If you love to bake or make treats for your job, it’s still important to keep life balanced and healthy. If you want to stay fit and healthy while continuing to bake, here are some nutrition tips for bakers that are practical and easy to do!
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash
I love to bake, and share my creations with others, it’s one of my favorite things! Even more fun is that baking and cooking is part of my job now as a blogger, so I can make a little bit of a living while cooking. I really enjoy it!
But, all that baking can have consequences, like growing out of my clothes 😮
Several years ago when I first started my food blog, I was baking and making treats all the time. That, along with all the sitting from working on my blog, meant I started to gain weight. Not really what I wanted to get from blogging!
Even though something needed to change, I didn’t want to give up baking since it’s part of my job as a blogger, and I genuinely love it! I think that fitness/health and enjoyable activities can go hand-in-hand if done mindfully. So, I decided to keep most of my baking to the weekends, and I try to follow these ideas most of the time when I do my baking and cooking.
Nutrition Tips for Bakers
Gluten Free Chocolate Cookie Bars
These are also great tips if you’re doing a bunch of baking or treat making around the holidays or for parties, so these are helpful for anyone who loves to make sweets!
Make smaller batches of treats if you can
Unless you’re making big batches for gifts or parties, try to make smaller batches so you don’t have cookies or sweets for days and days.
Limit taste testing to only what’s necessary
This one is really tough for me, I love to take tastes of my baking even when I don’t need to! Cookie dough is my weakness, and it is so hard to stop eating the cookie dough when I start. But, I’m working on taking tastes only when I really need to so that I don’t overdo it.
Keep your meals healthy
On baking/treat-making days, keep your meals whole food with well balanced macros. I do most of my baking and recipe testing on the weekends, so I know that I’ll be eating and test tasting more goodies on the weekends than usual, so I try to eat really healthy and balanced meals the rest of the day with plenty of protein, fruits, and vegetables.
…and don’t bake on an empty stomach!
If you bake or make sweets on an empty stomach, you’re more likely to fill up on those high calorie sweets. Eat your regular healthy meal first, then have some treats afterward so you’re not eating too much sugar.
Share
I try to share as much of my cooking with others as possible if it’s sweet and decadent so I don’t have as much in the house. I have a sweet tooth, and sometimes it’s hard for me to stop at just a couple cookies. It’s so easy for me to eat too much sugary sweets! I try to share when I can by sending things to work with my husband or sharing treats with my sister or parents.
Freeze extras for later
The freezer is now my friend when I’ve made too many treats! Most cookies and desserts freeze pretty well, so it’s a great idea to freeze extras for later if you ended up with a huge batch and don’t want to eat them all at once. Since I have food allergies, it’s nice to keep some treats I can have in the freezer to have a treat when the mood strikes without having to make a whole batch of treats.
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie. She’s a food allergy mom and allergy friendly food blogger of 12 years based in Wyoming. Sarah is also an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Certified Health Coach, Revolution Running certified running coach, and an ACE Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist