How Lily Stopped Relying on Painkillers

Lily is 30, a wedding makeup artist with 10 years in the industry who also teaches. She has trained at Habitat twice a week for 18 months. In that time, she has gone from three or four trips upstairs with her makeup suitcases to one, and the painkillers she used to take regularly are now only for the odd weekend of back-to-back work.

Where Lily started

Ten years of wedding makeup means a lot of leaning forward with her arms held up, and teaching adds plenty of sitting on top of that. By the time she came to us, Lily was in pain, frustrated and feeling weak. She had poor posture and a lot of wrist pain, and she was taking Panadol, Voltaren and Nurofen regularly just to get through her working days.

Still in her twenties, she knew she was too young to be feeling this way.

She had tried different types of gyms before but was never consistent with any of them. She’d also convinced herself that getting fit meant giving up the food she loves.

Food is personal for Lily in another way as well. Her parents never taught her how to be disciplined and healthy with it, and she wants to break that cycle and be the first in her circle to start influencing the people around her.

Why Habitat

Lily was looking for something different, and a friend who trained at a private gym got her curious about trying one herself. Habitat’s Prestons location was only five minutes from her home, which made it easy to fit around a busy working week, and her personal training program was built around her goals and the specific issues she came in with. It was a big change from the gyms she’d tried before.

What training at Habitat looked like

Lily trains at Habitat twice a week, and from the start the focus has been helping her move without pain, so she could work day-to-day and build her business. Jeannie, one of our co-founders, is her coach, with the rest of our coaching team supporting her along the way. Each session follows a personalised program that focuses on strength training to build up the muscles around her joints, then finishes with cardio to build the endurance she needs for long days as a business owner.

Her approach to food has changed along the way too. She still enjoys the food she loves, but she portions it out, cooks at home more often and spends far less on eating out than she used to.

The results

The difference shows up in her working week. Getting her makeup suitcases upstairs used to take three or four trips with breaks in between because they were so heavy, and now she does it in one go. She can lift a suitcase into the car and load it easily too, and she can’t remember the last time she took anything for pain on a regular workday. Voltaren and Nurofen only come out now when she’s working back-to-back on a weekend. She doesn’t need to see a physio or chiro as often as she used to either, and her posture has improved a lot.

In her words

“I like to know that by me showing up in being disciplined, I’m slowly influencing the people around me.”

“I just feel like I am intentionally living better and for my future.”

If Lily’s story sounds familiar, we’d love to hear from you and hear about what you want to change.