Eva (00:06):
You are listening to. Less of You. I'm Eva.

Kami (00:09):
My name is Kami.

Eva (00:10):
Come with us as we confront our reasons for being obese while losing weight on semaglutide and roasting our past selves. How are you doing?

Kami (00:20):
I'm tired.

Eva (00:21):
Yeah, me too.

Kami (00:22):
Yeah.

Eva (00:25):
Hey, Donald Trump Jr. just texted me.

Kami (00:29):
Oh, did he? Oh, I didn't know you guys were friends like that.

Eva (00:32):
My answer to question number 10 impressed him. However, I missed question number four.

Kami (00:38):
Really?

Eva (00:40):
M-hmm. On a survey I guess that I never filled out.

Kami (00:43):
Oh, okay.

Eva (00:44):
Sorry Donald. I'm sorry. Don Jr. I'll get to it at the end of the day when I'm done doing all my real work.

Kami (00:53):
Yeah. Goodness gracious.

Eva (00:58):
Yeah, your hair still looks good.

Kami (01:01):
Thanks. It's kind of a mess right now because I'm a mess.

Eva (01:04):
Did you do that yourself? The color?

Kami (01:06):
Yeah. Oh yeah. It's hard to pay somebody to do it when you did it for 15 years.

Eva (01:12):
I know. Well, we went on our long vacation to Washington.

Kami (01:18):
How'd that go? Did you get to see my mom or no?

Eva (01:20):
I didn't get to see her.

Kami (01:22):
No. Okay.

Eva (01:23):
It was 10 days. It was about two days too long, and part of it was that we traveled during the week both times. So we went up there on a Monday and came back on the following Wednesday, and it just feels yucky to be traveling when I should be working. It doesn't feel good and it's long because Southwest doesn't have any direct flights to Portland, so we have to take two flights, which means it's like, it ends up being a 12 to 14 hour travel day for the kids, and they're really good at it now, but it's still long. It's long for me.

Kami (02:01):
Yeah, that's a lot.

Eva (02:03):
I took a picture of Kari doing gymnastics moves in the San Jose airport on Wednesday, and Ellie in the foreground is having a tantrum in front of her on the floor.

Kami (02:13):
Nice.

Eva (02:13):
She was over it.

Kami (02:15):
Oh yeah.

Eva (02:16):
But I still lost three pounds this month.

Kami (02:19):
Did you?

Eva (02:20):
Also, I learned don't eat licorice.

Kami (02:25):
What kind of licorice?

Eva (02:26):
Well, I ate a half of a single serve package of red vines, so that was maybe five red vines.

Kami (02:32):
Yeah. That's like nothing.

Eva (02:33):
And you have to imagine that I used to sit down with the bucket.

Kami (02:37):
Right. I was going to say that's nothing. And they're not super crazy high in calories either, but.

Eva (02:42):
No, and I could eat 'em all day. She always brings a bucket and we all eat red vines and I would eat them and eat them and eat them and eat them. Well, I thought, "oh cool, red vines, I'm going to eat a red vine." So I had a few, and it didn't hit me right away, but at two in the morning I woke up and my stomach making this crazy sound and I was like, "oh, oh boy."

Kami (03:05):
What?

Eva (03:06):
So I added that to the list of things I cannot eat.

Kami (03:10):
Yeah.

Eva (03:10):
Red vines, just a couple other things. I mean, you just can't eat anything fried. Can you eat fried food? I can't.

Kami (03:18):
So I don't gravitate towards a lot of fried food necessarily other than french fries. It doesn't seem to bother me.

Eva (03:28):
You just don't eat very much.

Kami (03:30):
Right. Although I have been eating more comfort food lately than I normally would because this whole job thing got me stressed out. So I think the last time we talked, I was considering going back to my prior company and I interviewed, they hired me, sent me a offer letter for more money than I asked for, and then two days later they were like, "just kidding, we're not going to hire anybody. So sorry."

Eva (04:03):
Yeah. But then they hire your friend? Didn't you say they? Didn't you tell me last time that they were interviewing your friend too?

