Today, I'm going to talk about the power of tracking your digestive symptoms. So stay tuned.
Hey there, if you're new here, my name's Amanda Malachesky. I'm a certified functional nutrition
health coach and a digestive and allergy detective. For tips and tricks about how to
resolve your digestive complaints for good, please consider subscribing and be sure to hit the bell
to be notified when I post a new video every week. Many of my clients come to me explaining that they
are tracking their digestive symptoms and their food on various apps or diaries or notebooks,
but there's a few particular things that they're missing to get the most out of their digestive
tracking. So I wanted to take a chance today to talk about how to use a digestive tracking tool
for best effect. So by the end of today's video, you'll know how to use a food symptom diary,
which is a key tracking tool for digestive success, and you'll know
how to use it to get to the sources of some of your digestive problems. So let's get started.
All right. So first I want to introduce you to one of my very favorite tracking tools,
something called a food, mood, poop diary, or also called a food symptom diary. This tracking
tool is unique because you track your food and your symptoms, but you also track what your poop
is doing alongside of it. The reason for that is because your poop is a really important diagnostic
tool to help you understand not only how you're reacting to foods, but what kinds of functional
things might be wrong in your digestive system. It helps us understand where we need to look
for solutions. So for example, if your poop is loose, this could tell us that you're having some
kind of reaction to a food trigger. It could tell us that you're having some kind of inflammation
in your gut that needs to be addressed. Or it can also tell us that you might not be
absorbing enough water from your stool and that can have to do with a lot of different things.
So all of these different pieces of knowledge help inform our choices about how to move forward.
If you'd like your very own copy of my food symptom diary, you can head over to the link
that I'm going to leave below this video and grab your free copy. Once you have a hold of it,
I want you to go ahead and use it. So mine has seven blank days of space to record what you're
eating, what your symptoms are and how your poop is. So in that food column, you're going to write
down your food and maybe your supplements, if you have questions about whether some of those
might be triggering some of your symptoms. In the mood column, you're going to note your symptoms.
So this is anything from headaches to diarrhea to cramps to pain in your joints, whatever is
happening. You can also note things like fatigue or depression or anxiety, moods, and symptoms.
Then in that third column, you're going to note what your poop looks like. To
get sort of on the same page about that together with each other, I'm going to
recommend that you use what's called a Bristol stool chart, which is a standardized pictoral
graph of a range of poops. So in that poop column, you can note which number your stool looks like.
So a few other additional things to note about your poop that can be very important include
things like, does it sink or float? Is there an oily or greasy sheen on the water in the toilet?
Is it an unusual color? Are you seeing pieces of undigested food in your stool? Is there a
really offensive smell? So all of these things can be really valuable to note so go ahead and
note those on your food, mood, poop, along with the number describing what your poop looks like.
So now you've got some data and now we're going to take that and start to work on interpreting
it to try and understand what your body is telling you. So the first thing that
I want to invite you to do with that data is to just expand your thinking a little bit and
think outside the box. We're going to get curious about what these different results are telling us
and think a little bit bigger than just, "Oh, I have a digestive problem." The first thing to
consider is whether or not certain particular foods are triggering some of your symptoms. So
the most common culprits are things like gluten, dairy, and sugar, but they really could be any
food at all. It really can be anything. So if you're having trouble discovering which
particular foods are problems for you, this is one place where the tracking tool can come in handy.
You can take a look at a time when you are having those symptoms, like if you're having
them frequently and you can take a look at what you've been eating in the last day,
either in the meal right beforehand or maybe the 24 hours beforehand. Or if you're someone
who's noticed that your symptoms sometimes take several days to appear after you eat something,
you can be looking two to four days before your symptoms show up. The tracking tool is actually a
really great option for this, because it's pretty hard to remember what we ate yesterday, let alone
four days ago. So let the tool do the work for you in trying to sort out your food sensitivities.
Next, I'd like you to notice if your symptoms tend to flare at a certain time of day. If they do,
this can be a clue either about foods that you were eating normally at that time of day or
something to do with your lifestyle or habits. So things like your sleep or your exercise or
places that you go regularly. So for example, if you get bloating and diarrhea every day
before you go to work, it's worth considering, what am I eating for breakfast and drinking?
