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.
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.