Food as Currency: “What Am I Buying Today?”

A client recently shared a beautiful metaphor that I can’t stop thinking about. She described how all the things our bodies do - thinking, moving, healing, digesting, feeling, growing - are biologically expensive.

Every heartbeat, every hormone produced, every cell renewed, every moment of concentration at work or play; they all cost energy. And food? That’s the currency our bodies run on.

Food Isn’t Just Fuel, It’s an Investment

We often hear the phrase “food is fuel,” which is true, but also incomplete. Fuel sounds transactional, a one-way exchange just to “get through the day.”

What this client described so insightfully is that food isn’t just about surviving; it’s about investing. Each meal or snack is like making a deposit into your body’s account, allowing it to carry out thousands of processes that sustain your physical and mental wellbeing.

She said that now, when she sits down to eat, she asks herself: “What am I buying today?”

Maybe that breakfast “purchases” concentration for the morning meeting.
Maybe lunch “buys” patience and emotional regulation for the afternoon.
Maybe dinner “invests” in hormone balance, muscle repair, or immune function.
And maybe dessert “buys” pleasure, connection, and a sense of normalcy around food, which are just as essential to health as any vitamin or mineral.

The Cost of Undereating

This metaphor also highlights what happens when we chronically underfuel. If we try to run the body on too little currency, it’s forced to start budgeting; shutting down or slowing non-essential systems just to keep us alive.

That might look like fatigue, brain fog, irritability, feeling cold, irregular periods, slower digestion, hair thinning, or weakened immunity. The body is doing its best with the funds it has, but it’s expensive to be human, and running on a deficit always catches up eventually.

Shifting the Mindset Around Food

For people healing their relationship with food or recovering from an eating disorder, this way of thinking can be transformative.

Instead of viewing food as something to earn, control or justify, it becomes something that supports the life you want to live.
Eating regularly and adequately isn’t indulgent; it’s responsible. It’s wise financial management for your biological bank account.

You don’t have to micromanage every “purchase.” Your body knows what to do with the investment; repairing, regenerating, and keeping you alive in ways you’ll never even notice.

The Science Behind the Metaphor

Your body is constantly “spending” energy, even when you’re doing absolutely nothing. This baseline expenditure is called Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), and it accounts for around 60–70% of the energy you burn each day. That’s the energy cost of running all your internal systems: your brain processing thoughts, your heart pumping, your lungs brething, your liver detoxifying, your cells regenerating.

Then there’s thermogenesis (the energy required to digest and metabolise food), movement and exercise, and adaptive processes like immune responses, tissue repair, and hormone production.

When energy intake (food) consistently falls below these biological expenses, the body starts cutting costs - slowing metabolism, suppressing reproductive hormones and diverting energy away from growth, repair and mood regulation.

That’s why adequate, regular nourishment isn’t just about “calories in, calories out”; it’s about giving your body the financial security to run all the systems that keep you thriving.

A Gentle Prompt to Try

Next time you sit down to eat, ask yourself: “What am I buying today?”

Maybe it’s energy to laugh with your friends. Maybe it’s mental clarity for a project. Maybe it’s comfort, warmth, or stability. Whatever it is, your body will spend it well.