WE FAIL HARD. WE SUCCEED HARD.
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BACKSTORY
Jessica Limpert and Ramon Medeiros transformed their bodies and lives on NBC’s The Biggest Loser.” And they kept the weight off while they worked as celebrity trainers at the “Biggest Loser” resorts for a few years.
But as time passed the now-married couple gradually regained the weight as they tried coping with complicated emotions they still had about their bodies. So, when they were asked to appear on their 2nd reality show “The Big Fat Truth” Jessica and Ramon were all in, and very successful. Then their post-show roller coaster ride started again with Jessica getting to 358 LBS and Ramon 385 LBS.
Having been thru two reality shows, too many diets and exercise plans to mention, they considered weight loss surgery but felt unsure. Like others, they thought surgery was “the easy way out.”
“Once I educated myself and I realized that it doesn’t matter how much knowledge I have. It doesn’t matter how much motivation I can gather every day. I need more,” Limpert said. “I needed a tool that can help.”
So they took the leap in January 2021 undergoing vertical sleeve gastrectomy (VSG) and not only have they settled into a weight they can live with, a major change that has come from their journey is a whole new mindset and sustainable lifestyle.
And the best part of their story is they’re soon to be parents.
JAY: Jessica and Ramon, thanks so much for being here today on Going Beyond the Scale.
JESSICA: Thanks for having us.
JAY: Nine times out of ten times before I do a podcast, I’ll do a virtual chat with my guests. But what was great about prepping for today’s chat was a few weeks ago I got to stop by your place, Black Oak Artistry in Pittsburgh. No surprise, we talked for hours, so my focus for this conversation is to hit on the highlights of some of the amazing things you two have been up too. Let’s start with where you guys are today, and then we'll do your backstory. There’s been a lot written about your latest adventures by the TODAY Show, the Pittsburgh Gazette, and lots of other media outlets. It's been quite an adventure. Why don't you share that with everybody.
RAMON: We have the biggest project we've ever been working on ever. This is totally new for us, uncharted territory. We've never done this before.
WE'RE SUPER EXCITED!
I'm just gonna come out and say it we kind of let the cat out of the bag, you know, with a photo but we're pregnant.
IT'S UNREAL!
Goosebumps. Goosebumps immediately.
I'm gonna be a dad, and you're gonna be the best mom ever.
IT'S CRAZY!
There's going to be another human running around.
IT'S NUTS!
JESSICA: I love how excited he gets. This is something we've been, I wouldn't say we've been working on for a long time, but fairly recent. We have almost 11 years together in our relationship and it's just the next step to complete this book and start a new book.
And we couldn't be more excited to welcome our baby in October of 2022!
JAY: The thing that's neat about it is that I could just tell by the how excited you guys were when we got together about being parents. Sometimes people are not sure. I know you both well enough to know that you got the kind of spirit and excitement and love of life, which is so important when you're a parent. The other similarity between us is you'll be parents, but you're also entrepreneurs, who recently moved back to Pittsburgh. Why did you do that? What's going on?
JESSICA: I'm from Pittsburgh, Murrysville, Pennsylvania to be exact. I took off for California about almost a year before I got on The Biggest Loser. I was out there nursing. I was a travel nurse at worked at Stanford, Kaiser Permanente hospitals. The show kind of fell into my lap. After the show, we stayed there. Ramon joined me. We did a ton of different things, everything from being personal trainers for the Biggest Loser Resorts to doing voiceovers and working with NBC. I never lost my love of nursing. I went back to nursing for a long period of time, while Ramon continued to work with the resorts. From there, we did film another TV show with the creator of The Biggest Loser, JD Roth on a documentary called The Big Fat Truth where we went vegan, which did not expect to love or do well with, which we did do well with for that period of time. At the end of 2019, we were in California, ready to move back home wanted to ultimately just get everything together and start a family soon. We weren't going to start a family in a state, at least half a country or states away from where our family lived, because we knew we couldn't do it alone. And so, we did come back to Pittsburgh at the end of 2019. And at that time, I couldn't have predicted it better that there was a pandemic coming. I was an ICU nurse all my life, worked in critical care, absolutely loved the job. But I was ready for change. I took that opportunity of moving cross country to also explore something new in nursing. I became a district clinical specialist for a laser aesthetic company, of which I've now become a clinical educator for them working remotely. I absolutely love it and it sets me up to work from home with my future child. We moved home to Pittsburgh. Ramone worked for Gallery 4 Twelve in Pittsburgh, which is a tattoo shop. It was a wonderful start for him to find Pittsburgh clientele. We recently opened Black Oak Artistry here in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, to work with and coincide with our other shop out in Florence, Colorado.