Kami (04:10):
Yes. So they had, right, so from my understanding, basically she was offered the job and she's like, "I'm not interested, but you should really hire Kami." And so they hired me. That's what happened. So I think it was like the day or two after you and I talked last time. That's how that went down. I bought this chair because it's like a rocking chair and it's a 360 swivel and it's heated and massaged and all the things thinking that, oh, it's fine. I'll just put that on my credit card. I'll pay it off when I get my first paycheck. Nope, that's not how that went. My husband's like, "what are you doing?" I'm like, "making bad choices, obviously." God. So yeah. So I'm back at square one, which is fine. So that just threw me for a loop. And then everything going on with the HOA and the fire that we had and meeting with the attorneys and suing State Farm, and I was like, I think I've hit my max. I mean, I'm good at least for another year, but that's not how that goes, I guess. So I was like, this is just insane. This is insane. So I got the offer letter on Monday to start the following Monday and Wednesday is when I got the call. Now I had already gone to the local office and picked up all my equipment, so I had to go and take it all back.

Eva (05:42):
That's so weird.

Kami (05:44):
Yeah. I'm like, okay. I think that they're restructuring some things internally on how they do at their acquisitions and they are suspecting they're not going to need many people in the position that I applied for as they currently have or will need in the future. I don't know.

Eva (06:04):
Well, do you feel better schedule, stress, time wise now that Cordelia is back at school?

Kami (06:10):
Well, it's only been two days, and so on top of all of this, the bus,

Eva (06:15):
I feel better within five minutes I kick their little butts out the door and I'm like, see you in the spring.

Kami (06:20):
Yeah, I'll be honest. So my husband goes to work, this is his routine at 12:50. He hops in the shower at 1:00 PM he's walking out the door to go to work. That's how long it takes him to get ready. And he's walking out looking hot too. You know what I mean? He's got the beard oil and his hair's off thing, and it's not like he dresses up in a suit and tie or anything, but this is not fair. So from 1:00 PM until Cordelia gets off the bus, whenever they fucking decide to bring her back, we'll get into that in a second. It's nice having a house to myself. So that is a plus. The bus schedule has been a literal shit show for, so her first day was yesterday and today and yesterday the bus just skipped our pickup just didn't come, literally could see it next door. So we live in a condo community, but there's several condo communities all in a row on the same road. And so they went to the community next door, picked up those lucky little bastards, and we're like, we're just not going to go to the one. That's fine. We'll just skip that. It's just one kid. Who cares? I got two dozen kids here. What's one more? Who cares? Right?

Eva (07:39):
I think you're being really ungrateful. There's entire school districts that can't even find bus drivers and you're complaining about them just making you walk to the next neighborhood over.

Kami (07:51):
I know. I had to drive.

Eva (07:51):
And flag them down.

Kami (07:53):
I had to drive her, I had to drive her, which okay, fine, but I'm like, alright. So I call yesterday and I called yesterday and I talked to the secretary at the school. Very nice woman. She's like, "yeah, it's just first day working out the kinks, blah, blah, blah. Everything should be fine." And verified her information, her bus number, her stop, all the things. So again, did not pick her up today and yesterday when they dropped her off, not the bus she's supposed to be on. So do you have a, here comes the bus app?

Eva (08:31):
No, but we don't have a bus. But I've heard about this. You can track them like Find My right?

Kami (08:36):
Yeah, it's great. It's fantastic. Here comes the bus, five stars. Love it. But if your kid is not on the bus, that number that's attached to your account, you fucking don't know where she is.

Eva (08:47):
Now it's here comes the heart attack.

Kami (08:51):
Yeah. And of course we get the message, "sorry, the bus systems are late, blah, blah, blah, blah." So random buses are coming in because there's kids. This is insane. There's kids in our community. Now, granted not a lot of kids, I think there's maybe seven children in all 59 units in my place, and three of them are with one parent.

Eva (09:17):
Like single parent homes?

Kami (09:18):
Yeah so I've got a single mom with three kids, and then I've got right next to her is a married couple with two kids, and then my husband and I with Cordelia. So how many is that?

Eva (09:28):
Yeah, 3.

Kami (09:28):
That's 3, 3, 5, 6, 6 children and three of them are all in middle school and go to the same school. And the other two are a brother and sister that go to the same elementary school. So literally there's only three schools that pick up here in a special school because she's all smart and stuff. So they're like, she can be high ability and go to this different school. Okay, cool. So this bus pulls up. That's not the bus number that she's supposed to be on. And here she comes, bebopping off the bus. I'm like, what the fuck? So I have not made the phone call yet. I'm like, I'm just going to let that sit.

Eva (10:12):
It's Friday.

Kami (10:14):
It's fine. So we'll see how it goes today before, I think make the bitch mom phone call.

Eva (10:23):
Okay. Yeah. Give them one more chance.

