Your Metabolic Journey – with Marc David

One of the most powerful and amazing dimensions when it comes to our health is our personal story. Who we are, the life we’ve lived, and the challenges and triumphs we’ve faced not only create our identity in a deeply personal way, but also impact us profoundly when it comes to our biology. We refer to this lifelong story as “Your Metabolic Journey.” In this fascinating video from IPEtv, Marc David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, shares some powerful distinctions that can help you see food, your body, and your health in a whole new light. These are some excellent insights you can put into action immediately that can make a real difference for any eating or health concern.

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

Below is a transcript of this week’s video:

Hi, I’m Marc David, Founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.

Today’s Topic: Your Metabolic Journey

I’ve noticed over the years that so many people go through life in relationship to food, body and health – unaware, disconnected, without curiosity, upset that they don’t have what they want, and never fully embracing the bigness and the depth of the journey that we’re on with food and body.

A vast majority of people tend to not think about their health, body, or diet until something goes wrong. So our experience of health is based on ignoring it until it’s failing us. We react, as opposed to being responsible, planning, and putting our arms around the big picture.

From this reactive place, it’s easy to feel blindsided and it’s easy to feel that life is shortchanging us. But there’s so much more to the story.

In fact, each of us is living out a beautiful and epic story when it comes to life in a body.

I’m calling this: Your Metabolic Journey.

I’m using the term journey in the widest and most generous sense possible. A journey implies a sense of adventure, exploration, excitement, the unknown, surprises, challenges, some dangers, new discoveries, lots of learning and growth, and some great stories to tell along the way, and at the end.

Your metabolic journey is that aspect of your journey through life that’s all about the body. It’s the journey that you go through from the time you’re conceived in the womb until the time you take your last breath and exit planet Earth.

Your metabolic journey is all about the illnesses you face, the symptoms you deal with, the diseases that might befall you, how your body changes from being an infant to a toddler to a young child to puberty to a teenager to a growing adult, perhaps to pregnancy and childbirth, to all the ways we lose weight, gain weight, all the ways that our body morphs and transforms when we do more exercise, or when we find ourselves sitting at a desk for months on end. Your metabolic journey is all about the different diets that you’re on, the different nutritional systems you’ve followed, it’s about when you catch the flu, it’s about when you break your arm, it’s all the ways that life teaches us through the body.

We tend to look at the aspects of life that I just mentioned as being separate and disconnected. But everything we go through when it comes to food, body and health is an interwoven tapestry. Whether we like it or not, the body is always teaching us.

Your metabolic journey, if you even begin to look back on it now, has likely been a powerful teacher. You learned a lot. You’ve had to manage a lot of pain, discomfort, illness, injuries, as well as perhaps all kinds of interesting challenges when it comes to eating, weight, and body image.

When we look at our metabolic journey from a higher perspective, it’s easier to see it in a more positive light. When we take this bigger view, we can actually feel more empowered, and help ourselves get unstuck.

If you haven’t done so already, here’s my suggestion:

It’s time to see your metabolic journey in a positive light.

•It’s been a teacher for you.
•It’s challenged you to grow.
•It’s asked you to be more expansive.
•Your body is always urging you to be more aware, alert, responsible, and alive.
•Your body has asked you to explore passion and sexuality.
•It’s asked you to explore food and nutrition.
•It’s asked you to explore movement and exercise.
•Perhaps it’s asked you to explore dance and athletics.

It’s time to see your metabolic journey as a beautiful story – a story that has all kinds of ups and downs, dark nights, depressions, feelings of despair, confusion, uncertainty, feelings of triumph and renewal, and so much more.

Think of your life, and your metabolic journey as a really great movie.
And it’s your personal movie, and it’s the kind of movie that no matter what the reviews are, the show must go on.
And it just so happens that you are the star of your own metabolic show.

So, take a look back on your own metabolic journey:

• What has it taught you?
• What were the high points around being in your body and feeling your health, vitality, and pleasure?
• What are some of the low points of pain and frustration, symptom, illness, weight challenges?
• How have you grown from your challenges?
• Where are the places where you need to rise more to the occasion?
• And how can you get even better at learning the lessons that your metabolic journey has to teach you?

We often are just focused on the outcome – being healthy, fit, and at our perfect weight. We often promise ourselves that life will begin once we reach our goal. But that perfect state never quite comes for most of us, and even when it does, change is predictable. Nothing lasts forever.

In food as in life – we often learn through pain and suffering, through trial and tribulation. This is the way of the world. Embrace it, get used to it, get over the fact that it’s not different, and surrender to the reality that none of us can escape the hidden architecture of life.

The good news is, as you begin to see your metabolic journey as a beautiful epic tale, you actually begin to create a happy ending because you’re creating more happiness along the way.

The journey informs the destination. If you’re trying to reach your end goal by hating yourself, attacking yourself, fighting food, fighting hunger, judging your body, and believing that somehow self abuse will take you where you want to go – you need to change your strategy immediately. It’s not working, and it never will.

If you truly want to get where you want to go in your metabolic journey, it’s best to love yourself into the destination where you want to arrive.

But of course, please don’t take my word for it. Try this for yourself.

I hope this was helpful, my friends.