Food Diary Tips

[Pegleg84]

So, I've started a food diary.

Right now it's pen and paper, cause that's just how I function, but eventually I might need to sift through all this info.

I am recording:

- all ingredients I can think of, aside from writing down all ingredients in processed foods.

- how I'm feeling after eating

- relative times of eating and when symptoms start.

From this I can probably make a list of foods I eat frequently, and foods that might be bothering me.

To make this easier, are there any good apps out there? something accessed online so I can use it both on my home and work comp, or on my phone.

Also, how long do you think you should track things before the big picture starts to come together (if ever). Right now I seem to have different reactions even when I eat the same meal twice, so this might be hard to pin down.

Anyway, thanks all.

Peg

[T.H.]

re: apps - One I've heard good things about is the 'Food Allergy Detective.' It will actually detect patterns between food and reactions for you. You can make notes for each food, and you if I recall right, you enter in the foods ahead of time so you have a basic list you can quickly choose from as you enter in a particular meal. It's about $3 or so, not expensive at all.

One thing I would add to what you're recording might be amounts of food. For intolerances, you may not have a reaction until you've eaten over a certain amount of an ingredient over a certain span of time. Might be within a few hours of previous ingestion of the same ingredient, or multiple ingestions over the span of a few days.

Intolerances make the detective work that much harder, ugh!

I would think you need to do this for a few weeks, at least. Some reactions can be delayed by up to 48 hours or even more, for intolerances. Also, you may need to eliminate foods and see how you feel, then add them back in, and so on. I kept my journal for over a year, and then started it up again periodically when there were problems. I highly recommend it, but it IS a bit of a pain. Worth it, but a pain.

I've been looking at trying the app I mentioned above, but haven't gotten to it yet! :-)

[Pegleg84]

Thanks TH, I'll look it up and see if I can get it on my phone.

I've been trying to keep up with recording things, but it seems on the good days I forget about it, then am frantically trying to remember what I ate as soon as my stomach goes wonky.

If I start using it, I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks

Peggy