RAMON: Jess summed it up pretty well. We always do things in moves, and, and have a plan. For me after the show, I was just floating around trying to find my way. I tattooed before the show, and I was a tattoo artist. And through that time, I just took some time off. I was trying to find myself and find what I wanted to do in life.
What was missing…art. What held me together was… art.
And so, I got back into it in 2018 and opened the shop in Florence, Colorado. The plan was to get back to Pittsburgh and open a shop here of my own and have two going back and forth. It seems kind of nutty, but it works well. I've got great artists in Colorado and I’m hoping to get some great ones here in Pittsburgh. And then you know, open the doors, we want to travel. As they say this kills two birds… we get to see my family in Colorado, I get to work, and I don't have to take any time off. Tattooing is what I love, and it's great to come into a studio, that's mine. In the area that we we're now in Murrysville, is her hometown, and now it's mine. Two shops in our hometowns. We're always looking for the next best thing. We got a laser tattoo removal coming in this summer. We'll put them on and take them off which will make the shop full service. We also do permanent makeup and microblading in both studios. We have a lot of things going on at the same time. But that's how we like it. If I don't do that, I'll just eat.
JAY: You guys have been together for 11 years, and from what you've shared with me I’m really getting the sense that you both separately, and together, are really coming into your own. And you’re both sooooooo excited because you have a whole new life in front of you as parents.You're in a place where you're doing things that you love and feel like you're on purpose. So, when Ramon said “If I don't do that, I'll just eat” I know for myself and for many others that when people aren’t living a life that they feel fulfilled in, they self-medicate with food. As you’ve shared that’s been the story for you too.
JESSICA: You hit the nail on the head because that's true. People who live life full of stress are typically working a job that they don't love. I've worked in Critical Care and not every day is a great day. You go home, you cry, things of that nature. Ramon was struggling to find out where does he fit in, what he wanted to do with his life? When we first met, I was like, what do you mean, you don't make a paycheck. He didn't understand business life. You show up, you clock out, you get a paycheck. And that's what kind of drove him into being a personal trainer at that point. It took us a few years to figure that out. And what's been really nice over the past few years, and I think you're right, maybe it's age, maybe it's experience, but we found what we love to do. We no longer allow work to run us because we enjoy it. I've chosen to leave something that led me to a lot of stress. And it's led me to something that I love to do, I never thought I would love to teach nurses. That came out of this job opportunity that came to me. I never thought I would work in a tattoo shop. I'm not a biker. That's my thought of a tattoo shop. I still have a tattoo. But I appreciate it. And I love it. And so, you know, I'm going to be working with him doing micro blading. I'm going to be running and creating this tattoo removal program that we're gonna have here. It's fun, and I get to work with the person that I get along with the best, which is my husband. Honestly, it's weird to think back to it. If we never went on The Biggest Loser, none of this would have happened. Who knows where we would be today. I know for sure I wouldn't be pregnant and due in October and with somebody that I love.
That's the big key here.
There are so many jobs out there, you shouldn't be stuck into doing something that you don't love.
Everybody's scared of opening a new door.
I've opened a ton of doors, not all of them are great, but I finally found one that does have that green pasture and I am absolutely in love with it.
JAY: One of the big takeaways from anybody that would Google your background on The Biggest Loser, The Big Fat Truth, and learn what you two have done as trainers is important because so often people think that there's some straight line to success.
You guys know first-hand, life is a great big roller coaster ride!
