How to Keep a Food & Mood Journal

Have you ever chosen to eat a particular food based on your mood at the time? Or have you noticed a pattern in your food choices based off of your stress level, mood, or time of day? Many of us maintain some sort of eating pattern from day to day, but have you ever stopped to think about how those foods make you feel after you eat them, mentally and physically?

Keeping a food and mood journal can help us recognize patterns in food choices, moods, and more. Identifying patterns in our food choices in relation to mental state or mood, stress level, emotions, and physical feelings can help us make more informed choices about food in the future to do what is best for our bodies and minds!

Here are some ideas of what to include in your food and mood journal:

• Time of day

• What you ate or what activity/exercise you did

• Your mood before and after eating and exercising

• Your stress level on a scale of 1-5

• Emotions and physical feelings you felt during the day

• Your levels of hunger and fullness using the hunger/fullness scale (1-10, a 1 is starving and a 10 is stuffed)

• If you struggle with drinking enough water, record when you do drink water. Draw glasses of water and check them off when you drink one.

• If you had a bowel movement that day

It is your choice what to include in your food and mood journal! You can complete one as often as you’d like. The more often you do it, the more likely you are to notice patterns.

Examples of things you might start to notice:

• What hunger feels like to you (headaches, stomachaches, lightheadedness, irritability)

• How you feel after eating certain foods

• The time of day you are the hungriest

• How you feel after exercise

• The impact stress has on your mood and food choices

• And so much more!

The purpose of a food and mood journal is self-discovery. Learning to become more aware of your physical and mental feelings in relation to food can bring insights about yourself to light. Try it and see what you learn about yourself!

Blog post by Amelia Stone, Dietetics Intern