When Chicago lawyer Liz Ash received an invitation to her high school reunion in 2016, she began to ruminate on everything she had achieved in life — a law degree, a successful career, a happy home life.

“I was happily married and had this ideal life, but my weight was something that I hadn’t conquered,” said Ash, who at the time was more than 100 pounds overweight.

Ash, 40, founder of the personal weight loss blog Lawyer at Lunch, decided she wanted to lose weight before her high school reunion that July. But she also wanted to improve her overall health and work-life balance.

“When you’re talking about type-A high performers, in general, we just tend to think that we’re indispensable, and I was like that for a long time until I realized I’m no good to anybody if they have to carry me out of the office on a stretcher,” Ash tells NBC News BETTER.

Ash decided it was time to “put boundaries around myself and my health.”

Here’s how she lost the weight:

She started with a goal

Ash opened a Word document on her laptop and typed “Lose 50 lbs by July.”

She typed a second goal to reduce her blood pressure so she wouldn’t have to go on medication.

But Ash, who works more than 40 hours a week and has a busy home life, says she needed more than just goals to conquer her weight loss.

“I had to figure out a system that would work within my daily life,” she says.