About Us

Life is about reasons or results.

For days I typed and erased and was so embarrassed to write this, my heart is beating out of my chest right now, but I knew this is something women need to read right now. I ask my clients to share their stories to inspire others, so I would be a hypocrite if I was not willing to do the same.

I’m no longer embarrassed to show you this right now, because I stand for myself as a woman and I stand for you! I hope this gives you that inspiration to love yourself no matter what.

POP!

That’s the sound I heard back in 2015 when I opened my facility here in Smyrna. That POP! was my knee teaching a class and it changed the trajectory of my life for the next 2 years.

I was in great shape and felt strong, and kept saying to myself over and over “How could this happen…why now?”

Then the news came…

My surgeon walked into the exam room with an MRI scan of my knee.

He said “Holly I’m sorry to say, but you need a full knee replacement. You tore every ligament in your knee and if you don’t fix this you can create permanent damage”

I was DEVASTATED! This would be surgery number 7 on that same knee.

I just spent my life savings opening up Better Body Fitness and was just told I would not be able to move for 3 months and most likely not be able to teach ever again…

That’s it!

I’m going to lose everything!

That moment I felt like I wanted to die right then and there.

This is what I love doing and to be told I may not be able to go back to it, crushed me.

I felt like giving up…

But instead I decided to self-medicate to numb the feeling inside and just hope it would all disappear.

I started to drink heavily for the next two years and pop 6 Ibuprofen a day to mask the pain and my emotions.

Not only did this send me down a spiral of depression but it also killed my digestive system.

I started to gain weight…and I am not talking a few pounds. With all this poison I was ingesting and eventually eating food I know wasn’t good for me, I packed on 30lbs!

Here I am a fitness professional that just opened her studio to inspire women to take control of their health and empower them to feel amazing inside and out and I couldn’t get my shit together.

I started to HATE my body

I started to feel like a LOSER

I saw myself as a FAKE

I would look at myself in the mirror and be so disgusted with who I was and there were times I didn’t even recognize who I was.

It was a losing battle

I can remember clearly. I was sitting at my desk staring at my computer late at night. My husband and children were fast asleep.

I poured myself a glass of vodka because that was my routine. Numb the pain with this clear poison.

But something hit me!

I don’t know what your beliefs are, but in that moment I felt like there was someone with me saying “Holly together we can get through this”

I just started researching different options for surgery and that’s when I met my angel…Jean!

I met an amazing woman named Jean that helped point me in the right direction and I started working on my glutes and hips which was where all the problems were coming from.

I was always so intense, stressing and eating dieting food with no nutritional value and my body was getting nothing that it needed to heal because I was still drinking to cope with pain and depression.

Jean said to me one day “Holly you are to hard on yourself, you work your ass off and then counteract it with putting shit in your body” aka bad supplements and protein drinks and alcohol.

She also said something that I will never forget.

“Stop Holly! Learning to love yourself and you will start treating yourself better”.

I thought for the longest time about that and I truly didn’t see that I was being my worst enemy.

The thought of me made me sick. I didn’t know who the hell I was anymore.

I started on my healthy healing journey.

Mentally, spiritually and physically.

I started taking time to forgive myself and learned to accept me for all the flaws, good bad and ugly and when I say forgive, I forgave all the people I felt wronged me and forgave myself for abusing my body, forgave myself for not being the best mom and wife I could have been.

This was the moment everything started to shift.

It wasn’t an easy process nor a short process.

I wanted to feel pretty again and feel confident inside my skin. More importantly I just wanted my health back and to feel better.

I did a complete 180 with my life and called upon the true warrior inside me. If you know me, you know I can have this crazy passionate energy and that’s what I needed to push me through this journey.
I appreciate and respect life. At the end of the day I wanted to be proud of that woman looking back at me. I wanted my kids to be proud of me. I want my family and friends to know that they helped me keep this train from being a total train wreck with their love and support.

And to my husband always supporting me and giving me tough love.

I wanted my clients and the community to look up to me as their leader but first I needed to lead myself.

I tell this story because I’m a little different from some people. I don’t pretend anymore or act like life is perfect. I want my kids to know that I’m one badass woman and sometimes life punches you in the face, but it’s not about how hard you get hit, it’s about how many times you get back up to move forward.

As a fitness professional, I remind myself every single day that’s it not about how perfect I look or pretending to have it all together. My struggles and life lessons have made me one of the best personal trainers and health coaches around. I’m so glad and now appreciate my struggles and battle wounds.

My knowledge has expanded more than I ever planned and I understand that getting healthy is a process. It’s not magic and nothing is more rewarding in life when you can actually be proud of your body and truly know who you are and who you are not.

As I said in the beginning “I stand for myself as a woman and I stand for you!”

I am here to remind every woman how beautiful and strong they are no matter where they are in life. Life is not easy and I don’t expect you to just love yourself with a snap of the fingers. It’s a journey and a process that you will embrace.

What I can tell you though is that I STAND FOR YOU…I WILL FIGHT FOR YOU…I WILL BE BY YOUR SIDE.

It’s so easy as a woman to put pressure on ourselves and compare our bodies to other women. We want to look like the girls we see on social media. The moment I stopped comparing myself to others was the moment I took back my inner peace.

I empowered myself with confidence that you can’t purchase but you can learn and embrace.

So here I am. Holly Drayton.

The person below on the left is Holly Drayton who didn’t love herself. The person on the right is Holly Drayton who loves herself no matter what!

I am not shy or embarrassed to post this today because I know that women need to read this story and be reminded that no matter how bad things can seem, there’s always a journey ahead of us that will lead us to happiness.

Please do me a big favor. Let’s stand together as women and please share this with your friends. Just like I heard that little voice that night to help me turn things around, I want to be your little voice that helps you turn things around.

Holly D