After a night with friends at a local youth disco, Conor Doyle found himself a victim of cyberbullying. A stranger had downloaded a photograph of the 17-year-old Dubliner, edited it, added a cruel caption and uploaded it to an embarrassing night club photo site. 

The image was liked and shared until, before Conor knew, his entire year at Belvedere College had seen it. This humiliating act sparked a remarkable personal journey for the teenager, as he lost three and a half stone in the following 12 months.

Conor said of the abuse he received: "You can't really be fine (when you get those messages) and anyone that says that they're fine is lying.

"I'd consider myself relatively strong mentally, but that hurt. It was hard to deal with," he added.

He shares his story below.

Conor duly signed up for the W82GO programme over a year ago and hasn't looked back. 

"When you're overweight, you always feel a little insecure," he explains.

"But, when you lose a little bit of weight your confidence skyrockets - and it should - because it's an achievement.

"It just meant that I could talk to my mam and dad about this, whereas before when I was overweight I was not comfortable talking about my weight - because it was embarrassing for me."

Exactly a year to the day since the offensive caption was posted, Conor uploaded a series of images to his Facebook page showing how much weight he had lost and the response was overwhelmingly positive which he says "means the world" to him.

The W82Go programme approaches weight loss from four angles - paediatrician, psychology, nutritionist and physiotherapy.

The cut-off point is 16 years of age – Conor was 16 for most of his weight loss period and had been admitted to the programme before he turned that age.