Printable food and symptom diary

How to fill it in

1. Write a row for each meal, drink or snack, and a row whenever you notice how you feel, including when you feel fine. Fine rows are what possible patterns are compared against; gaps change what a diary can show.
2. Name the main foods with a rough amount in your own words. There is no need to weigh anything, and a mixed meal can be recorded by its main parts.
3. Describe symptoms plainly and use the same strength words each time, such as mild, moderate or strong. See describing severity without a 0–10 scale.
4. Note what was different only when something was: a bad night, a stressful day, travel, illness or a new medicine. Which context is worth recording explains why less is often more.
5. Write “not sure” rather than guessing, and fill in what you can at the time; entries made at the time are easier to trust than ones pieced together later.

A diary shows what tends to happen around your meals; it cannot tell you a food caused a symptom. Talk to a GP or dietitian before cutting foods out, and when you have a few weeks of pages, our appointment summary tool turns them into one page for that conversation.