Peloton’s Camila Ramón on Silencing Her Inner ‘Tia Toxica’ and Learning to Love Herself (Exclusive)

Years after she learned to tune out well-meaning relatives commenting on her curves, the Miami-raised fitness trainer is inspiring others to do the same

Camila Ramón says she gets “a little emotional” thinking about some of the messages that fans send her.

The Peloton instructor — who is the first person to teach Spanish-only cycling classes on the fitness platform — is beloved for telling her followers to brush aside body-shaming comments and “wear the shorts.”

“Camila, I just want to let you know that, at the age of 60, I have finally been able to accept myself and love my body thanks to your classes,” the Miami-raised, 31-year-old says, paraphrasing what some fans tell her. “I couldn’t ask for anything else.”

But while Camila’s Instagram followers may know she once struggled to embrace her curves, they may not know how unhealthy her obsession with weight was. It included excessive exercise, skipping meals and even taking supplements that left her feeling faint. It was all part of her desperate attempt to fit into a perceived body ideal.

“I would be overly restrictive, overly hard on myself, consuming fat burners, things like that because I really wanted to fit in with the rest of the girls,” Camila tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview.

From middle school onwards, the “girls” in question were the members of her dance team. She says, “I looked at myself in the mirror and I had wider hips. I thought there was something wrong with me and I would think, ‘Why can’t my hips look like the rest of the girls?’ It was very dangerous what I was doing at the time.”

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But Camila’s self-acceptance challenges didn’t begin in school. Born in Argentina and raised in Miami, she remembers relatives making body shaming comments that impacted her.

“It was probably one of my biggest struggles growing up, embracing myself and my body and loving who I am and what I look like,” she says. “I think the images that we see as Latinas, especially in Latin media, is not conducive to celebrating body diversity, self-love and self-acceptance.”

Peloton fans may have heard her refer to “your tia toxica" which is "a toxic family member.”

Camila says, “As a Latina, when you go home and you visit your family there’s always this one person that comments about your body, about your relationship status. So, it’s very common to hear, ‘You’re looking a little thicker,’ or ‘What’s up with the boyfriend?’ Or ‘You’re going to eat all that? You shouldn’t be lifting weights. You’re going to look manly.’ These types of narratives are very common.”

While Camila says her mom didn’t make comments like that, she says her mother was “always worried about her [own] weight” and would exercise “only to be thin.”

"That’s kind of how I grew up,” she says. That mindset was compounded at school, where she says, as a dancer, she feared being put on “weight probation.”

Although it never happened to her, Camila claims some girls were removed from dance routines until they slimmed down. To avoid that situation, the teen skipped meals. In middle school, she joined the cross-country team because she thought running would make her “skinny.”

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By the time Camila was in college, she took up bodybuilding, training with competitors, she focused on looking lean. She threw supplements like fat burners into her routine, which promised to help her achieve her goal by either raising her body temperature, so she could burn more calories, or curbing her appetite.

But, they made her feel so nauseous and “disgusted” by food that she wouldn’t eat. She was thin, but she wasn’t happy, and Camila says, “When the scale was at its lowest was when I was the most irritable, having the most panic attacks that I ever had in my life. When my body fat percentage was at its lowest and I was supposed to be super satisfied was when I was training and I felt like I was going to faint. I couldn’t finish my runs or my workouts.”

So, she gave up. After college, tired of training, she stopped working out for three years. Her first step towards self-acceptance came when she eventually returned to fitness and developed a different mindset. It happened nearly a decade ago when she was standing on Miami’s Key Biscayne Bridge after a five-mile run as part of her attempt to slim down.

“I got to the top of the bridge and I broke down crying because I was so frustrated about all of the workouts that I had been doing and how my body had not changed,” Camila says. “Then I turned around and looked at the ocean. I looked down at how far I’d come because it’s a steep and long bridge. I said to myself, ‘How dare you have the audacity to be so ungrateful when your body is so healthy and your legs are so strong to take you up this bridge!’ From that moment on, I made it my mission to just move to enjoy movement. I said, ‘I don’t want to live this way anymore.’ I started just doing things to have fun.”

Camila says the mindset switch wasn’t immediate. Thirty-minute walks with friends and taking dance classes just for fun followed, but it took consistent work and daily affirmations to learn to love herself.

“I would look at myself in the mirror and thank every inch of my body,” she says, even the bits that she struggled with like her tummy — her “little pancita.”

“I would say, ‘I love you. You’re a part of me,’ ” Camila remembers. “It was so healing.”

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Today, the fitness instructor doesn’t weigh herself, skip meals or diet. She’s also curvier and happier than she was during her bodybuilding days. Camila says, “The best decision I ever made was to love and choose to accept myself.” '

As for that tia toxica, she says, “When you’re able to live in your body with joy and compassion, grace and confidence, nobody can take that away from you. We have one body and one life."

If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, please contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or go to NationalEatingDisorders.org.

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