The single most important tool for managing IBS and other digestive symptoms is a food
symptom diary, but how do you properly use it?
Keep watching to find out.
Hey there.
If you're new here, my name is Amanda Malachesky.
I'm a Functional Nutrition Coach and Digestive and Allergy Detective.
I help you figure out what's causing your symptoms and how to get rid of them.
If you want more information about this regularly, go ahead and subscribe to my channel and be
sure to hit the bell to be notified when I make a new video every week.
Lots of people are driving themselves kind of mad trying to figure out which foods are
causing their symptoms and what to do about it by trying this diet and that diet.
So today I'm going to share it the humble tool that helps you figure out the answer
to this question and I'm going to show you how to use it.
I use this tool with every single client that walks in my door to help them get clarity
on what's causing their symptoms.
My client, Andrea, used it to figure out her IBS and anxiety triggers, my client, Mark,
used it to figure out what was triggering his hives, and I've personally used it to
figure out what was triggering my constipation.
I know that you can figure out your triggers too, so let's get started.
The simple tool that helps you figure out your food triggers is nothing more but a simple
food diary, but it's a special type of food diary called a food-symptom diary.
Just tracking your food intake doesn't really tell you very much until you start tracking
that data alongside your signs and symptoms, and also how the food is affecting your stool.
You're going to want to grab your very own copy of my food-symptom diary.
You can get that by heading over to confluencenutrition.com/food-symptom-diary, or you can also look below this video, I will
definitely leave a link down there for you.
A lot of my clients get a little squirrelly or squirmy when I start suggesting that they
take a food diary.
I think they're worried that I'm going to get all judgy on their ass, but that isn't
what I'm about.
The name of the game is really just to let your signs and symptoms speak for themselves,
to just take a look at what you're eating and how is it affecting you and get clear
on that.
If you pull out the food-symptom diary that I gave you, the technique is really very simple.
In the column labeled food, you write down what you ate and you put it in the appropriate
time of day, whether it's morning, afternoon, mid-afternoon or evening.
In the second column, you note any signs or symptoms that you're experiencing, including
your moods.
These include things like headaches, gas, diarrhea, bloating, pain, irritability, whatever.
Whatever you're noticing, just note it when you feel it.
If you're reporting back at the end of the day, just put it in the area where you think
it happened.
Then in the third column, and this is the part that some of you may not be familiar
with, you want to note what is your poop doing, what does it look like.
To use a standardized comparison, we use what's called a Bristol stool chart to make a descriptive
comparison.
If you have a normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill poop, you're going to write a number four
in that square on the journal.
That's it.
You just write it down, don't think about it too much, don't overthink it.
Just write it down and don't worry about it, and do that for five to seven days.
If you're already using a therapeutic diet template, then this is a good place to make
use of that as a way to guide where you might direct your attention, especially while you're
taking this data.
For example, if you are using a low FODMAP diet to address your IBS, you might consider
looking at that list ahead of time to think about which foods do I want to just maybe
pay a little extra attention to that might be causing a problem.
After you've got five to seven days worth of data now comes the fun part, which is to
do a little bit of analysis.
This is the fun part where if you're a person who enjoys using colored pencils or highlighters,
you're going to want to get those out to help you.
Next, I want you to look through those five to seven days and see where you had a bowel
movement that was not how you would like it to be, whether that's on the diarrhea end
or the constipation end.
Where did those happen, and highlight them in a nice bright color so you can see them
really clearly.
Then what I want you to do is take a look at what you had to eat in the previous 24
to 72 hours.
See if there's anything in there that stands out as like, hmm, that might be a trigger,
and maybe highlight that item with your highlighter as well.
Once you've identified some of those possible culprits, it might be worth seeing if there's
any other instances of that on the same food diary, and if so, take note of that.
You also want to be mindful of these other places where you had difficult symptoms, things
that are uncomfortable, things that regularly bother you.
Things like headaches or pain or whatnot, take note of those and also see if you can
correlate those with any of the foods that you ate in the previous few days.
If you think that you see a correlation between your symptoms that you're experiencing and
a particular food the next step is to test your theory by eating the food again and then
doing a few more days of observation.
So eat the food and watch what your bowel movements and your other symptoms and signs
do over the next three to four days.
Using this method is how I discovered that broccoli was a constipation trigger for me,
which was a bummer because it's one of my favorite vegetables, but what am I going to
do?
This is the basic way to use the food symptom diary to help pinpoint your triggers even
in a sea of really complicated food, which is typically what we eat.
We eat a lot of different foods.
Another way to use the food symptom diary is to use it to compare the results that you've
gotten from a food sensitivity test.
I talked about this two videos ago, so if you'd like to learn more about the food sensitivity
tests that I recommend, go ahead and check out Food Sensitivity Test Comparison.
Despite all your best efforts, sometimes you might not get any answers that you're looking
for and this can be super frustrating, but it is part of the process sometimes.
Just as an example with my broccoli problem, it took me several weeks of tracking to figure
this out.
It didn't happen overnight.
It's just because I kept being persistent at it and I was determined to figure out what
was going on that then when I went back and looked, I could see that there was a delay
of maybe two days between when I'd eat the broccoli and when the constipation would happen,
but it was consistent that every time I ate it I would have that effect.
So if you're finding out that it's not real clear, keep at it, keep persisting, because
eventually patterns do emerge often.
It just might take a little bit more time.
Another way to think of it is to think of different angles.
Maybe it's the way that I'm preparing my food, or maybe it's the quantity of that food I'm
eating.
If I eat a small amount, it doesn't cause a symptom, but if I eat too much, I might
have that reaction that I'm noticing.
Then even though food sensitivities are often the root of certain symptoms, they're not
always the only root cause.
So if you're not able to figure out what's going on with this method, you might need
to consider some alternative options for investigating.
You might want to take a look at what's going on with your gut and whether you have gut
infections, you might want to look into environmental toxins or other possible causes.
Just because you don't get answers right here, don't give up.
It doesn't mean that there aren't answers for you.
Have you ever used a food symptom diary?
How did it help you?
Tell us about it in the comments below.
That's the best way to use a food symptom diary to help pinpoint and identify your food
triggers, and now you're ready to give it a try.
So make sure that you grab that food symptom diary, I've left the link for that below.
If you've already done a little bit of work but you're still feeling unclear, or you need
a little bit of support and guidance figuring out how to read your food symptom diary, I
really want to encourage you and invite you to schedule a free 30-minute assessment session
with me so we can talk about what it would be like to work together.
You can do that by heading over to confluencenutrition.com/contact.
If you'd rather get started on your own, but you need a few ideas about where to start
looking, I invite you to grab your free copy of Roadmap to Gut Recovery.
You can head on over to confluencenutrition.com/roadmap.
There's also a link for that below this video, so go ahead and grab that and find out what
you can do to get started right away on healing your gut.
I wish you all the best with your food tracking adventures.
Be sure and leave a comment below or leave me a question that you'd like me to answer
in a future video and I'll be sure and check that out.
I will look forward to seeing you next time.