At 47, Corry Matthews knows firsthand what it feels like to be told your health concerns are “just part of aging.” Navigating early menopause, recovering from a broken back, and managing heart disease risk factors, she’s experienced the silence many women face when they try to advocate for their own well-being in midlife. It’s this combination of personal experience and professional expertise that drives Strength & Grace Fitness, a women-focused brand built around a straightforward mission: helping women stop hiding from their health.
Matthews brings an unusual depth of experience to this work. A former IFBB professional bodybuilder with a bachelor’s degree in Exercise Physiology and a master’s in Sports Medicine, she’s spent decades translating high-level strength training into sustainable practices for women—particularly those navigating perimenopause and midlife. Her educational programs have reached institutional scale: she developed pre- and postnatal fitness programs adopted by Gold’s Gym International and the United States Marine Corps.
What sets her women’s health and fitness programs apart is the refusal to treat exhaustion, weight struggles, or hormonal changes as problems to hide or minimize. Instead, Strength & Grace Fitness combines intelligent strength training, nutrition education, and lifestyle-based hormone awareness into programs designed for real life—not idealized schedules or extreme protocols.
From Magazine Features to Education-First Advocacy
Matthews’ career has evolved significantly since her early days appearing in Flex Magazine and Oxygen Magazine as a fitness model. She transitioned from aesthetics-focused work into becoming a longtime health columnist and community builder. In Southern California, she founded and led a nearly 1,000-member community for women navigating perimenopause—creating space for open conversation around a life stage many women are conditioned to endure quietly.
Her Amazon best-selling cookbook, Strength & Grace Kitchen, became a top seller in the gluten-free category by addressing a practical gap: how busy working mothers can prepare family-friendly meals that support energy and hormone health without cooking separate “diet food.” The book reflects her broader philosophy—women don’t need perfection or restriction; they need tools that fit their actual lives.
Building Visibility for Women’s Midlife Health
The brand’s signature Hormone Solution Program focuses on resetting women’s relationship with food through whole foods and reduced inflammatory triggers, rather than extreme restriction. Additional strength training and nutrition education offerings teach women how to build muscle, stabilize energy, and understand how food, movement, and stress intersect with hormones.
Matthews has recently expanded into podcasting, creating long-form conversations about women’s health, strength training, and sustainable vitality across life stages. Her focus over the next one to three years is clear: increasing visibility so more women can find the support they need. She frequently hears from clients that nothing worked until they found her programs—but only if they can find them in the first place.
Through education-driven fitness and nutrition guidance, Strength & Grace Fitness challenges the idea that weight struggles should be hidden or that strength is something women “age out of.” Matthews has lost 20 pounds after 40; her business partner has lost 65 naturally. Their goal isn’t aesthetic pressure—it’s helping women reclaim energy, confidence, and an active role in their own well-being.
