Food Journal for Crohn’s disease: Should you keep one?

Although it is possible to write everything you eat, there is more to hold a food journal for Crohn than to make a simple list. Consider these three tips to make the newspaper more useful, especially when it comes to linking food to subsequent symptoms.

1. Use the format you like the most

The most important aspect to hold a food journal is consistency, explains Castro, so it is useful to choose a strategy that you will use daily. This could mean using an application or writing in a paper notebook, or even holding a photo news journal where you take a photo of each meal and snack.

“The objective is to make it practical, so that you can record your food consumption as soon as you have finished eating and being as detailed as possible,” explains Castro.

2. Save all the symptoms you have in a few hours after eating

You aim to assess food tolerance and identify trends by examining the global models, which is why it can help note the symptoms you have after eating each food and try to identify the models, explains Castro. However, it warns against the anticipation of certain symptoms, as this could in fact encourage you to amplify the problems which would have seemed minors differently.

“It is important to follow your symptoms, but you don’t want to expect to feel sick,” she said. “The perception counts, so try to take it day after day and document what you observe.” Regarding what to record, she suggests a journalist:

• What foods you eaten
• About how much you ate each food (for example, a cup of broccoli cooked with steam or a chicken breast)
• The time you ate each food
• Gastrointestinal symptoms that you have a few hours after eating food, such as abdominal pain, nausea, bloating, gas or stomach burns
• Stool changes such as frequency, volume or consistency

3. Also follow non-gastrointestinal symptoms

• Fatigue
• Fever
• Loss of appetite
• Mouth wounds
• Night sweats
• Pain or redness in the eyes
• Swollen or painful joints
• Difficulty sleeping

“Writing symptoms like these could help you and your doctor identify the models that can be linked to food but which could also be linked when you take your medication, for example,” he said. “The more information you have like that, the better.”