FREE PRINTABLE
IBS food diary template: a free two-week printable
A diary works when you can fill it in quickly. This two-week printable has one page per day for meals, symptoms, stool form and notes. Print it, keep it where you eat, and take it to your appointment.
Download the diary
Low FODMAP food & symptom diary (2 weeks): an instruction page, a Bristol stool key, 14 daily pages and a short notes page. Black and white, so it prints cleanly on a home printer.
What to write down
The BDA advises keeping a food and symptom diary while you make dietary changes, so you can see what helps. These are the fields on each daily page:
- Meals and drinks, with times and amounts. A rough portion is better than none. For restaurant meals, note what you are unsure about.
- Symptoms, with times and severity. Use a 0 to 10 scale for bloating, pain, gas and urgency, and write the time each started.
- Stool form. Write the Bristol type (1 to 7) and the time.
- Context. Sleep, stress, exercise, travel, your cycle and any medicines or supplements.
A worked example
This is a made-up day to show the level of detail that helps. It is not advice about what to eat.
| Time | What | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | Oatmeal with a banana, black coffee | Banana about 100 g |
| 12:30 | Restaurant pasta with tomato sauce | Unsure about garlic or onion |
| 15:00 | Bloating 6/10, gas 4/10 | Started about 2.5 hours after lunch |
| 19:00 | Rice, chicken, zucchini | Home cooked, about 150 g rice |
| 21:30 | Stool, Bristol type 6 | Poor sleep the night before |
The uncertain lunch ingredient is exactly the sort of gap to write down. If a pattern shows up later, the note tells you which meals to question.
Using it for two weeks
- Fill it in as you go. Memory fades within a day, especially for amounts and times.
- Keep it simple if it gets stressful. Skip the fields that do not help, and ask your dietitian what they want to see.
- Mark the good days too. They are your comparison.
- Read the whole record before drawing conclusions. The trigger guide shows how to compare entries without assuming a cause.
- Take it to your appointment. See what to bring to your dietitian.
Two weeks is a practical starting point. How long your clinician wants it to run is their call. A diary records what you noticed; it cannot show that a food caused your symptoms.
Bloat Gone is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent disease. Use Low FODMAP guidance with a qualified healthcare professional.
Paper or phone
Paper works well if you like writing and are comfortable carrying it around. The Bloat Gone app does the same job on your phone: it keeps meals and symptoms on one dated timeline, adds Bristol types, and exports a PDF or XLSX report for the dates you choose. Use whichever you will actually keep up.
IN THE APP
Keep your food and symptom diary on your phone
Log meals and symptoms as they happen. You can return to the dated entries or export a report for an appointment.
