mobility.
She said: "I have it in every joint of my body. If I stop moving, I seize up, my joints and muscles stop working. If I was still overweight and didn't change my diet and movement, I would be in a wheelchair right now."
Clare said her children had "a very unhappy mum", but she has since been able to turn her life around and regularly brings them on activities, joking that she even has more energy than them now.
"I cried all the time," the mum-of-two added.
"But now kids have a healthy mum who's on the swings with them now rather than sitting in the car exhausted watching them. I missed out on all those things when I was younger so I'm going to be the really embarrassing mum who does it all now!
"I want to enjoy the rest of my life as best as I possibly can. That's what a lot of people aren't doing, they close themselves off from the world and get stuck behind a wall of not moving. There's more out there to life but we need to be happy and active to enjoy it."
Previously working in the finance sector, Clare said she always knew she wanted a job where she could help people.
She continued: "I worked in finance and wasn't getting anything from it whatsoever. Never in a million years did I think when I was going to lose weight it would end up being my career as well. Who would've thought I'd been in front of people giving them advice on losing weight?
"But now 250 members a week come through this door and I have a part in changing their lives. I just love that."
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