{"id":171091,"date":"2025-09-30T19:36:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T19:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/171091\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T19:36:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T19:36:22","slug":"my-year-of-bodybuilding-has-helped-me-with-self-care-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/171091\/","title":{"rendered":"‘My year of bodybuilding has helped me with self-care’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rumeana JahangirNorth West<\/p>\n

\"@robertschofieldpt@robertschofieldpt<\/p>\n

Robert Schofield says he took up bodybuilding after taking the selfie on the left in June 2024<\/p>\n

A man who says he became overweight despite being a personal trainer is “super proud” after being selected to represent Britain at an international bodybuilding contest.<\/p>\n

Robert Schofield, from Manchester, says he was eating too many takeaway meals after experiencing stress and depression while setting up his gym and dealing with his son’s autism diagnosis.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old had a turning point last year when he realised he had “not done any self-care” and decided to enter a local bodybuilding contest.<\/p>\n

“I just knew I wanted to have an end goal. I’d always loved bodybuilding and building muscle weight so I thought ‘I’m nearly 40, I’m going to enter this competition for September 2025’.<\/p>\n

“I needed a goal and the bodybuilding competition was the goal I needed.”<\/p>\n

He has spent 17 years working as a personal trainer, including for famous clients, but says he was “doing habits that I teach other people not to do”.<\/p>\n

“So I was giving people the information, motivating them, changing lives and then for my own self, the only pleasure I got, because I was working myself to the ground, was I am an emotional eater – I always have been since I was a child.<\/p>\n

“I knew the food I was eating wasn’t right but I would justify it in my head with ‘you’ve had a long day’. And before you look, it was four or five takeaways a week, it was drinking on a Sunday.”<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/p>\n

Robert Schofield says he “loves” bodybuilding but warns youngsters not to have unrealistic expectations<\/p>\n

Having spent about 18 hours a day working on his business and “not being present at home”, he says he took stock after taking some selfies in a gym in June 2024 and decided he “needed to take control again”.<\/p>\n

He gave up alcohol, which he says is “the best decision I ever made”, does 30,000 steps daily and now “enjoys” a strict diet of mainly fresh produce.<\/p>\n

“I have to go shopping every day. I eat lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, Greek yoghurt, lots of meat and eggs, dairy.<\/p>\n

“I’m cooking all the time. So while I’m personal training, I’ve got an air fryer on the go, I’ve got the chopping board out and I will cook in between sessions.”<\/p>\n

Negative social media<\/p>\n

He eats five to six meals a day but says the efforts paid off when he won in two of his categories during a regional bodybuilding contest this month.<\/p>\n

Since then, he has been selected for a team of bodybuilders that will represent Britain at the World Fitness Federation European Championships in Poland this November.<\/p>\n

He says the contests are “purely aesthetic” with judgements made on presentation and muscle definition but highlights it “takes a lot of work” to get to a prize-winning condition.<\/p>\n

Bodybuilding has become popular among many teenagers<\/a>, partly due to social media, and he says some youngsters have asked him for advice at the gym. <\/p>\n

He says he does not think all the social media exposure of bodybuilding is positive, even though he loves the sport.<\/p>\n

“It’s pushed down the throats on social media, you scroll through and you open these images of perfect people – and real life isn’t like that.<\/p>\n

“I speak to a lot of young people who want to sign up to me and they’ve got these absolute crazy goals like they want to be this bodybuilder, they want to be giants. <\/p>\n

“You have to explain it takes these people a long time. They’ve probably been doing it for years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rumeana JahangirNorth West @robertschofieldpt Robert Schofield says he took up bodybuilding after taking the selfie on the left…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[6647,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-171091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}