Business of the Week: Intentionally Healthy & Fit Makes Clients Feel Valued

When Denise Tressler named her business Intentionally Healthy & Fit, the word “intentionally” was not an accident.

Now the Brooks personal trainer has been recognized by her own clients and community for putting that philosophy into practice.

Intentionally Healthy & Fit is a winner in The Citizen’s Choice Awards in the category, “Who makes you feel genuinely valued every single time?” The awards begin with nominations from local citizens and are decided by votes from local citizens. The Citizen’s Choice Awards are powered by the Fayette County Chamber of Commerce.

Tressler did not even know she had been nominated at first.

“One of my clients nominating me. I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking,’” Tressler said.

Once she found out, she spread the word among her clients and encouraged them to vote.

The award is particularly fitting for a business Tressler says was built around listening to the women who walk through her door.

“I would say that I am a good listener,” Tressler said. “I intentionally listen to them, whether it be our first meeting and they’re telling me all about themselves. I’m soaking it in, right? I’m soaking it in because I want to understand them.”

Tressler launched Intentionally Healthy & Fit in August 2023 after leaving a roughly 26-year career working with AT&T, sometimes as a direct employee and sometimes through contractors. She had been strength training since she was about 19 or 20 and frequently found other women asking her what they could do to become stronger or healthier.

After becoming certified under eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney, Tressler began traveling from house to house training clients. Business grew quickly enough that the arrangement became difficult to sustain while raising a family.

Her husband suggested another solution: build a studio.

The Intentionally Healthy & Fit studio opened in Brooks on December 4, 2023.

Today, Tressler primarily trains women, particularly women navigating perimenopause and postmenopause. Her focus is strength training, with workouts tailored to each client’s age, injuries, goals, and abilities.

Tressler describes Intentionally Healthy & Fit as a personal training and small-group fitness studio focused on helping women become stronger, healthier, and more confident at every stage of life. She said her goal is to create an environment that feels personal, encouraging, and welcoming rather than intimidating, while helping clients build strength, improve their overall fitness, and develop healthy habits they can realistically maintain.

For Tressler, that also means meeting women where they are. Her philosophy is that becoming healthier does not require perfection, but rather being intentional and taking consistent steps toward feeling and living better.

“I try to be very specific with their workouts so that they get a good workout, but I don’t injure them,” Tressler said. “At the same time, I try to educate them how their bodies have changed from when they were 20 to now that they’re 60, right? And how things may not work the same, and why we have to do certain things versus other things.”

Her clients’ goals can look very different.

One woman came to Tressler at age 60 saying she wanted to be able to do pull-ups within a year. Now 62, Tressler said, she knocks out seven unassisted pull-ups before her regular workout three days a week.

Other clients have lost more than 40 pounds.

But one of Tressler’s favorite success stories has nothing to do with a number on the scale.

Her first client — the same woman who nominated her for the Citizen’s Choice Award — has trained with Tressler since August 2023. Earlier this year, that client became a grandmother.

During one workout, Tressler noticed tears running down the woman’s face and initially wondered if she had hurt herself.

Instead, her client told her what the training had meant.

“You don’t know how how this how Intentionally Healthy & Fit basically saved my life. I was going down a horrible hill of not taking care of myself and and not eating good,” Tressler quoted her as saying.

The woman told Tressler she was now looking forward to being able to get on the floor and play with her grandson, climb stairs, and care for him because she had taken better care of herself.

“That’s probably one of my favorite stories,” Tressler said.

That kind of relationship may also explain why Intentionally Healthy & Fit earned an award specifically about making people feel valued.

Tressler said she tries to listen when someone needs to cancel because of a sick child or grandchild, work around clients’ circumstances when possible, and find solutions when cost becomes a concern.

“I try to always err on the side of the customers,” she said.

She currently has about 15 clients and only limited space for one or two more. She is also expanding virtual training through an app, allowing women who cannot regularly travel to Brooks to receive workouts and stay connected with her remotely.

Tressler has deep Fayette County roots. She was born in College Park and grew up locally. Her father, Dennis Watson, has served as pastor of Harps Crossing Baptist Church in Fayetteville for 43 years.

She also credits him with helping inspire her lifelong commitment to fitness.

At 74, Watson still runs about 800 miles a year, according to Tressler.

“He is my motivation to keep myself in shape,” she said.

Tressler is a runner herself and participates in local events, including those connected with the Peachtree City Running Club. She and her husband have five children between them, including one son serving in the Air Force and another preparing to enter the Air Force after graduating from Whitewater High School.

That family is one reason Tressler has deliberately chosen not to grow her business as large as she possibly could.

“Something I have learned as a business owner is I have to be intentional about keeping a good balance between work and family,” she said. “I probably could take a lot more clients, but I choose not to because you know my family comes first, and then my business second.”

It brings the story back to the same word Tressler chose while running on a beach and thinking about what she wanted her new business to become.

Intentional.

And for the local citizens who nominated and voted for Intentionally Healthy & Fit as a business that makes them feel genuinely valued every time, it appears they noticed.

Learn more about Intentionally Healthy & Fit at IHF.fit or find the business on Instagram at IHF.fit.