Getting started with Skintrition by keeping a food diary

When you start your journey with us one of the first things we will ask you to do is keep a food diary. This will help us to see any patterns in what you are eating and how these may affect your symptoms. Getting a head start on this will save time, giving us important information before we even meet you.

Keep a food diary

A food diary is simply noting down everything you eat and drink for 3 to 5 days. We give you some guidance on how to gauge portion size but we don’t ask you to weigh anything. Eating as normally as possible and being really honest gives us a good baseline to build from.

As well as information on what you are eating, we ask that you keep a note of your skin symptoms, your mood, how you have slept and your stress levels.

All of this information helps us to build your personalised plan.

Food diary template download

Click HERE for a food diary template that you may want to use but you can keep the information in whatever way is easiest for you.

Tips for keeping your food diary

A simple way to gauge portion size is to compare to a familiar object e.g. palm-sized piece of meat, matchbox sized piece of cheese, mug or cup of coffee etc.

Photographs of your plate or of food packaging can be useful too. It’s helpful if you can note down the type of certain foods e.g. semi-skimmed milk; white or wholemeal bread, white or brown rice for example

For the skin, mood, sleep and stress columns use the scale below

1 = Poor
2 = Not too bad
3 = Average
4 = Pretty good
5 = Great

If you are having periods, it is helpful for us to know where you are in your monthly cycle.