Kami (10:24):
I think. So

Eva (10:25):
We're in a new world because my husband's at a new school. He's a teacher. My daughter's going to that school, which is cool. I didn't think they'd be able to go to the same school until she was in middle school because teaches he was teaching eighth grade. Now he's teaching seventh grade in coaching football, but now they get to go to the same school, however.

Kami (10:47):
Oh, that's really cool.

Eva (10:47):
It's a brand new building and it's only one third of the way finished. So they finished the wing for the little kids first. So kindergarten through, I think fifth grade goes to the new building and sixth through 12 goes to the old building until Christmas, and then after Christmas, they'll all be in the same building.

Kami (11:07):
Okay, well that's really,

Eva (11:08):
We're in a little bit of a transition.

Kami (11:09):
Yeah, it sounds like a nightmare, but okay.

Eva (11:12):
It's okay.

Kami (11:13):
It's not great.

Eva (11:14):
It's a gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous building, and I'm so excited for them to get to go there for the next 13 years. 14. If you count my other child, actually, I don't know where I was going with that. We will never have a bus.

Kami (11:28):
The bus, okay.

Eva (11:29):
I have discovered two very interesting things since things started spinning up for school. I know everyone in my neighborhood who's going to this school too, because we're in a carpool group. So on Saturday we're all getting together at the pool to talk about carpools. I don't really have a car big enough for carpool, but I'm going to go to the meeting. I want to know everybody in the neighborhood, but also I might be able to figure it out. But then, okay, so this is the first time the whole school, it's a K-12 school. Every parent in the school is in one Facebook group for the school. And so you can see right away the people who you're like, "oh boy" And my husband being a teacher, I sort of feel like I should be making a list like, "watch out for this one."

Kami (12:19):
Oh yeah, you're definitely fly on the wall spying for him for sure. Be like, "ohh."

Eva (12:25):
I always am. I mean, being a coach's wife, I learned a long time ago never to sit with parents. Never. Don't do it. Find a job, volunteer. Be on the other side of the field. Just be somewhere where nobody, you won't hear anybody talking about your spouse in any negative context whatsoever, especially if they don't know who you are. Like, oh my gosh.

Kami (12:48):
Oh my God. Yeah.

Eva (12:51):
I had my follow up this morning to go get more four more injection, my pack of injections, and I saw Ashley. I haven't seen Ashley in a while because summers weird. Ashley's my favorite and I asked her if she'd come on the show and talk to us. She's been my provider now for almost a year. She's my big cheerleader who I see every month. Right.

Kami (13:16):
That's exciting.

Eva (13:18):
She's nervous. She doesn't want to be on camera, but I'll convince her.

Kami (13:22):
Who cares?

Eva (13:23):
I know. I'm like, you haven't seen the show.

Kami (13:26):
Look at this shit. Tell her be like, "I was like, my partner in crime is a total hoarder, so it's fine. It's like whatever."

Eva (13:33):
We are here to make you comfortable, Ashley, but we can get our weird medical questions in order and ask her whatever we want.

Kami (13:44):
Yeah, I love it.

Eva (13:45):
And she's so sweet. So that'll be fun.

Kami (13:48):
Totally. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I think I've pretty much maintained, honestly, I really meant to weigh myself this morning and then I just with the bus thing, and then we had to go and get more medication for my cat. So you want to hear, it's funny is my pussy has a pussy problem. Oh. So she's having some weird things going on and she's spayed, so we don't know what's going on anyways, so I needed more medication because I don't think that they mixed the medication correctly and I had to go pick up that. And then,

Eva (14:23):
Is this coming from a cat compounding pharmacy?

Kami (14:27):
Nope, just the vet's office. So it's antibiotics. So it comes in a powder and then you mix water in it to make it in a liquid. So you get the dropper and whatever, and she's like, did you get the drops or the pill form? I was like, please do not make me have to give my cat a pill. Please. Yeah. So that was a mess.

Eva (14:48):
That's the cat bite industrial complex at work right there trying to get you bit by the cat so you have to go to the doctor and get treated for the cat bite. Don't you think it's a conspiracy?

Kami (14:58):
It sounds like

Eva (14:59):
You have a lot of issues today.

Kami (15:02):
Yeah.

Eva (15:03):
Do you want to give me your numbers, even though you didn't get on the scale today?

