A quick thought experiment...
You can choose to sit beside one of two campfires to keep yourself warm. The only rule is, whichever one you choose, you have to tend to it all day and night.
🔥 Campfire #1 is made of small sticks, twigs, bark, scraps of wood and paper. It ignites, it burns, it provides some warmth; but you have to constantly pay attention to it. The fire barely ever “catches” and it comes close to burning out every hour or so. Fortunately, sticks and twigs are lying around everywhere and aren’t hard to carry. It’s time consuming to keep this sputtering fire lit, and you have to pay attention to it *all the time*, but it’s doing the job... sorta.
🔥 Campfire #2 is made of birch logs. The logs burn really warm, reliably, and consistently; and you can go a very long while before you have to throw on another log. When it does come time to tend to the fire, you can do so casually; the coals are burning hot so, whenever you get around to it, you can go wrangle up a log. Acquiring birch logs takes some effort, and they’re heavy (ask me about my birch log selfie; my bicep is still cramped!), but once the fire is going, it’s awesomely hot, effortless and mellow. You can turn your attention away from the fire for hours and enjoy the world around you.
I like to get my clients’ metabolisms running like a birch fire. A set-it-and-forget it paradigm where energy, mood, and hunger are quiet and self-sufficient and, whenever you get around to it, you can feed yourself great supportive food without it feeling urgent, hangry, or out of control.
Needing to eat every few hours to keep energy up? You’re running on kindling, and that’s an exhausting fire to keep lit. Eventually you get so frustrated by wrangling up the sticks and paper, that you just dump some lighter fluid on it and get it over with (binge behaviour).
...oh I can keep going. Metaphors are my second language. 🤣
Let me know if the analogy landed, in the comments.