Goals.

We all set goals. We learned about setting goals at a young age. What do you want to be when you grow up? What’s your dream school? Your dream job? What ARE your dreams? We learn to set goals that are challenging to accomplish and once we achieve them, we get the dopamine release that we all crave. But what happens when your goals are self-destructive? When pushing yourself harder and harder to reach a goal can kill you?

If you would’ve asked me my goals a year ago, they would be: 1) Burn minimum of 900 calories a day. 2) Do whatever I need to at work to prove that I deserve to be ranked above my peers. 3) Eat only low carb, low cal, low sugar, high fiber, high protein food. Notice how these are only short term goals focused on only myself? had gotten so lost in my eating disorder that I stopped focusing on the long term goals that I once cherished. That I’ve longed to achieve my whole life. That I worked so hard in academia for. Because there wasn’t a future for me. So what do you do when your goals almost kill you?

You learn to think differently.

One of the mantras that I’ve lived by in recovery is: in order to make positive changes, you need to think differently. If you don’t think differently, no matter how many times you do the motions you “should” be doing or in my case, that I felt backed into a corner to do, in the end it wouldn’t matter. If I didn’t start to think differently, I would inevitably fall back into the abyss of my eating disorder. So slowly, I began to re-wire my brain. With each therapy session with my therapist, with my dietician, when I was alone with my thoughts, I began to think differently. I began to think, what would life look like without 2 hour workouts each day? What would life look like if I wasn’t scared to go to restaurants? What would life look like if I didn’t try to control every aspect of my life, and everyone around me? And it scared the shit out of me.

Thinking differently is scary.

When you work so hard to achieve a goal and then realize the goal wasn’t actually what you wanted, it hurts. It’s defeating. I wanted to be fit, and I wanted to expand my horizons with my diet to eat more nutritionally dense foods that I had written off years ago. But the thing is, I was already fit. My goal should have been to understand nutrition and my body. Not to starve, overwork, and deplete my body of the necessary carbs and fats that it needs to function. And it really, really sucked to take a step back and realize my eating disorder changed my goal to death. When I finally took the step and realized what I was doing to myself, I lost it. I bawled my eyes out. I was more vulnerable than I had been in years. I was sitting in front of my computer screen, on a Zoom therapy call, and I had finally recognized I was at rock bottom. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself anymore, because eventually there wouldn’t be any more of me left.

I started over.

This was my chance to start living again. To figure out what my goals really were. I had to understand my values and what drives me. I knew that fitness and health had always been a value of mine, that I value love and kindness, honesty, ambition, relationships, achievement, passion. I remember sitting on my floor sorting through the pieces of paper that had 50+ values printed on them, and realizing that I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt these values as a part of who I am. If my value was truly health and fitness then how did I end up where I was? I had convinced myself that I was living my values, but in reality I was trying to live by one value, and even then I had lost sight of what that value truly meant.

I set new goals, and I remembered the goals I used to have.

So what goals was I going to set for myself now that I had a glimpse into what my future could look like? A future I had previously written off. For starters, I have always valued love and kindness. And I’ve always wanted to make sure as many people as possible feel what love and genuine kindness are. So the first goal that I re-established for myself, that I’m determined to achieve, is making an impact. I want to touch as many lives as possible. I want to make as many people feel loved and cherished and important as possible. The second goal I created was to be successful in my career, and to truly love what I do. Have I found that yet? I don’t think so. I love my company and I love my coworkers who have become close friends and confidants, but my current career doesn’t allow me to make the impact and touch the lives I want to touch. But that’s why it’s a goal, it’s something I will continue to explore and achieve. And my third goal, to be true to myself always. To have a family and be true to them. To live a long life with people I love, to have children that become my world, and to genuinely be happy.

So how do I get there?

It starts with recovery. It starts with me holding myself accountable to the promise I made that I WILL recover. No excuses, no corners cut, no more deceit. No more Ed. And that meant that in addition to these life goals, I need to set short-term, weekly goals that would help me get there. One of the first goals my dietician and I came up with was: In order to get to the end goal you need to go through all parts, which means being in the middle. Being in the middle gives you a chance to re-center and pull in the “think differently” part of making sustainable changes. God, I hated being in the middle. It made me feel out of control and it made me feel like I was being forced to be there. I have never liked being in the middle, I needed to be at the top. But, that wasn’t an option. That goal is one of the more broad goals we had set. Most of my weekly goals consisted of: Take 5 minute ‘Chip’ breaks (Chip is my bunny that I love with all my heart) and set boundaries with work on when I need to log off. Another – Go out to eat with mom without looking up nutrition information ahead of time. Another – Eat a bagel with at least 2 tbsp peanut butter. God, that one was hard. I choked down a bagel, 200 calories, plus 2 tablespoons of actual peanut butter, not PB2, 180 calories. At the time, it felt impossible. But I did it. And these small fear food goals (pizza, mac and cheese, nachos, peanut butter, sugar, plus way too many more to list), began to become less challenging. I was doing it, I was achieving these goals, week by week. And then, they cut my workouts. I got 45 mins, 3 days a week, to do my HIIT workouts. God that fucking sucked. I hated my therapist and dietician for a hot second. Was it hard? Obviously. I cried more in those months than I had in forever because I had to feel full, I had to let go of my control and trust that my dietician’s meal and exercise plan for me was going to help me heal and gain weight in a healthy way.

I still have work to do.

I still have fear foods to tackle, I still have to maintain control over moving my body in a way that feels good, that is challenging, but isn’t over the top. I still have to find better coping mechanisms for when I feel too full. And recently I’ve been struggling with that last one. So, we set new weekly goals. This week, here are my goals:
1. No longer delaying eating. Breakfast by 9a, lunch by 2p, dinner by 8p. Breakfast within 1 hour of waking up, eating every 2-4 hours and going no >6 hours between meals.
2. Keeping workouts contained and be intuitive about workouts. Continue to honor my body by respecting my cues.
3. Commit to ordering what you want with balance at a restaurant.
4.Commit to a 30 minute lunch break and mindfully eating.
INTENTIONAL, INTENTIONAL, INTENTIONAL!

You may read these goals and think, really? You have to commit to eating meals? You have to commit to ordering what you want at a restaurant? You have to commit to a lunch break? Yeah, I get that these are what “normal” people do without questioning it. But these are MY short-term goals so that I can achieve my long-term goals. So I can make that impact that I know I can have on the world. So that I can live a long, full life have a family, have a career I love. So that I can be the woman that I know I can be.