Or how did I sleep last night? Or what is it about work? Is there something particularly
stressful about work that I'm worried about every day before I go there? So what are the different
things that are involved in that symptom flare. Or if things always flare while you're at work,
consider what happens while you're at work. Are there snacks that a coworker has provided that
you're always nibbling on? Is there an air quality issue in your office that might be bothering you?
Or is there a coworker that you're really stressed out about? So in this way, we start
to think more holistically and more broadly about all the different factors that can be involved.
We just try and use the tracking tool to pinpoint where the source of the problem is coming from.
Now, we're going to take a look at the poop column. The qualitative appearance of your poop
can actually tell you a lot about what's going on inside your digestive tract. So I want to talk a
little bit about some of the different things that we can learn about by looking at our poop.
So a normal stool should be smooth. It should be roughly the size of a banana and it should be
easy to pass and it should sink. So these basic qualities are things that make up a normal or
ordinary poop. If your poop is looking different than that, then that's a pretty good sign
that there's some other things going on that need to be addressed or could be supported or enhanced.
So for example, if you have greasy or shiny stools that float, this can be an indicator
that your fat digestion isn't working very well and that might need a little bit of support. Or if
you're seeing undigested food in your stool, this could be a sign that you may need some additional
digestive enzymes or stomach acid support to make sure that that food is really breaking down well.
Or it could also signal a need to do a little bit more chewing while you're eating. When these
kinds of things come up on the food, mood, poop, it's an opportunity to ask yourself, "Do I need
to pay attention to some of these other things?" Two other things can be helpful for tracking your
digestive symptoms. Number one is keeping track of your blood sugar. This is especially true if
you're someone whose mood or energy level kind of yo-yos or fluctuates really wildly through
the day, or if you have energy slumps at one time or another. So if this is you and you are noticing
these kinds of effects frequently, it's important to maybe do some work with either a blood sugar
monitor to see if those times are correlating with blood sugar crashes or to be paying attention
to what kinds of foods you're eating at the meal beforehand. You might need to make some
enhancements there to make sure that you're not going to set yourself up for a blood sugar crash.
If you're a woman, the second thing that can be important to track is your menstrual cycle
alongside these other symptoms. A lot of women do notice that their digestive symptoms change
or get worse during certain phases of their cycle. So just sort of keeping track of when
your period is happening and when you think you might be ovulating can be helpful for
noticing any hormonal pieces that might be involved in your digestive symptoms. This can
give you some ideas about where to go with that. Using a tool to help you track all these things
is actually really important because beyond a day or so, it's pretty difficult to remember
what exactly happened, what did my poop look like two or three days ago. Without the help of the
tool, it's really difficult to track this stuff. So I really want to encourage you to get tracking,
get busy taking a look at what different things are happening in your digestive system and all
the pieces that are related and see what you can learn about your digestive symptoms. You
might be surprised at what turns up or becomes clear after doing some tracking.
What kind of tracking have you done before? Tell me about your digestive tracking in the comments.
So there you have it, tracking digestive symptoms can help you understand which
foods or behaviors are triggering your digestive symptoms, and it can help you understand what
might not be functioning well and needs support to help you feel better. If you're struggling
with digestive symptoms like constipation or diarrhea, there's two main ways that I can help.
The first is that I want to invite you to download my free guide called roadmap to gut recovery.
Inside, you'll find the step-by-step process that I work through with all of my clients.
It also includes access to some of the tools that I use with my clients. You can download that free
guide by going to confluencenutrition.com/roadmap. I will leave a link for that below this video.
Or if you've already tried quite a few things and you're still feeling confused or frustrated about
what you need to do to move forward, I do work one-on-one with clients. So if you'd like to
learn more about working with me, please schedule yourself a free 30 minute assessment session.
In that session, I'll get to know a little bit about you. You can ask all your questions to me
about working together and we can move forward from there. You can schedule that free session
by visiting confluencenutrition.com/contact. I will also leave a link for that below this video.
I hope that this video helped you feel empowered to track your digestive symptoms to understand
what you need to do to move forward. It's this very simple, accessible thing that everyone can
do at home. So I encourage you to get out there and get started tracking. If you liked this video,
please like, please subscribe or share it with somebody who you think could use it.
I really appreciate you watching. I will look forward to seeing you next time. Take care.