Before The Biggest Loser, you both had big challenges with your weight, correct, or you wouldn't have been on the show. You were both very successful on The Biggest Loser, enough so that you both became trainers at the Biggest Loser Resort. What's cool about that, is that you got to see the other side of what it's like for others like you and for them to feel comfortable and relate to you. At the Biggest Loser Resort who were very inspiring and relatable to the guests because you were who they were. Eventually you left and little by little your weight started coming back on again because you both were in that place, we all get too at times… what do we do now, and you start to wander and wobble. Then you were asked to be on The Big Fat Truth. And you both were very successful on that show too. And then after The Big Fat Truth you guys got back into a roller coaster.
What was that like for you? You have gone through so many things, was there a time where you just took a step back?
RAMON: Stepping away was a time for us to figure it out. We were struggling. I didn't know what to do at a certain point. I would preach, you got to fix your head and your heart, you got to do all these things, you got to work out, you got to eat clean. I would do that for a while. Then I would take a dive. That's what happens. You know, but for us, it's like there's, you know, there's really big peaks and valleys. Man, we were on a freakin TV show about weight loss.
We fail hard. We succeed hard.
We would just hide because we didn't know how to comprehend negative or positive speak. You know what I mean? And we would get just a little bit of each. And for some odd reason for myself, I didn't know what to do with that, you know, I just couldn't handle either one. I wasn't happy with what I looked like on the outside. I wasn't happy with what I was on the inside. I was definitely happy with Jess, we're the strongest together. Throughout, that's like the common denominator of things that we've really succeeded it at, is being together
JESSICA:Kind of summing up what Ramon said, words really affected us deeply.
Positive or negative. I would read into whatever anyone said to me.
But no matter what they said I was thinking
I'm still not good enough…
I'm still not where this stranger expects me to be. Let me prove to them why. Why do I need to prove to a stranger, that I'm where they expect me to be. The comparison game is a big part of this, especially from The Biggest Loser. Whether it's with other contestants that like I've had very close loved ones actually asked me well, why don't you look like Jen and Olivia? And I'm like, because I'm not. I'm Jess and I go through different life, and I have a different story. And that made it worse. When we compare ourselves to other people, or let's just be honest, when there's, you know, reunions and new shows coming out, like the new The Biggest Loser, you’re crash dieting to go to this finale? And it's like, for what reason, why, why are we constantly trying to impress somebody else, but that's what we were doing. And these words, got me so bad that when I worked at the resorts, which should have been the best time in my life, really getting paid to workout, I'm getting paid to talk to people who want to come and hang out with us who want to hear our stories. But I was getting the comparison game of myself and real life to a sticker of myself on the wall. How come you don't look like your sticker? I'm not one dimensional. That messed me up. I would work out real hard with, with the clients that came in, I would do everything right. Then I go home, and I'm eating a pizza. I'm going to eat it in private. I'm not going to share this because this is another door to open up being judged. That was really, really hard for us. That's where it started. We didn't neglect having an outlet, somebody that we could talk to therapy, mental health, and walk us through what it's like to be in the public eye, and still performing for strangers on a daily level, but always remembering to keep yourself first. And that's where I kind of lacked. And that's where I struggled the most.
Ramon: I don't ever think that anybody was too negative toward us. But it's how we internalized even the smallest little thing, even if it wasn't there. Most of it is all positive. Our time on the show was positive. Everything after the show, was positive. We put so much pressure on ourselves that it was rough. I didn't go back home for a long time because I felt that I didn't do a good job. I didn't do what I was supposed to do. I didn't have a six pack. I didn't look like Dolvet. I started tattooing again. And that was a big deal in 2018. I was about 390 LBS and I said you know what? I gotta go, it doesn't really matter. And I started seeing all my friends again. There wasn't one negative thing. They asked about the show. They thought it was really cool that I was on it. And they didn't go, hey, man, you got fat as heck again, they didn't say that at all. They were just happy to see me. And that's the kind of thing that I needed at the time. And now, as we've gotten older, we needed that safe place. Instead of hiding, we're getting back out there again. We find that it's way easier now than ever to be out in the in the public because we're ourselves. And it's, it's fun.
