Breakthrough Spotlight!! Lydia Lee-Chin
Breakthrough Spotlight!! Lydia Lee-Chin
Our Breakthrough Spotlight for April is Lydia Lee-Chin. Not only did she absolutely rock it during our recent Drop Two Sizes Challenge, Lydia’s positive attitude and spirit are so infectious that she was voted one of the top 3 most inspirational members of the Challenge by her fellow training partners. We chatted with Lydia at our D2S finale party, and we are excited to share her story!
Breakthrough: Thanks for taking the time to share your story, Lydia! Tell us about how you were feeling before you started training here at Breakthrough.
Lydia: Before I joined the gym I came back from my family reunion with such a bad case of sciatica that I had to use wheelchairs at the airports to get from the gates to the baggage claim, to the car. When I was at the reunion I had a significant problem because it was on a hilly terrain, I had to take a golf cart everywhere because I couldn’t go up and down the hills. So when I came back I said I have to do something about it, and so I started working with you guys here because I had been told that you take people from wherever they’re at physically, and work with what’s there.
Breakthrough: Yes, absolutely. So then, was that a big turning point for you?
Lydia: Yes, I got scared, I got scared by being immobile. And I said I’m too young to give up mobility, and I have a two story house, how am I going to manage life in this setting if I cant go up and down those stairs?
Breakthrough: What prevented you from getting started before?
Lydia: I’ve been a regular gym member for most of my life, I worked with a trainer up until 2008. Then with the downturn of the economy we went through a very stressful period with finances, my husband lost his job. All kinds of things got in the way… and I have a very stressful job as a teacher. So you know, it’s like I couldn’t find time in my life for it. So I just wasn’t taking very good care of myself.
Breakthrough: Sure, it can be hard to find time to take care of yourself when you take care of your family and the kids you teach. But you realized the importance of taking some time to prioritize your health, and decided to really take action when you joined our Drop Two Sizes Challenge.
Lydia: Well I had already made quite a bit of progress before the Challenge, and had lost 10 pounds. But I had gotten to the point where I knew I needed to focus on the food as well as what I was doing physically. I was still experiencing some pain, which I knew some of it was from the stress of the excess weight, and I figured if I lost more of what I was trying to support on my skeleton, maybe the pain would go away. So when you brought up this whole nutrition aspect of it as part of the Challenge, I was ready to push it a little further.
Breakthrough: So when you joined the D2S challenge what happened, what surprised you?
Lydia: What surprised me was that there was structure but not… Well, I’ve been on almost every kind of weightloss program known to mankind, hah! I’ve paid plenty of money towards these things, but nobody had really structured it in such a way that was doable… so that I could understand the kinds of combinations of foods that go together to be successful, how often I should be eating. Those kinds of things had never been a part of anything. You know, they say you could have two snacks, or not have… It was very loosey goosey and all over the place and not terribly easy for me to figure out in terms of points, or they either wanted you to count every calorie you put in your mouth or do some nebulous thing that I never really understood. That was not working!
Breakthrough: But you found that the nutrition program that you’re doing here was different?
Lydia: It was very different and very doable.
Breakthrough: And how do you feel now? You’re looking great in your jeans that are two sizes smaller!
Lydia: Pretty amazing! These are the pants that I could not shut… and now they’re kind of loose! And gradually within the last six months or so, the pain has almost completely gone away in terms of the type of sciatica I had before. I’m sore now from working the muscles – haha! But I don’t have the lower back pain that I was having.
Breakthrough: Fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing your story, and we are excited to see you keep going and accomplishing great things!
Lydia: Oh yeah – very motivated!
