Making and Using a Food Diary. Why and How.

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I have made many food diary’s in my time as a mother for various reasons. Sometimes because I thought that my child was reacting to a food but couldn’t figure out what. Sometimes the diaries have focused more on other aspects of life and simply tracked foods just in case. I have also had to track food for some of the health care practitioners I have seen over the years. More rarely I have simply tracked my own food to see how much I was eating of what to know my ratios of fat/protein/carb and some of the macro-nutrients. As you can see there are many different kinds of food diary and what works for one may not work for another. I’m going to cover the two ways that I have done it below and give you lots of ideas on how to make it right for you.

If you are wanting to make a food diary you may find yourself overwhelmed by the details of it. Start out by making a list of what you need to be sure to include in your diary.

Some common things to include are:

• foods eaten at meal time. Include quantities if appropriate.
• Foods eaten as snacks
• beverages (can be included with the foods)
• behaviors/mood (can have several entries for this or just one general one for the day)
• If nursing a child who is also eating solid foods it is best to track what mom and baby eat on the same chart but in separate entries.
• poop (quantity, quality and timing if appropriate)
• pee (if it is excessive or minimal)
• rashes
• seizures
• sleep quantity and quality
• Medications and supplements taken may need their own entry
• Other-I’m sure there are more that I haven’t listed

Obviously not everyone will need all of these categories. Think of what you are trying to keep track of and how specific you need to be.

What I usually do is to make a spreadsheet. You can use Excel, Google Docs for a free online spreadsheet or Open Office for free downloadable spreadsheet software (it has a full office suite, not just spreadsheet software). I have used Open Office and Google Docs and I like Open Office a bit better, but both work well for this application.

What I usually do in the spreadsheet is have the “timed” stuff at the top of the page and the all day type of stuff at the bottom. You can of course modify this however works best for you. I have an example below of what a basic chart might look like. For some reason I can’t get the grid lines that I added to show up here but hopefully you get the idea.

Once you have it set up you need to make a decision. Will you be wanting to print it out and fill in the information by hand or do you want to type your entries on the computer. It really is a matter of style which way you prefer. I personally am a much quicker and neater typer than hand writer so I prefer to enter it all on the computer. Others prefer to do as little on the computer as possible. There is no right or wrong to this.

One advantage to doing it online is that your spaces can easily be set to grow to fit everything you want to put into them as you use them. I also like that I can always find it. I have a tendency to set down pieces of paper and lose them. A disadvantage is that when I am away from home getting the entries into the spread sheet can be tricky. One option is to do it on Google Docs and if you have a smart phone or tablet you can probably use that away from home to add and entry. Otherwise simply bring paper with you for any entries that come up. Do not try to rely on your memory too much. You are keeping these notes because it is so difficult to remember every little thing. When I am using the form on the computer I like to put dates at the top of each column instead of days of the week.

If you are going to be printing it out and writing on it you will need to decide how large to make your spaces before you print it out. Think about how much information you are wanting to get into each slot and how big you write. I think it works best to print it out using the landscape view or sideways view. Also be aware that if you don’t add borders to the cells your page won’t print the grid that you see on the computer. It will just print the words that you add in the appropriate spots on the page. Save your master to print out more weeks from. In using this method it is most helpful to have one week per page to help you quickly find a date.

When I have done this for a nursing toddler I have included everything that I eat in a separate space on the chart. That chart looked something like this. The shading makes it easy to see who’s information goes on which line.

Once you have the diary you will start to fill it in. After a few days look back over it and see if anything stands out to you. One thing that food diaries make clear to me is how much variety I am (or am not) getting in my daily diet. I look for the things that stand out. Most food reactions will happen within 4 days of consuming a particular food. I personally like to vary my diet more while doing the food diary so that things may stand out to me. That was how I determined that my younger dd was reacting to almonds and chocolate in my milk. I looked back over the day before the bad day and could see that I had eaten something I didn’t usually eat. Sometimes these things will just jump out at you. Sometimes you have to keep going for a while for a pattern to emerge. There is always a chance that you won’t be able to find anything but a Nutritional Therapist or other health care professional will be able to.

