The Joy of Baking: One Way To Make Peace with Food
Reclaiming the joy of baking helped me make peace with food (dare I say, bake peace with food?), and maybe it can help you too.
Why We Bake
Baking engages all of our senses. The sound of a mixer creaming together butter and sugar, the visual cue when egg whites reach stiff peaks, the feel of kneading dough, the aroma of cookies in the oven, and of course the taste when it is done. Activities like this allow us to express creativity, reduce stress, and bring pleasure to ourselves and others.
Baking was my first introduction to the kitchen and cooking, as it is for so many kids. I can still remember standing next to my grandma, barely able to see over the countertop, as she measured flour into her electric mixer to make a cake. I loved the magic of taking simple ingredients like flour, sugar, butter and eggs and turning them into something more than the sum of their parts.
As I got older and could be trusted to bake alone, I set up my baking station like Martha Stewart. All the ingredients were pre-measured into little bowls so I could move through the recipe like a TV chef creating cakes, cookies, muffins, and bars.
I remember in 2008 when I really got into bread baking, including cultivating my first sourdough starter. Literally making a crusty loaf of bread out of nothing more than flour and water. It was in those heady days before I decided that gluten was probably the cause of everything wrong in my life (spoiler alert, it wasn’t).
Diet Culture vs. Baking
Those idyllic memories clash with the world of dieting and diet culture. In the world of diets, baked goods are evil. Too many calories, too much fat, too many carbs. Sure, there are exceptions—a cake for a birthday, cookies for Christmas—but they all come with a promise of future penance. “The diet starts Monday” or “no sugar in the new year.”
How does one reconcile an activity of joy with the strict rules of what should and shouldn’t be eaten?
I struggled with this for years.
As I continued to fall down the path of diet and wellness culture, so many things I once loved were left behind. No more baking bread or chewy cookies with crisp edges. Sandwiches became salads, cookies became date balls.
Making (and Baking) Peace with Food
It was during the pandemic that I started toying with intuitive eating and experimenting with foods I had previously avoided. I jumped on the sourdough bandwagon (and am still riding it to this day). I found that bread, one of my favorite foods, brought me joy and satisfaction, not pain and lethargy, as I had once thought. Though I appreciate the struggle of those who need to be gluten-free due to celiac disease, I realized I had no good reason to be swapping almond flour in cookie dough or buying loaves of rice and potato starch-based bread. My taste buds (and food budget) loved the new freedom.
Making peace with food is an important intuitive eating principle; if we keep restrictions in place, then food has power. When we let go of restrictions, food is just food. Of course, it can be scary to go from avoiding certain foods or eating them, followed by a downward spiral of guilt and shame, to just letting them exist in your world. To go from saying, “I don’t make cookies because I will eat them all”, to having cookies around most of the time (and maybe even forgetting they are there at all). But guess what? It works.
My Weekly Baking Challenge
During the summer of 2021, I set a goal for myself to bake something each week. To always have a baked good in the house. To revisit the joy of baking while also challenging my own thoughts about my relationship with food. I made boxed brownies, carmelitas, raspberry crumble bars, browned butter crispy treats, and chocolate chip cookies. It was fun, delicious, and eye-opening.
I made an effort to take a full-sized serving of each item instead of that old diet-y behavior of cutting a thin strip repeated over the course of the day and being surprised that the pan is half gone while also not really feeling like you enjoyed eating it. In the beginning, I wanted that treat after every meal of the day and sometimes as a snack in between. But as the days and weeks went by, I found myself passing by the pan for entire days, sometimes even having to toss the last few because they got stale or moldy.
Of course, you can make peace with food without baking too. I did that with other foods like potato chips, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and pizza. But as someone who really loves to bake, this summer of baking felt special. I was learning to trust myself around food while also learning to spend my time doing activities I enjoyed.
Try Your Own Baking Challenge
If you also love to bake or have always wanted to bake but diet culture has stopped you from doing so, try your own baking challenge. Fall seems like the perfect season—pumpkin bars, apple crisp, pecan pie. Or around the winter holidays—all the cookies, cheesecake, and yule logs. Or spring with lemon tarts, coconut cake, or strawberry trifle. Any time of year is a great time to bake something delicious.
If you do decide to undertake this challenge, there is one ground rule that can make a big difference in your experience: eat regular meals and snacks throughout the day.
The average human can’t go longer than about 5 hours without primal hunger setting in. When we get too hungry, we tend to crave the easiest and most energy-dense food we can find. This is part of another principle of intuitive eating, honor your hunger. If you haven’t eaten for 6 hours and come home to a pan of brownies, you will have a very different response to them than if you had had a satisfying lunch 3 hours ago.
If you do end up eating more than feels good physically in your body, that is ok too. You can take time to reflect on what might have contributed to that—too hungry? Too stressed? Too tired? All of these things (and more) contribute to food choices. Examining what happened leading up to it can help you cultivate self-compassion rather than feeling guilt or shame. It can also help you determine what to do differently in the future (i.e., don’t skip lunch, move your body to release some stress, etc.). And if all this feels overwhelming to undertake on your own, set up an appointment for additional support and guidance.
To learn more about how working with a nutritionist could help you, schedule a free 15-minute call.