For many women, the pressure to “do it right” in fitness starts early, eat less, do more, stay disciplined.
At some point, the body pushes back.
For Olivia, Peyton, and Grace, that moment became the beginning of something different. What they had each experienced through sport, training, and personal struggle didn’t match what they had been taught, and it wasn’t something they could sustain long term.
Former college athletes Peyton and Grace first connected through lacrosse and their shared approach to fitness, while Olivia’s path looked different. Her relationship with strength came through struggle, and eventually, through healing. Together, they began to recognize a common issue. Many women weren’t lacking discipline. They were lacking education.
“One of the number one things we see with women is severe undereating,” Peyton explains. The issue isn’t motivation. “People don’t even know what macros are,” she says. “A lot of it is fear fueled by a lack of education about food.”
That fear shows up in different ways. It can look like skipping meals while still making it to the gym, or pushing for progress while feeling constantly depleted. On the outside, it looks like discipline, but internally, the body is struggling.
For Olivia, that disconnect became impossible to ignore.
Despite years of sports, she had never been taught how to properly fuel her body. When she started pursuing fitness on her own, the results came quickly. Weight loss, a sense of control, validation. But the impact followed just as fast. Her cycle stopped. Her hair began to thin. Social situations became isolating. “That taste of being thin was hard to leave,” she admits.
Eventually, her body forced a change.
A binge episode became the turning point that led her to seek help and ultimately to Grace. What followed wasn’t immediate. It was a gradual rebuilding of trust, both physically and mentally.
Strength training became part of that shift, but not in the way she had originally understood it.
“It’s one of the simplest ways to feel evidence of discipline,” she says. Not punishment or control, just consistency. Showing up. Following through. Over time, that mindset carried into other areas of her life, from her career to her confidence. “If I could share one message,” she says, “it’s that you will be benefited so much in other aspects of life.”
Grace approaches the work with a focus on behavior and sustainability.
After discovering lifting during ACL rehabilitation, she learned that change doesn’t come from extremes. “Habits don’t change overnight,” she says. Instead, it’s built over time through small, consistent actions and meeting people where they are.
That’s often where the real work begins.
For many women, the hardest step isn’t lifting weight. It’s walking into the gym. “A lot of it starts with being confident enough to take up space,” Grace says. The shift becomes less about the number on the scale and more about how the body feels, how it moves, and how it holds up over time.
Muscle starts to represent more than appearance. It supports metabolism, bone density, and long-term health.
Peyton experienced a similar shift. Learning how to properly fuel her body didn’t just improve her performance. It expanded her life. Cooking became something she enjoyed, not avoided. Food became something to understand, not fear.
What started as conversations, sometimes between sets, sometimes on a treadmill, eventually grew into something more intentional. They called it The Growth Project, a space where women could learn, ask questions, and work on strength training and nutrition in a more supportive way.
Because what kept coming up wasn’t just training or nutrition. It was trust.
Trust in your body. Trust in the process. Trust that strength doesn’t come from doing more, but from understanding what your body needs.
And over time, that trust carries into other areas of life, how people show up in their work, their relationships, and for themselves.
And for them, that’s really what this work is about.