A 21-stone travel agent from Caerphilly was shamed into losing half her body weight – after being pictured next to her size 8 sister on their joint wedding day.
Mum-of-two Sarah Hart, 30, wore a size 24 bridal gown and dwarfed her petite sibling Amanda, who weighed just 8st 7lbs.
After the wedding she continued piling on weight until she got so big she was unable to stretch an aircraft seatbelt around her waist on a holiday flight.
But instead of going on a traditional diet, Sarah had gastric mind band therapy where she was hypnotised into believing she had a stomach the size of a golf ball.
She started eating tiny portions and shed over 11st in just under two years and now tips the scales at 9st 12lbs.
Sarah, of Caerphilly, said: “My dress was absolutely huge. I needed to have it custom made.
“I was stuck in a size 24, while my sister effortlessly slipped into a stunning little dress.
“My size was always in the back of my mind, but I was in denial at the time, because I was in love and happy.
“Looking back at the photos, I’m shocked. I never realised I was that big. The weight just crept up on me.
“I used photos like my wedding snaps as motivation tool. I stuck them to my fridge to scare me away from snacking.”
Sarah began piling on weight in her early years due to an unhealthy diet and an asthma issue which required steroids.
By the time she 14 she weighed a colossal 14 stones.
But despite the regular fat jibes from cruel classmates, Sarah put on a brave face and got by parading her ‘bubbly’ personality.
On the day she married her sweetheart Lee, an aircraft sprayer, in Cyprus in September 2000 – despite being just 19 years old – she was a size 24 and weighed 19 stone.
After giving birth to her two sons Marshall, now three, and Harrison, five, she reached 21 stones and 1lb.
The final straw came during the 2009 Christmas flight home from the house in France where they were living at the time.
As she settled into her seat for the short hop back to Cardiff, she was unable to pull the seatbelt around her huge girth.
The incident brought memories of her wedding day flooding back.
She said: “Now I’m quite disgusted by how big I was. I would have done something much sooner if I had realised.
“Even my husband was shocked when we looked back at the wedding album.”
Within weeks of the aircraft incident she spotted an article about the Elite Clinic in Marbella, Spain, which specialises in gastric mind band therapy.
Within weeks of the hypnotherapy Sarah had lost a stone and by the end of 2010 she had lost seven stones.
Sarah – who is now so fit she recently ran a half marathon – added: “I feel so much much better now. If I want chocolate, I eat chocolate, but just not five bars of it.
“And I can’t eat too much because I feel full, so I eat smaller portions.”
Elite Clinic owner Martin Shirran said: “Sarah is so typical of the clients that fly over for the treatment, she had tried all the traditional approaches to weight loss with little if any permanent results, her problem like so many others was down to her psychological relationship with food, once this was overcome, the results followed.”