Food is a Doorway – with Emily Rosen

Many people think of food as merely a bunch of nutrients that you eat or something that simply exists to fuel your body. Those who have eating concerns or challenges tend to look at food as a problem, as the enemy, or as something we have to overcome because it’s so powerful and makes us lose control. Well, it’s time to see food in a new way. In this great video from IPEtv, Emily Rosen, Director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, shares how food is a doorway. Food presents for us an amazing opportunity to make some discoveries about ourselves that can forever change who we are, while helping us to transform our eating concerns in a whole new way. We think you’ll make some fascinating connections and discoveries!

In the comments below, please let us know your thoughts. We love hearing from you and we read and respond to every comment!

Here is a transcript of this week’s video:

Hi, I’m Emily Rosen, Director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.

Today’s topic: Food is a Doorway

First of all, I hope you’re wondering what that even means – food is a doorway?

Next, I want to make the assertion right up front that this is a game-changing concept that can rock your nutritional world, and transform your relationship with food in a really good way. So in other words, I don’t take what I’m saying lightly – but I think it sheds a lot of light on the challenges that many of us face with eating. I’m talking about overeating, binge eating, emotional eating, unwanted eating habits, weight challenges, and more.

Most people look at their eating issues as the enemy. No matter what concerns we face around food, we want to get rid of them as quickly as possible, preferably yesterday. A majority of people see their eating challenges as something that’s a foreign invader: it needs to be attacked, skewered, smacked around, pushed aside, fixed, and eradicated in any way possible.

We see our food issues like a bad virus – and indeed if we could take some drug to knock it out or some supplement to drain the life out of it, then that’s what we’d do.

If you look around you, you’ll notice that the majority of strategies that professionals use when it comes to working with weight and all kinds of eating issues center around doing whatever we can to change our bad behavior. Clearly we’re doing something wrong, we have a weakness, we have a willpower issue, we have a character fault – so let’s just fix what’s broken.

But here’s the headline news:

This approach is completely outdated, antiquated and massively ineffective.

If you’ve used this approach, I guarantee you it has not worked for you successfully in the long term. At best it’s a Band-Aid that doesn’t really make us any happier or healthier.

The remedy, though, is quite simple:

Food is a doorway.

This one simple statement is a complete reframe of the entire field of psychology when it comes to eating.

“Food is a doorway” means that our relationship with food can take us to some very powerful places. Every eating challenge we face is a portal, it’s an opening – and this portal leads us into any number of mysterious and surprising places that our challenges with food are indeed connected to.

Food issues are not merely about food.

Overeating, binge eating, and emotional eating are generally connected to other domains of life – I’m talking about relationship, career, money, love, sexuality, spirituality, family, parenting, our purpose in the world and so much more.

When we walk through the doorway called “my challenge with emotional eating,” for example, it might lead us to a place where we begin to notice that we’re emotionally eating because of our relationship struggles. Perhaps our communication with our partner is ineffective, perhaps true feelings aren’t being shared, perhaps we’ve reached an impasse and need help, and when we don’t address the relationship challenge in a way that’s truly effective – a common result of such an experience is emotional eating.

So in this case, one’s emotional eating has nothing to do with being a willpower weakling or a loser when it comes to food. Emotional eating here is simply a doorway. It’s asking us to knock. It’s asking us to open the door. And when we open that door we find ourselves in a new space that we need to explore in an honest, sincere, and humble way.

Our eating challenges have an amazing way of making us human.

They ask us to look at Self.

They ask us to dive deeper into our life to see what’s going on, to see what’s happening in our own heart and soul, and to make adjustments and corrections that are in alignment with the highest expression of who we are as human beings.

Once you begin to see that your relationship with food is a doorway, then you can truly begin the process of healing and transformation.

Attacking your eating issue is literally like attacking your own self because that’s where the eating issue lives, and that’s where it comes from. It’s as silly as one hand fighting the other. There is no possible way to win.

Life wants to teach us through the vehicle of our relationship with food.

This is all about growing, and self-evolution.

Try as we might, life will not let us avoid facing the true issues at hand.

Believe it or not, as uncomfortable as that may sound, it’s the best news possible.

Because once we walk through the doorway called food and explore what our eating challenges are trying to teach us – we position ourselves to truly get where we want to go.

We position ourselves to become better nourished, happier, more effective in the world, and more able to create and attract the life that we want.

Stop seeing your eating challenge as the enemy.

Quite the opposite; it’s your friend. It’s an opening.

Of course, what we find when we walk through the doorway called our food concerns is a mystery.

What a beautiful thing.

Life is a mystery.

Be willing to walk through the doorway.

It’ll change everything.

I hope this was helpful.