The life of Pablo: He needs an eating babysitter.

Full-bodied Red Sox third baseman Pablo Sandoval — on indefinite hiatus from the team, officially due to a shoulder injury — needs a full-time monitor to prevent him from compulsive eating, according to his former trainer.

“He needs to be smart enough to say there’s a problem,” said Ethan Banning, owner of Triple Threat Performance in Phoenix, told the Boston Herald. “It’s like the alcoholic that won’t admit he’s an alcoholic: Well, you can’t address that you’re an alcoholic if you don’t ever admit there’s a problem.

“He’s proven to me and shown consistently that he’s got to have somebody like me holding his hand doing that. And it’s not an exercise thing, it’s an eating thing. Obviously exercise is an important factor in it, a very important factor, but eating is going to be the component that needs to be managed and monitored.”

The 29-year-old Sandoval, working on a deep-dish $95 million contract, lost his starting job to upstart Travis Shaw in spring training after showing up overweight. That wasn’t a new scenario for Banning, who recalled Sandoval gaining 21 pounds in 21 days on a trip home to Venezuela prior to the 2012 season.

Sandoval and Banning lost touch following that offseason, the trainer told the newspaper, but says Sandoval’s brother, Michael, reached out this winter hoping the two would reconnect.

“I think that he’s embarrassed right now,” Banning said of Sandoval’s stunning decline, compounded by Friday’s report that he’s visiting Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion on his shoulder. “I don’t know that it’s going to be with me, but he’s going to hire somebody [to look after him]. I think he’s likely going to figure it out. But it’s not going to be this season, and likely not with the Red Sox, the way it looks.”