One thing to pay attention to is food families. That is foods that may have something in common that can reveal an underlying sensitivity to a food chemical. Often those sorts of reactions build up over time so as a food or a group of foods are eaten more the reaction appears and then gets worse. An example is Phenols. Everyone has a limit to how quickly they can eliminate phenols that they are ingesting. For some people that limit is reached with one bite of an apple while for another it takes more apples than a person can reasonably eat. When I notice that my child is reacting to several different foods I try to see if there is something common between those foods that will help me to predict what other foods may be an issue for her. Sometimes there are outliers. That is a food that your child reacts to that is not in that food family and seems to be restricted to just that food. My older daughter can’t tolerate sweet red peppers. She never has tolerated them. They don’t fit into any of the other food families that she has issues with but I still can’t give them to her. My younger daughter can’t tolerate cucumber. Again it is just that food and she is fine with all foods related to cucumbers.

One more word about uncovering food sensitivities. I got lucky that my dd clearly had a reaction to high oxalate foods. Most people do not have a clear reaction to high oxalate foods when they need to be on a low oxalate diet. In fact often eating a high oxalate food will help that person feel better for a time. This is because it is not a food chemical sensitivity most of the time. Oxalate will build up and be stored in the body. It is only when intake drops and it begins to come out that most people have symptoms. Eating a high oxalate food will often stop those “dumping” symptoms and so the person concludes that those high oxalate foods are in fact beneficial. Unfortunately, eventually everyone hits a storage limit. At that point there is nothing that will stop the “dumping” and they symptoms will be continuous until you can reduce the body burden of oxalate.

I won’t lie to you. I hate making these food diaries. They are a lot of detailed picky work and keeping track and I really hate doing it. However, they have led me to many breakthroughs in my children’s health and my own health. I still will do just about anything else other than this to try to solve health problems. I just don’t like paying that much attention to what I eat! If you go back through my old records from past food diaries you will find blank meals and even whole days with nothing written. I just had a rebellious moment and refused to write it down. The good news is that even with my bad attitude I have learned good, valuable information from this exercise pretty much every single time I have done it. It is worth it even if I am a big baby about having to do it whenever it becomes necessary.

So the other reason that you may want to start a food diary is more about nutrition and volume than it is about symptoms and poop. For that kind of food tracking I like a website and app called My Fitness Pal . I want to say up front that I do not agree with its diet advice. It has targets for carbs, fats, and proteins that I think are way off. However, what I like about it is that I can track how much of those that I am consuming as well as some other macronutrients like calcium and iron. In addition, its food lists are extensive and you can easily add to them as well. It also has a way for you to enter a recipe and then divide it up into servings and easily see the nutritional information per serving for your recipe. I just wish it had a way to also track other things in the same program. There is a notes area that you could use but to see that you need to go onto each page. It also only lets you compare calories day to day. I would like it to have a chart where I can see how I’m doing for say calcium over the course of a week. But all in all it is a good app and available on many smart phones as well as on your computer so you can take it with you.

So there you have it. Those are the ways that I have tracked food for various reasons in my home. Have you ever kept a food diary or used My Fitness Pal? What tips can you share with other readers who may be convinced that this is a good idea but overwhelmed by the process?

I also want to add that I do not advocate a food diary for someone just starting the GAPS Diet. You have enough on your plate without adding this to it. GAPS can and does often clear up food intolerance that a diary would uncover without you ever having to eliminate them from your diet. However, for those who are not in that place. Perhaps you have been doing GAPS for a long time and sense that there is something you or your child is eating that is causing issues but you just can’t figure it out. Or perhaps you aren’t doing GAPS at all and you are trying to figure out what is triggering various symptoms in your child and determine if a diet like GAPS or Low Oxalate is right for you.