A while back I heard this story from Dr. Andy Galpin, professor of Kinesiology at Cal State University. He said when it comes to nutrition, we can be either a cook or a baker.
Bakers like precision and strict rules. They’re meticulous and they thrive when using approaches like counting calories or macros. What seems overwhelming for many (for example, eating 150g of carbs, 150g of protein and 100g of fat per day), can give bakers a sense of freedom and peace of mind. They usually don’t mind weighing and measuring their food on a daily basis, and they might even prefer to eat exactly the same foods, every day.
Cooks are completely different. They would be overwhelmed by all the rules the bakers thrive on. They need flexibility, they like to be more spontaneous and they can easily adjust on the go. So Cooks usually do better following broad guidelines, like Crossfit’s: “Eat meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar - Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat”.
One is not necessarily better than the other, but I believe that in order to be a good cook, we all should be a baker sometimes. Using an app that tracks our food intake (MyfitnessPal, for example) for a week or two to get a deeper understanding of how much we’re eating, and what’s the macronutrient content of those foods, allows us to be better cooks.
Which one are you and what’s your plan to eat healthier?
Willian Alba
Comments