The Relationship of Personal and Metabolic Power

My name is Emily Rosen and I’m the Director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. I’m honored to share some of my story with the Women For One community.

I wear quite a few hats in my role – I make sure all the details of running the Institute go smoothly, I oversee student affairs, I direct our marketing efforts, and I keep a pulse on the fields of nutrition and eating psychology to make sure that we continue to be leaders in our profession. I teach in our programs and trainings as well.

Here’s the sobering reality: Eating challenges are all around us, and far too many of us silently struggle with an unhappy relationship with food and body. Women are particularly susceptible to the pains of weight, body image, overeating, emotional eating, endless dieting and more. The good news though, is that the same eating challenges that drain our life energy and dignity can become the fuel for reaching our greatest potential. That’s where the Institute comes in.

We’re on a mission to forever change the way the world understands food, body and health. We offer distance-learning trainings for professionals, programs for the public, online events, and plenty of free online content and inspiration. We take a fresh, positive, uplifting, and results driven approach to the most common and compelling eating concerns that so many of us face – weight, body image, overeating, binge eating, emotional eating, endless dieting, digestion, fatigue, mood and more. It’s not about eating disorders, but rather an eating psychology for everyone.

I’m thrilled to be part of a growing movement of coaches, counselors, healers, and educators who are making a difference in the world. I’ve watched so many women, men and children struggle with eating issues, often in secret, not knowing where to go for help. It touches my heart to see so many people in need. And I know these struggles all too well.

I’ve worked hard over the years to understand and heal my own challenges around eating and body image. Perhaps this is one of the greatest qualifications we can have when it comes to helping others – our ability to work on our own relationship with food and self. You don’t need to have the perfect body or perfect diet to do this work. You simply need a sincere desire to grow and serve.

For over 10 years, I dealt with a range of eating disorders. I struggled with weight gains and losses of over 80 pounds up and down, intense food restriction, binge eating, and anorexia and bulimia. I trashed my body and put my health at risk. I had a long list of symptoms including digestive distress, headaches, rashes, exhaustion, anxiety, depression and more.  Several times, I was literally at death’s door. I share this because I know so many women feel lonely, isolated and even crazy in their struggles with food and body. When we suffer with eating concerns, it’s easy to feel out of control, and even easier to find ourselves steeped in shame. Anxiety about food or trying to get our body to that perfect place can be a slow and steady soul crusher. We’re so much better than that, and we have so much more to offer the world than our food anxiety.

At the height of my disordered relationship with food and body, I vowed that if I ever found a way out, I’d devote myself to help others do the same. I devoured everything I could find about nutrition. I went to workshops and therapy.  The good news was that I was so inspired by everything I learned that I felt eager to share it.  I began to coach and teach and got an amazing position in a children’s camp as a nutrition and culinary director.  And I noticed something quite remarkable. The more I engaged with others and shared the valuable information I knew, the less I was obsessed about food and my body. To put it simply, the more fulfilled I became personally and professionally, the less I needed to fill up with food. And I began to heal.

Today, I finally feel empowered in my relationship with my food. My appetite has normalized, my health has returned, and I enjoy eating like never before. Of all the things I learned, there is one concept we teach at the Institute that stands out from the rest and helped turned things around for me. This concept, which I like to think of more as a magic formula is this:

Personal power = metabolic power

What it means is this: when we empower ourselves, when we start to make shifts in our personal life and inner world, when we put our attention on becoming the best possible version of who we can be – the body then has the best opportunity to reach its greatest potential. In other words, we will see corresponding changes in our physical and metabolic world as we work on our inner world.

To me, this is profound.

At the end of the day, while good nutrition is important for health, it’s simply not enough. To access true metabolic power, we also need to be empowered personally. When we become the best we can be, it means our body can do the same. Simply put, who we are as biological beings is inseparable from who we are as people.

Food issues are rarely ‘just’ about food or calorie counting.  Food issues always run deeper. Our eating challenges inevitably take us on a journey to other areas of our lives where our real issues originate: self worth, the need for love and connection, past hurts, unfulfilled hopes and dreams, and more…

Real breakthroughs happen when we work on both the nutritional and the personal dimensions of life.  When the two dance together, they create far more potential for transformation that either could do on their own.

All this has made it so clear to me how necessary it is for us to do deeper and more soulful work on self, and from there to deliver our greatest gifts and talents to the world. I’m honored to be working at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, to help train professionals in a life-changing body of work, and to be enjoying success in supporting a mission I so profoundly believe in.

Bio Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHrvB_kTNuY