Free printable · food & symptom diary
Free Food & Symptom Log Starter
Being told to "keep a food diary" is easy; keeping one you can actually read back is not. This free food and symptom log starter is the one page to keep on the fridge or in a bag: what you ate, how you felt, and how bad it was on a 1-to-5 scale. It arrives with the first rows already filled in as a worked example, so you can see how it's meant to be used before you write a word. Print it, fill it in with a pen, and bring it to your next appointment.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Pairs one row of what you ate with how you felt that day, plus a 1-5 severity — the record a doctor or dietitian can actually read back.
- Opens pre-filled with a fictional worked example, so the format explains itself; overwrite it or carry on underneath.
- Prompts you to note clock times if you can — the gap between a meal and a symptom is what turns a diary into a pattern.
- Keeps it safe to share — a record of your meals and symptoms, never a patient-portal login or an insurance member number.
- Comes as a printable PDF and a fillable spreadsheet (with a severity dropdown) — nothing to sign up for, nothing saved anywhere but your own copy.
Related reading
Own it, don't rent it
Want your foods ranked by what actually followed them?
This starter records; it can't count. The full Food & Symptom / Elimination-Diet Journal is the system behind it — a 10-tab workbook (Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice) plus guides, where you set a reaction window in hours and it checks every meal against every symptom for you, then ranks each watched food by how often a symptom followed a meal containing it. It also runs elimination phases with live dates, checks each reintroduced food for the reaction itself, and computes a one-page appointment summary.
A one-time purchase you keep and own — the structured journal between a note on the fridge and a rented food-diary app holding months of records about your body on someone else's server.
A record-organizing sheet, not medical or dietary advice, a diagnosis, or an allergy test; noticing a food beside a symptom is not proof it caused it. Elimination diets are normally run with a doctor or a registered dietitian. Seek urgent care for any severe reaction — trouble breathing, swelling of the face or throat, or fainting. Free to use; please don't resell or redistribute.