After graduating with a Master’s in Business Administration from Fordham University in 2013, I was ready to pursue my dream of becoming an expert in consumer marketing research. Never in a million years did I think I would one day be calling myself a “recovered coach” and helping people achieve what I had secretly accomplished after completing my master’s. 

While studying at Fordham, I had many goals: get good grades, build good relationships in the business world, enjoy living in New York with my husband as a newlywed, and land a great job after graduation. Secretly, I worked hard daily at another goal: to lose weight. Back then, I didn’t know that obsessing over my weight and my food intake had been important contributors to developing and maintaining an eating disorder for seven years. It was only when I decided to fully recover that I learned that weight control couldn’t coexist with ED recovery.

It was sometime at the beginning of early 2013, I don’t remember the exact date, that I decided I couldn’t continue with my eating disorder behaviors for longer. The eating disorder behaviors appeared in 2007, and soon after that, I had been trying to revert to a “normal” life, but somehow I always found myself in the same binging/purging/compensating/restricting cycle. The idea of having kids was starting to become a conversation between my husband and me, and I couldn’t imagine bringing a kid into this world as a mom who often was fighting against and hurting her own body.

I wanted to be normal, but I didn’t know how. 

I decided I would do whatever it takes to recover, to become a normal person who can eat whatever at a restaurant without worrying about it, or someone whose day isn’t ruined after weighing herself in the morning. I wanted to be someone normal that would pay attention during conversations with friends instead of thinking about who was eating what and how much… The eating disorder robbed so much in my life, but that’s something I only understood when I fully recovered.

Some time before starting my first post-graduate full-time job as a consumer research manager, I had already started fully diving into liberating myself from an eating disorder: Reading books about the mind and eating disorders, taking coaching classes, changing habits and behaviors, challenging my thoughts and beliefs, and facing my deepest fears while also learning to become my biggest support when all I knew was to criticize myself, is a summary of what had to happen before I became fully recovered. 

I had many “I think I’m recovered now” moments in the years after making significant changes in my life (including throwing away the scale) and developing important cognitive and emotional skills. One of the first moments I felt truly recovered was when I was pregnant with my son in 2014, and the doctor told me I had surpassed my limit of weight gain for being pregnant and that I should try to lose some weight. I remember telling myself I was not going back to any ED behaviors, including restriction, no matter the circumstances. I was going to continue listening and trusting my body, period. I’ve continued to trust my body ever since, with multiple moments disliking my body and going through different body changes. Curiosity and compassion have been key pillars in staying recovered throughout the years.

Since I made the choice that I was going to recover no matter what, a lot happened in my self-guided recovery process, and I can proudly say I’ve been fully recovered for over a decade. Today, I help clients navigate that recovery journey until they achieve full recovery. In addition to the strategies and lessons that helped me recover, I use exercises and principles that I learned in my ED recovery certification.

I love being able to guide people towards their liberation from an eating disorder. I never doubt that someone can recover from an ED, no matter how bad it is or for how long they’ve had it. I know how impossible it feels to recover from an ED, but I also know how possible it is to become fully recovered.