# Interpreting a food diary



## jennielouises (Jul 5, 2012)

I've kept a food diary for the last week. What I want to know is how to interpret it. So for example last night I had (mild) chilli for dinner. This morning I woke up needing a bm which was a bit strained. I then had my breakfast of alpro soya, shreddies and a bit of sugar. Half an hour later I have pain in the upper gi and heartburn. How do I know if it was the breakfast or strained from the bm? Then how do I know what made the bm not right?


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## TexasMom (May 27, 2006)

Food sensitivities are dose dependent and can be delayed for 72-96 hours, so you could be reacting to something you had 2-3 days ago as well. In addition, you can react to anything but salt and baking soda so if your chili has 10 ingredients in it, who knows what you reacted to.... could be the pepper, tomato, beans, etc. Same with the breakfast. It's better to do a 'few foods diet" so that you can identify the individual foods that are problematic. Having said that though, not all foods cause digestive symptoms. Some cause chronic inflammation that shows up as a headache, fatigue, insomnia, joint pain, etc so you have to record all symptoms. Another complication is that not all inflammation is "noticeable." Some inflammation is "sub-clinical" meaning that you don't necessarily feel it. That's why I prefer to use food sensitivity testing to help identify a list of "safe foods" to eat, and this helps everything to calm down. Once everything is calmed down, we can then add new foods to the list, and the symptoms then are a lot easier to identify.


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## Korga (Sep 8, 2011)

I would agree with the above. You need to be eating simple, single-ingredient meals. What I usually do is start with a 3-day brown rice fast. Then I will add one thing to each meal and record the results as I go along. To broaden what I am eating I usually start with simple veggies and fruits. Within a month I will have a fairly large 'safe' list, and then I can start adding more exotic ingredients from there.


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