A food diary in its most basic form is a list of all the foods and drinks you have during the day. It’s also really helpful to keep track of your water intake and number of bowel movements.
The template attached includes all of that, plus quality scores for how you’re feeling that day. Give a score, on a scale of 1 to 10, to your quality of digestion, energy, mood, sleep and exercise for each day (1 is terrible, 10 is great). These quality scores will help you piece together how certain foods make you feel, and to see how your body reacts to the changes you make.
You don’t have to track a full 7 days, 3 or 4 is great, but they should be consecutive days. That’ll average things out to give you an idea of what you eat in general, on a regular basis. For some people, it’s also really eye-opening to see how all of the little snacks during the day can add up.
Start by tracking before or just after some kind of major shift, like a cleanse. That’ll be a good way to see how your energy levels are doing, and whether you notice any results. It’s also perfect for keeping track of your reactions to food if you’ve done an elimination and are reintroducing things that you didn’t have during the cleanse.
Track again for a few days after 4-6 weeks. Then you can compare your energy levels and sleep quality, and learn more about your reactions to how and what you’re eating. Tracking for too long, or too often can turn into an addiction or obsession, and can feed into eating disorders, so be careful that if you have that personality tendency that you don’t go too long with it.
Keep a food diary periodically on a long-term basis to learn from, tweak and improve your diet and habits. Tracking for a few days every so often will show you how things change over time, but not get overwhelming or obsessive.
You can use an online tracking system, use the template here or just write on a scrap piece of paper – whatever works best for you. You might find it really interesting to keep them though, so you can look back on your progress in healthy eating and your energy levels. If you use an online system, there are some that allow you to make notes so that you can track those quality scores as well. Try sparkpeople.com or fitday.com.