Kami (15:06):
Yeah. Last time I was started off at 250. I'm down to 222. Goal is 150, but probably 160 still. So that's where I'm at. I've at the very least maintained. Because I did weigh myself earlier in the week. I just haven't weighed myself in the last four days. So it was the same as what it was, which is great because I was like, I have not made the best choices because of everything I've been going through with getting a job and not getting a job. And now,

Eva (15:38):
Yeah, I was 280 when I started in January of '23. I am at 196.

Kami (15:46):
Excellent.

Eva (15:47):
It is insane to me. There was a trip I went on to Cancun with a bunch of my girlfriends. I want to say this was like 2003 maybe, and I was going to Weight Watchers for months, trying to get from 196 down to 185. That was my goal. I never thought I would see 196 again.

Kami (16:14):
Really? Well, congratulations baby. You're doing great.

Eva (16:17):
Thank you. I bought a pair of jeans while I was in Washington. They found, this is crazy to me. My husband is from the middle of nowhere and everybody is poor. There's a Walmart, that's all there is, but things are kind of getting better there. And so there's these two little clothing shops owned by the same lady. And it was like the whole store was designed for me. I'm like, what does this say about me that I just found a store with my style in Chehalis? Someone in Chehalis has really good tastes. This is the story I'm going to tell myself. I bought the jeans. I love them. They look so good. And halfway through the day of wearing them for the first time, they were already too big. These are at 12. How is this possible?

Kami (17:04):
Was it a lot of stretch? Because that's what happens is like,

Eva (17:07):
They all I know, but you try 'em on and you've got a muffin top, you're like, these don't fit. So I went with the, I just keep making mistakes on clothes. Also, I need you to tell me, we don't have to do it on the show if you don't want to, but what size you're wearing, because I'm going to go through all my stuff and send you some also, and I'm going to send you, look what I have stickers.

Kami (17:29):
Stop it. I need those right now. They're so cute.

Eva (17:33):
They are so cute. And I'm going to send a pile to you with some clothes.

Kami (17:39):
Yeah, yeah. Right now I'm down to what I would consider a solid 16. Anything like a 16 or an extra large would probably fit me.

Eva (17:48):
Awesome. I know what to do.

Kami (17:50):
Okay. God, what else? Oh God. I can tell you something else my kid said, so I dunno if I text you this or not, but she was like, she likes to weave stories. So she's like, "and then this." Yes. Oh my gosh. She's such a little storyteller. And she was telling me this story about how she adopted this kitten and, "Mommy, I can't feed the kitten regular milk because it's black toast intolerant."

Eva (18:21):
Black toast.

Kami (18:24):
It's

Eva (18:24):
It's black toast intolerant.

Kami (18:26):
"Do you mean lactose intolerant?" She's like, "yeah, black toast intolerant." I was like, "no, that's not how you say that." I wanted to die. I texted my husband, I was like, "this just happened." He's like, "what?"

Eva (18:40):
That's so good.

Kami (18:42):
Oh my God. Oh, so cute. Oh.

Eva (18:45):
Ellie made her grandma laugh so hard. And then you know it was a good one when grandma retells the story to everyone that comes over. So I heard it a bunch this week, and it was that when we went to Minnesota in Grand Rapids, there's this Judy Garland birthplace museum, and they have her house that she was born in. Oh wow. And so we went there, we had a really good time. It was such a cool place. The whole time I was looking around, "where are the gays?"

Kami (19:10):
Where are they?

Eva (19:12):
We were there for half a day. And finally at the end I saw some come in and I was like, "whew."

Kami (19:18):
Like relief. Cool. People are here.

Eva (19:22):
And so grandma was asking Ellie about this picture of them with the things with the faces cut out where you stick your head in.Well Ellie was in Dorothy's face at the museum. So grandma's like "Ellie, who is that?" And she goes, "Judy." And grandma goes, what's her other name? And she's like, "Garland." And she goes, does she have another name besides those? And Ellie goes, "yeah, her nickname is Dorothy."

Kami (19:54):
Her nickname. Oh, that is so funny. Oh my gosh. Yeah, her nickname.

Eva (20:01):
Yeah. It's not lost on me. My husband likes to say that I've lost two Ellies because Ellie weighs about 40 pounds and I can't even barely carry one of her. And to imagine that much weight, two of them on my carrying it around on my body is just mind blowing.

Kami (20:17):
Isn't that wild? I think about that too. I'm like, she weighs card weighs probably around 42, I think is the last time she was weighed. But yeah, it's crazy to think about it in that context.

