Uncovering sensitivities with a food diary — Michelle Desira

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A food journal is an organised record of what you eat, including the amount, time consumed, and any following symptoms. Aside from revealing possible food sensitivities, it's also an effective and insightful tool for tracking how diet and eating habits affect your overall health. It is difficult to know what changes to make in our diets if we are not actively aware of what we consume. A food journal allows us to reflect on the nutritional factors influencing our everyday lives and recognise patterns that may go unnoticed.

Let's delve into how keeping track of your meals can help you on your wellness journey.

What is a Food Sensitivity?

Food sensitivity is an adverse reaction to a food or drink that does not involve the immune system. It's also referred to as food intolerance. The most common symptoms are bloating, abdominal discomfort, cramping, diarrhea, and constipation. Other reactions may include headaches, fatigue, anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, skin rashes, or hives. As these reactions can occur up to 48 hours after consuming the food in question, so it can be challenging to establish which foods are causing these reactions without proper tracking.

What Foods Commonly Cause These Reactions?

The foods that are most common to cause a reaction are gluten, dairy and eggs due to their inflammatory nature. These foods are known to irritate the gut lining, causing a leaky gut. Other foods that may also cause a reaction are soy, corn, nuts, and fish. You also need to be mindful about consuming food additives that are found in packaged foods such as nitrate, preservatives, flavour enhancers (msg) colours and artificial flavours as these can also cause reactions in some people. And we can’t rule out caffeine and alcohol. Are you running to the toilet after that cup of coffee???

How Does Keeping Track Help?

Tracking what you eat in a diary or journal can help uncover hidden sensitivities and more easily spot patterns in your diet that could contribute to poor health. A good practice is to note how you feel after each meal to identify patterns more quickly and easily. Tracking over several weeks can yield helpful information about which foods are making it difficult for you to achieve your health goals.

Making Changes

Once patterns have been established, small changes can also start being made and tracked, such as avoiding certain ingredients plus adding new ones like prebiotics or probiotics for gut support. Removing certain ingredients from your diet may be needed to give your gut a rest.

Using a food journal is an excellent way to uncover sensitivities and other diet patterns that may hinder your health goals, such as bloating, abdominal discomfort, and cramping. Keeping track of what you eat and how each food makes you feel afterward will help identify which foods are triggering these reactions so small changes in diet can begin taking place.

Of course, if this sounds too overwhelming and you just don’t know where to start, then guidance from a health coach, like myself can help. I have uncovered several food sensitivities myself and know the best, less stressful way to eliminate those foods and what to replace them with without missing out on those key nutrients. Find out more about my program here

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