JESSICA: We have a story that nobody else has. So now we're embracing it, and you know, are we at whatever cool weight that somebody expects me to be at? Probably not. Do I care? No, because now I'm happy. We have the business that we love, we're together, we're happy, we're creating this family. That's where we really have to put our emphasis. That's what I tell Ramon all the time. Okay, so you're not at your six pack abs goal, but you're also not almost 400 LBS. So, we have to reflect back and say, I'm proud of me because of where I am now. Because I'm not gonna let a stranger or my thoughts of what strangers think, put me back in the basement, which is where I hid for years.
RAMON: It's not just strangers as well. It's like the closest family members, our friends, whatever, ourselves, you know, we would put those weird expectations on those goals, like, Oh, I got three months to this.We’ve got to get to a certain weight. Why, are we walking around with a sign that says what our weight was. So like, it doesn't make any sense. I'm proud of myself. When we went to her brother's wedding and my suit coat was like, small, like the smallest I've been in 10 years. And I'm like, yeah, I kind of want to show people the tag, like, what's up with that? I didn't, I didn't cut it out before. No one sees it, you know? Yeah. But it's just these little things that we're finally embracing. And we're not, you know, taken for granted. That's, that's the biggest thing.
JESSICA: We've now created, and we have had safe places. Oh, yeah, throughout this, almost 11 years, I coached for many, many years, and I still am starting to get back into it. And I created that safe place for other people, well, dipping my toes into it. But now we have these safe places where, we've got our friends that are on journeys similar to ours that we feel comfortable sharing. I now like when we take away that stigma, the thought process of what is somebody going to think, and you get that out of your mind, you now created a safe environment for yourself, no matter where you are, and celebrate it. And so that's the difference of I think where we are now and where we were even just a year and a half.
JAY: One of the things that I think is really important that you guys have highlighted is that when we hear the term body positivity, people often only associate it with people who are a larger size. I think it should go both ways. Body positivity should feel positive about whatever their size is, for real, not as an excuse. If they're bigger, they shouldn't be scorned for their size. If they're smaller, they shouldn't be scorned for their size either. It's a personal preference. I know for myself, I feel better when I'm smaller than bigger, not because I don't like myself. It's just like, I can move easier. I'm really pleased that you guys don’t feel like anything’s off limits to share and to talk about, and I think the more people open up and don't choose sides and don't make something wrong, there's more opportunity for people to find where their particular place is in these types of conversations. We all at times can fool ourselves, not just with our weight and size, but in our career, in our relationships. It's not easy, being honest. It's not easy being vulnerable, but you know it takes a burden off of you when you do. That's what the I see in the joy of what you've got. You're excited because you have gone back and forth with your weight and your size. But you're excited because you feel like you have some freedom around being open in that conversation. It makes a big difference.
RAMON: You hit it right there. Fitness is not a size thing, right? No, there's a workout for everybody that could work for you. And there's stuff that doesn't work for you. There's an eating plan that's for you. There's some that don't work, right. We've tried everything and we finally found what works for us. There isn't anything specific to anybody, everybody can try something different and, throw all kinds of things at the wall and see what sticks.
With body positivity, you have to love yourself no matter what, but yeah, the fact of the matter is, get healthy.
Whether it’s to lose 25 LBS or 150 LBS, whatever you got to do or gain muscles or, you know, start working out, just start walking. All these different things will help you and in the long run, no one should have to be one thing.The world is full of different people. And that's how it's supposed to be, we're not all one size and shape and, and color and all these different things. It's like, be different, be unique, and be happy with yourself. Don't choose a side. That's so weird to me. I see these things, you know, you're big, and then you want to be big. And then you got to flaunt it or you you just lost a bunch of weight and now you hate everybody who is big. That does not make any sense to me, man help everybody or, or don't help anybody and just help yourself? You know, I mean, that's, it's just weird.
JESSICA:
Body positivity goes beyond weight.
In my mind, body positivity is a mindset, be happy and love yourself.
