But it is not quite the tragedy you might imagine - the Irish-born Dunedin fitness instructor has a shiny trophy and the title of Ms New Zealand Shape to show for her restraint.
The 26-year-old University of Otago PhD student won the shape category at the New Zealand Amateur Body Building Association national championships in Auckland at the weekend.
It was her first national title - in fact, she only started competing this year.
Her first competition was in August and last month she competed at the South Island championships, where she qualified for the nationals.
"I thought 'Hey, I may as well go up and see how it goes'," she said. "And I won."
While new to bodybuilding, Ms Baxter is an authority when it comes to exercise.
Fitness has been a way of life for the past eight years. She has worked at several gyms in Dunedin and also takes Zumba classes.
When she is not trying to motivate people to work harder, she is busy studying how to help people with chronic illness overcome barriers that prevent them from exercising.
After graduating with an honours degree in psychology, she is now studying for her doctorate, and has an answer for every excuse.
"Your mind will give up about 100 times before your body ever does," Ms Baxter said.
"Even for people with chronic illness, exercise can help you with your outlook on everything. It has even been shown to help people overcome depression. Exercise is quite powerful."
Sticking to an exercise regime and a healthy diet required discipline, but it was not all about sacrifice because the rewards were enormous.
"Fitness, for me, is more about a feeling, I guess. It gives you self-confidence and it can teach you other things in life like discipline and self-control.
"And it can bring you success as well. You can set yourself goals and, once you reach those goals, you get a great sense of achievement."
Everyone had a weakness and there was nothing wrong with a treat every now and then - especially if you had spent the best part of six months avoiding certain foods.
"I still like to eat clean [when I'm not preparing for a competition] but I was looking forward to having some chocolate. It turns out that my tastebuds have changed after 23 weeks of not eating things like that - I quite like the really, really bitter chocolate now."
Ms Baxter hoped to compete at the world championships in Germany next month, so for now even bitter chocolate is off the menu.
