Health and fitness
Food Journal
A food journal, a calorie log, a macro sheet, a food and symptom journal and a month of water. Blank logs with no targets printed on them, because what suits one person is wrong for the next.
Four steps
How to keep a printable food journal
- 1
Pick the sheet
Food journal, calorie log, macros, symptoms or water.
- 2
Write your own target
If you have one. None is suggested for you.
- 3
Fill it in at the time
Recall at the end of the day is a reconstruction.
- 4
Note the timing for symptoms
How long after eating is the most useful column.
- 5
Take it to an appointment
A written record is worth far more than a description from memory.
No numbers you did not write
Printable food trackers almost always arrive with figures on them: a calorie target, a macro split, eight glasses of water. None of that can be right for somebody the sheet has never met, and printing it lends it an authority it has not got.
These sheets contain none. Where a target makes sense there is a blank field for your own, written by you or given to you by someone qualified to give it. Nothing here is nutrition or medical advice.
The delay column
On the food and symptom journal, the column that makes the sheet worth taking to an appointment is started after. A reaction twenty minutes after eating and one six hours later suggest quite different things, and it is close to the first question a doctor or dietitian will ask.
Most printable food diaries have a symptom column and no timing column, which makes the record much less useful than the effort spent keeping it deserves.
Write it at the time
The difference between a record and a reconstruction is a few hours. Filled in at ten at night, a food diary reliably omits the unremarkable: the biscuit with a coffee, the last two chips off a plate, the milk in three teas. Those are exactly the entries that matter when you are looking for a pattern.
The forms on this page
- Food journal. A plain record with no targets in it. Written at the time rather than at the end of the day, because recall after eight hours is not a record of anything.
- Calorie log. The sheet does the arithmetic and nothing else. It contains no recommended intake, because a number that suits one person is wrong for the next.
- Macro sheet. Four columns and a total row. Whatever split you are working to is yours to write at the top; the sheet does not suggest one.
- Food and symptom. The column that makes this useful to a clinician is the delay: how long after eating something happened. Patterns show up in the gap far more often than in the food.
- Water intake. Counting is the whole mechanism. How many glasses is right for you is not something a printable can know, so the row length is a count rather than a prescription.
Related printables
Workout and running logs cover training, the wellness journal covers mood and reflection, and the meal planner plans ahead rather than recording after.
Answers