That's what I struggled with the most. That's where everything else snowballed after, because body positivity to me is if you don't love yourself, obviously, you're going to do things that are going to torment your body, right?
You're going to overeat, you're going to crash.
You're going to crash diet; you're going to never eat a carb.
Whereas if you do like Ramon said, take it small, you don't have to be big or small. Who's to say what is big and what is small, it changes when you get on the news. Do you love yourself today? Will you represent yourself when you walk outside in your best capability? That's the key. It's not about can you workout? Can you go to the gym? Can you lose 20 LBS? Can you do something good for your body? Can you eat a vegetable today? Yeah, you never eat vegetables? Can you read a book on doing better, and whatever you're struggling with?
That's positivity.
That's what builds that. I think I still am plus size. But you know, the plus size movement, I think is fantastic. Love yourself. But also, don't forget, there is a big health thing there too, you know what I mean? That's where it comes from. Don't love yourself so much, you don't go to the doctor, and that we just eat, garbage all day. At the same time, you should never starve yourself to fit what the public is telling you.
JAY: When people say my weight shouldn't define me, it's like, I get that. And you being a nurse Jessica you’ve seen first that yes it shouldn’t define you, but depending on your makeup it may be making your life more challenging healthwise.
If someone has cancer, you can say that cancer doesn't define me,
If someone has diabetes, do they say diabetes doesn't define me.
If somebody's had a heart attack. My heart attack doesn't define me like.
If you don't do something about it, it will take you out.
It’s not being mean, THAT’S REALITY
It's important that people begin having a more honest conversation about what’s going on with their head, heart, and body in terms of their short term and long-term health. To that point It’s no secret that you both got very honest with yourselves about the fact that you both weren’t comfortable with your size, so another step you both researched was the option of getting gastric bypass surgery.
Please share how you came to that idea where are you both are on that this journey.
RAMON: We struggled for a long time. We needed to find the thing that was going to finally work for us. I put it off for years. Jess set me up to do it like four years ago as I started creeping back up the scale. She said, why don't you try this and, I was gonna go and look into surgery, talk to the doctor, and I couldn't do it.
JESSICA: And it was 100% covered. Also, I wasn't looking at it for myself at the time because I should have also signed up for it too, but I was so worried about this guy.
RAMON: We were literally killing ourselves. All the things that we were doing crept back. All the things, the health scares, diabetes, for me, high blood pressure, my sleep apnea was out of what
Everything comes back hard when you start gaining weight.
We do it big like I was gaining 100 LBS in three, four and five months. That's not good for your body. And finally, we decided, this is our last resort man, we've tried everything. Every crash diet, we've tried everything, and we've been successful at them all. Yeah, we've been good at everything we've tried. That's a lot of problem. Yeah, to a point. But it wasn't a lifestyle. And I know, that's where everyone says, well, you’ve got to find that lifestyle,
JESSICA: Which we used to preach.
RAMON: Yeah, we preached. You got to do this, eat veggies, measure this, weigh this. Guess what you don't, you just got to figure out what's gonna work for you. What are you willing to do to live life the way you want to live it, for us surgery was the answer.
JESSICA: That was his AHA moment. His blood pressure was high, his sleep apnea got so bad to where I wasn't able to sleep because I'm worried about counting his breathing.
RAMON: We were we were eating like crazy. We would hit up all the fast-food joints. But I'm not saying like over a period of time, in one night, because our minds were fixated on more. A taco doesn't fill me, 12 Tacos, don't fill me up, I'm going to need a cheeseburger.
JESSICA: That's how bad our minds were. Because nothing filled us literally emotionally, mentally, or physically. And I got around, I think November of 2019. And I never had any comorbidities, I was the lucky big girl. I didn't have sleep apnea, even though I wanted it because I wanted the cool machine.
RAMON: No one who has sleep apnea wants the “cool machine.”
