Rhona's story

Who is Rhona?

For our very first issue of Ren3w, it felt important to centre a woman whose story reflects exactly what this blog and magazine stand for. Rhona Rance, a 50-year-old personal trainer, has a passion for the gym and competing in bodybuilding. She isn’t here because her journey was perfect. She’s here because it wasn’t.

Ren3w is about the process, the setbacks, the rebuilding, and the uncomfortable middle, not just the polished end result. Rhona’s story spans grief, competition stages, perimenopause, weight loss, rebuilding muscle, and learning to put herself first. It’s layered, honest, and real.

By sharing her journey, we hope you see a reflection of your own because strength doesn’t happen in isolation. Sometimes hearing another woman’s story is what makes you feel less alone and brave enough to start again.

This isn’t about perfection.

It’s about progress and determination.

Six months after losing her daughter, Rhona walked into the gym carrying more than just a gym bag. Grief sat heavy on her chest. The days felt long, unstructured, and painfully quiet. She wasn’t searching for aesthetics. She was searching for somewhere to put the pain.

On 5 February 2018, she made a decision: to train for a Mums That Lift competition. Not because she felt strong, but because she needed something to hold onto. Training became structured. Structure became survival.

Fitness wasn’t about perfection. It was about coping.

Dealing with grief & competing

The commitment gave her focus. Ten months of disciplined training led to her first photoshoot, a moment that felt surreal after such a dark season. In April 2019, she stepped onto the competition stage and placed 4th out of 35 women in the Mums That Lift category.

From the outside, it looked like transformation. Strength. Success.

But behind the physique was a woman still grieving.

“Training gave me somewhere to channel my grief,” she says. “I didn’t really think about what I was putting my body through. I just knew it helped my mental health.”

The competition prep demanded everything:

strict nutrition, relentless discipline, and emotional resilience. And for a while, that intensity felt necessary. It gave her something to wake up for. A target. A deadline. A purpose. But when the competition ended, so did the structure.

Without the goal, the focus slowly faded. Over the following year, her body returned to a place that felt unfamiliar again. Not because she failed, but because grief doesn’t disappear when the spotlight does.

Keeping Focus

In 2020, Rhona enrolled in college to study for her personal training qualification. She wanted to turn her experience into something that could help other women, especially those navigating midlife, confidence dips, and starting again. Then lockdown hit.

Like so many people, her plans were delayed. The qualification took longer than expected. Momentum slowed. But she didn’t give up. She stayed committed, studying, adapting, pushing through uncertainty and eventually qualifying as a personal trainer. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t quick. But it mattered. Becoming qualified gave her a new sense of identity, not just as someone who trained, but as someone who could guide others.

Over the next few years, she focused on building her business. She poured her energy into her clients, helping them grow stronger, often placing their progress above her own. Training herself became something that happened “when there was time”, and like many women, there rarely was.

"Quick Fix"

Last summer, navigating the challenges of perimenopause and weight that felt increasingly resistant, Rhona decided to try Mounjaro. She describes it simply as wanting “a little nudge". The medication did what it promised; the weight dropped, but alongside it, so did her appetite and her energy. Without enough fuel, training became harder. Sessions felt heavier. The strength she had worked so hard to build began to slip away.

“I lost weight,” Rhona says, “but I didn’t feel strong. I didn’t feel like myself,”

And that was the moment something shifted. This time, she wasn’t preparing for a stage.

She wasn’t chasing a placing or a number on the scale. She understood her body differently now. She knew what strength felt like: energised, capable, powerful – and she knew this wasn’t it. So instead of settling, instead of staying in something that didn’t align, she chose again. This decision felt different.

Choosing herself at 50

With Rhona's 50th birthday approaching, she made a different kind of decision. This time, it wasn’t about shrinking herself, stepping onto a stage, or escaping how she felt. It was about rebuilding. In January 2025, she hired a coach, not to prepare for competition, but to invest in herself. It meant committing to six small meals a day and scheduling her training sessions into her diary from Monday to Friday. It meant carving out time she had so often given to everyone else. At first, the shift felt unfamiliar. Prioritising herself didn’t come naturally, but gradually, something changed.

Food became enjoyable again, no more bland, restrictive meals that left her uninspired and exhausted. Her workouts stopped feeling like an obligation and began to feel purposeful, challenging in the right way, and energising. Training was no longer something she had to endure; it was something she genuinely looked forward to.

Since January, she has lost weight while building muscle, but the physical changes only tell part of the story. More importantly, she has rebuilt her relationship with food, with movement, and with herself. “I’ve never felt so good,” she says.

Strength, she has learned, isn’t about stepping on stage or pushing to extremes. It isn’t about perfection. It’s about consistency, energy, and joy. It’s about feeling capable in your own body.

“I don’t want to look small,” Rhona says. “I want to look strong.”