You’re listening to Burnt Toast! Today, my conversation is with Lauren Leavell.

Lauren is a weight neutral fitness professional and content creator. She focuses on creating inclusive environments for movement and exercise to help clients feel strong and confident, and previously joined us on the podcast back in 2023.

Lauren is an oasis in a sea of toxic online fitness and wellness culture. And it has been super toxic lately! So I asked Lauren to come on and chat with us about the recent dramas happening on Tiktok and Instagram.

Yes, we get into the girl who said nobody over 200 pounds should take Pilates.

We also talk about how to stay grounded when this noise is happening online, and how to seek out inclusive movement spaces—whatever that looks like for you.

Today’s episode is free but if you value this conversation, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Burnt Toast is 100% reader- and listener-supported. We literally can’t do this without you.

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Episode 197

Virginia

Lauren, it’s so great to have you back on the podcast! It was one of my favorite conversations. It was two years ago that you were here before, I think.

Lauren

I know! Honestly, we could have a conversation once a month about toxic fitness stuff.

Virginia

There’s always something. For anyone who missed your first appearance and has missed the 72,000 times I say “I love Lauren’s workouts,” can you introduce yourself?

Lauren

I am Lauren Leavell. I am a certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor. I’ve been doing that for almost a decade at this point, which is so wild. I’m not tired of it yet, which is amazing for me. I have a virtual program online, and Virginia is a member of tat community.

Virginia

A groupie.

Lauren

Honestly, yes. Love that. I teach live classes and on demand classes. All of them are body neutral, and most of them are lower impact, because we’re here for a good time and a long time. And I also have private training clients who I program Stronger Together workouts for.

When I’m not doing that, I’m apparently complaining on the Internet. Well, I try not to complain too much on the Internet. And stalking cats in my neighborhood.

Virginia

You are my favorite Internet cat lady.

Lauren

Huge, huge accolades here.

Virginia

Favorite Internet cat lady. That should be in your bio. And you are talking to us from France right now! Do you want to talk about that?

Lauren

I’m really leaning into my Sagittarius lifestyle. I just picked up my life in Philadelphia and decided to move to France. People keep asking me, why? And my answer is, why not? My partner and I are child-free except for our two beautiful cat daughters. But they’re pretty easy to move. So we packed up our lives and moved to France. We are still really new here, really getting into it. And I’m genuinely just so excited for all the new stimuli.

Virginia

Of course for folks listening to this episode, it is now mid-June, so we’re going to talk about something that happened a month ago, and it is forgotten in the attention span of the Internet. But I still think it’s very important to record for posterity that this happened.

So Lauren, can you walk us through what I’m going to call Pilatesgate.

Lauren

Pilatesgate occurred wh