JESSICA: I didn't have blood pressure or diabetes, but you did. What happened to me in 2019, really scared me. I woke up gasping for air in the middle of my sleep. It was horrific. It was such an out of body experience that I'm the one screaming and feeling my throat that I actually thought it was somebody else screaming like it was just it I get chills now to the day because it scares the living daylights out of me. I never want to experience again. I didn't sleep for about a week after that. The only thing I took from it was, I'm dying. My body is dying from the inside out. I'm literally choking myself while I'm sleeping. Even though I'm failed the sleep apnea test, my body is failing, and it's going to kill me. All I could think of is that my neck had just gotten so big that I stopped breathing. That's just how it manifested. At that moment I was done. I looked to a friend who actually didn't make it on The Biggest Loser. We became friends on social media. She started posting about having gastric surgery, and she had VSG. A vertical sleeve gastrectomy. I reached out to her to kind of find out the ins and outs of the cost and this and that. She actually referred me to a company she didn't go with called Blossom Bariatric. I checked it out and fell in love with the company just even just looking at their information. We had enough money in savings that we were gonna pay out of pocket for it. Because at this point in our life insurance wasn't gonna cover it. In hindsight, 2020 there. But that was it. I believe I told you, I'm doing it, whether you do it or not.
RAMON: She was like, we're gonna do this. We're gonna do it now. I was like, okay, when are we doing it? Like a few months from now? And you're like, Nah, like, I was like, now, okay. I called my best friend who had also done the surgery years back, four or five years ago, and he's still successful, and talked to him about it, trying to get myself ready for what's going to happen. Obviously, we talked to the doctors out there, their nutritionist, their therapists to get our minds in the right place. And then, we really only waited about a month and a half
JESSICA: We both had the surgery. The biggest challenge once again was the mental part. We looked at surgery for 8 to 10 years. I wish we didn’t wait so long. Yeah, there’s a stigma to it. People in the hospital, the nurses and doctors have their own opinions. And that's kind of where I came from. I'm watching TV and I know certain celebrities that have had it. They don't talk about it and it's like shameful. That's what influenced me for so long. I wish I would have just had a mind of my own.Yeah, I should have just done what I needed to do for my health because I could have started living years ago. But I waited and I let some more life pass by which now we're making up for it. But, you know, it's been a blessing. I just hope that sharing this is going to help at least one more person, just say, okay, I'm not gonna give up. Anybody that's watching this that struggles with weight will most likely understand what it's like when you're driving on empty road, and you're like, I'm ready to give up because nothing is working for me. I don't want to live like this. I wouldn't say I was suicidal, per se, but like those thoughts go through your mind. You're not a good place to live. And it's because you're overweight. That's ridiculous. The fact that we don't realize that it's okay if Jenny Craig doesn't work for you. It's okay. If Atkins doesn't work for you. It's okay. If The Biggest Loser didn't work for you. But there's like 100 more things to try. If you're willing to try it again, like he said, there is something out there for you. And for us. It was going through surgery. So we had that in January of 2021. And that brings us to today and even though I'm pregnant, I've done actually really well.
RAMON: We got surgery to be healthy parents, right? I knew that there was no possible way for one, she could probably get pregnant. And two, we could raise a baby being close to 400 LBS, we can barely chase after my nephew. We would hold him and be dead the next day, you're dead in the evening and almost every minute. We wanted to start our own family and have a family to go to that next chapter in life. And we needed to tackle our health to put those pieces in motion.
JESSICA: I mean, let's be honest, I'm already in a geriatric pregnancy category for my age. I also don’t want to be told, hey, you're too fat to get pregnant, but that was the reality. And that's why we never really tried to get pregnant before because, again, it was the fear that I didn’t want to hear another stranger tell me I'm not good enough to have the life I want.
RAMON: You would say, I need to be a certain size before we get pregnant. And at our last doctor's appointment, you said, wow, the doctor didn’t say, hey, you should be at a certain weight.
JESSICA: I even asked, are you okay with my weight? And he's like, yeah.
RAMON: He looked at her like, What?
JESSICA: Are you saying? I can have a cupcake? Yeah, yeah, the baby needs a cupcake.