Eva (20:32):
Or imagine carrying two 40 pound kettlebells. I couldn't go to the gym right now and pick up two 40s. I could probably pick them up, but I wouldn't be able to hold them for very long.

Kami (20:41):
No, no.

Eva (20:44):
When I was seeing Ashley this morning, I told her this story about I had gone on this trip to California a couple of weeks ago to see a client and just the context of me inside of these two professional situations in this body instead of the old one was really startling. And the first one was fine. I've been going to client's offices for years and never really felt anything other than anxiety about what I was wearing, which I could always kind of figure out what black clothes to wear and get away with. But the second of my two meetings was with a guy who turned out to be, I didn't know this before the meeting, but he was the helicopter pilot for President Obama and President Trump. He was an ex-Marine.

Kami (21:32):
Wow.

Eva (21:34):
And his work is in private equity. And I went into that meeting, confident, comfortable, fully present. And it occurred to me later that a year ago I would've gone into that meeting fully under a wet blanket of "I'm so fat, they're just going to think I can't control myself. They're going to think that I have no willpower. They're going to think that I am a weak person and I project all this horrible stuff on myself about who I am as a person." Which is not true just because you are one size or another, but I am so grateful to be here and not there.

Kami (22:16):
Yeah. Well, recognizing that you had that kind of negative self-talk going on is crucial. Major progress. Amazing. I applaud you because that's over half the battle right there. Yeah. Well I was talking like last time my whole, "well, you need to stop taking this medication so you can eat something and cure your anxiety." Like what the hell? So realizing this medication helps you, it's really what goes on in your brain and being able to step outside yourself and realize, "Hey, I'm having all of these weird, crazy thoughts that are impacting my life and how I eat and all these things." And then you can actually, once you've kind of stepped outside yourself, you can do the real work to be like, "okay, hey, I am not a terrible person because I'm overweight." That is stupid. Right?

Eva (23:20):
M-hmm. And I want to have empathy for others who are where I used to be. Not like I'm going to go up to them and be like, I'm going to preach now and tell you what you need to do, but maybe to look past it. Yeah. Is a lot of new feelings.

Kami (23:40):
Yeah.

Eva (23:40):
It's a good thing we have a podcast to untangle them on.

Kami (23:43):
Know This is an outlet here. This is great. Well, and what I love about your story, Eva, is that you've been doing this for a long time. I mean, I'm just new kid on the block situation, but you're the veteran here and the fact that you're still having these epiphanies and personal progress is phenomenal. It really is amazing. And that deserves recognition.

Eva (24:15):
Did you know it would do that?

Kami (24:17):
I have no idea, I dunno what that was.

Eva (24:20):
That no feature in the platform that I've been waiting to try a surprise.

Kami (24:29):
That was so great. Thank you.

Eva (24:32):
You're welcome.

Kami (24:33):
Okay.

Eva (24:36):
Oh, I thought that was going to be ba dum ts but it wasn't. I'm not going to do anymore.

Kami (24:46):
Oh my god.

Eva (24:48):
Actually that one's probably called drum joke.

Kami (24:52):
Oh, is it? There it is. Oh shit, girl. I think that's a good way to end the show.

Eva (25:01):
If you're still listening, I'm sorry.

Kami (25:04):
We apologize.

Eva (25:05):
If you want a sticker, DM have me your mailing address @lessofyoupodcast on Instagram and I will mail you a Less of You sticker for your laptop. It did occur to me when I got the stickers that I should have ordered refrigerator magnets since the sticker is supposed to be a refrigerator with magnets on it. So coming soon. Refrigerator magnets.

Kami (25:28):
Yeah, let's do it.

Eva (25:29):
Yeah. Get that swag.

Kami (25:31):
Alright chickadee, you the best.

Eva (25:34):
You are the best. I'll see you in two weeks and we'll talk more about back to school.

Kami (25:40):
Yes. Oh, I'm sure I'll have more stories. Stay tuned.

Eva (25:43):
I can't wait. All right. Call the bus driver.

Kami (25:45):
Don't worry. I will

Eva (25:49):
Follow us on Instagram @lessofyoupodcast. Are you confronting the same challenges and have a story to tell? I'd love to hear your story on our Skinny Shot Stories podcast. Contact me for more details at skinnyshotstories.com. If you're a doctor and would like to learn more about sponsoring this or any of our cosmetic surgery and weight loss podcasts, go to lessofyou.com. Less of You is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.