‘I had abs. I was in the best shape. But I was miserable’: the fitness fanatic who quit the gym

What happened when a bodybuilding influencer changed tack?

When you’re making any kind of change, it’s messy and uncertain; making mistakes with a large audience is trickier,” says Sophie Aris of her switch away from online bodybuilding and fitness. When the now 36-year-old joined the early cohort of fitness influencers posting about weightlifting and nutrition in 2015, she was working as a secondary school art teacher and had got into gym culture through an ex-boyfriend.

She posted morning and night. “I used to pull up at the school car park, in Oldham, at 7.30am with my gym selfie or picture of my Tupperware meals ready to post,” she says. Within a year, she had more than 100,000 followers on Instagram, weighed seven stone (44kg) and was a competitor in the bikini category of British and European bodybuilding competitions, winning gold.

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