JAY: When people are trying to lose weight, they feel like they're being pushed into something. And it feels like something being put upon them. Where the story you’re sharing is that you’re creating a more compelling life, a more compelling future. You're being pulled, things are pulling you forward. I don't care what anybody says there's nothing fun about losing weight, yes you will eventually feel better, but it’s not fun.Why? Because the word loss is not a word we like. It’s truly a four-letter word. Who likes to be restricted, loss. Okay, as we’re wrapping this up is there anything else that you got up your sleeve from some other kind of venture other than being parents and having your new businesses that you're really moving forward?
RAMONE: I'm gonna take 80% of my tattoos off. Starting over. For me, there's a lot of big things coming up. I'm gonna be this new dad. I'm not getting rid of tattoos. I'm getting all cool new ones. I'm changing my whole lifestyle, my whole everything, and I'm growing, and I want to look different, you know, so I'm gonna change the way I diet, I'm gonna change the way I eat, I'm gonna change the way I work out, I'm going to change the way I physically look, with tattooing, and hopefully, it's going to be positive, because I want to be that cool dad.
JESSICA: As far as for me, I love where I'm at right now, I'm going to start working here, doing microblading. Then, of course, the laser. I’m getting back into coaching because I miss it. It held me accountable for a while until I let myself hide, and I'm not going to do that anymore. That's why when people do ask me like, oh, you look familiar, I used to just say I have you I have one of those faces. Well, I'm like, okay, I know, you know, I will tell you where you know me from, I'm not scared of it. Because I'm not who I was a year and a half ago, I'm not who I was even five years ago, and I'm proud of where I'm at.I'm going to honor and respect each and every day, get back into coaching, helping other people celebrate whatever journey they decide to go in whatever door they open. And if it is VSG, then they can lean on somebody that has been there and had a very positive experience. And I'm not done. You know, I mean, just like anything else, we can fail at this. But I'm not going to know, because I've tried everything else. And every time I failed; I've learned something. And so, I've got enough of those little nuggets of information to make sure that we've got the building blocks for both us and our child so that we're not necessarily raising the littlest Biggest Loser.
RAMON: We're not saying, hey, you should go get surgery. If you need it, go for it. Don't be ashamed, you know what I mean. Don't be ashamed of it. Don't put it off any longer. We’ll answer all your questions if you need it. We’ll be that shoulder to cry on or that ear to listen. I mean, that's how we are, like I said, we've done it all. And we've been successful. We've also failed at a lot of things. But oh, well, that's how you learn and grow. And that's how you become the person you're supposed to be. And we're finally getting there. And it's taken a long time. But you know, the last resort, we did it and now we're here.
JESSICA: I'll end with this, like, I opened up my Instagram, but I posted something the other day where I think it's so important to have this mindset is like for me now, it's not about the size of where I'm at for this journey. It's the experiences that I can have. It's being able to get on the swing to be able to fit in the car or the airplane and not ask for the belt extender. Those little things were big nuggets for me, you know, and it's more so about, you know, honoring where you came from, and respecting where you're at, and just knowing that you're never done. And as long as you don't give up. There's always somewhere else.
Yeah, no more fake happiness.
JAY: One thing I want to leave you guys with as well. I had sent you like an open invitation. Not that I'm some friggin expert in podcasting. But I have found that the more we get an opportunity to have real conversations with people like you two and share it with can be so helpful for people on their journeys.There's a real opportunity and contribution you guys can make if you start podcasting. You’re up to a lot. You're gonna be doing the new parent thing.You’re building your businesses. So even if it's once a month, turn on the camera and interview people, share with people what you’re up to. I think they would like to have more of you. I'm going to just kind of tag you guys and say, consider it, you know, and if you ever need any further help, let me know, I'd be more than happy to be able to help you any way that we could.
RAMON: Challenge accepted. Tomorrow!
JAY: With that, we're gonna put links and information here so people can get a hold of you guys. And for anybody that's been watching, listening, or reading this blog, reach out to Jess and Ramon as they are truly great, supportive people. And I think you could tell that in their conversation today. Thanks, guys for being here.
RAMON: Thank you, Jay.