When a health coach sends cookies to her new clients, maybe indulging in a little treat isn’t such a no-no.
Ingrid Vaicius has always been attracted to the kitchen. “Cooking and baking is where I found my grounding,” she says. “I don’t care what kind of day I had, I’m just going to go home and make a meal.”
This post originally appeared in our September 2019 print issue. For more food and health content, subscribe to our weekly newsletters.
When she felt burnt out at her job working for Arlington County, she sought coaching for herself. “I was the unhealthiest-healthy person I knew,” she says. She ate well and worked out, but, “I was not feeling great. I looked at my life—something needs to change.”
Vaicius earned a certificate from The Institute for Integrative Nutrition and started her own practice, Healthy. Happy. Balanced. YOU.
Her second business, Bākt by Ingrid, features vegan, gluten-free, grain-free and refined sugar-free cookies: chocolate chunk, double-chocolate chunk and one in collaboration with New York-based Revolution Motherhood with, what Vaicius says, are healing ingredients like beet powder and cordyceps mushroom powder.
She trusts almond flour to better hold moisture, making the bite chewy, not crunchy. Coconut oil, maple syrup and Himalayan sea salt sub for butter, refined sugar and processed salt.
“I don’t believe in diet and restriction,” says Vaicius. “Go for the thing that you really want,” she says, but make it “a little bit better for you.” // $8 for eight cookies
